Photo/arts Magazine

Roadside Aesthetics

2012-02-28T10:00:00.001-05:00

Montgomeryville, Pa (2012)

Force Of Nature

2012-02-27T11:00:00.000-05:00

Elaine Kurtz: A Retrospective
Elemental: Nature as Language in the Works of Philadelphia Artists

Woodmere Art Museum
Philadelphia, Pa

February 17- April 22, 2012

One of the most intriguing images to me in this dual exhibit at the Woodmere Art Museum is a photograph of Elaine Kurtz taken in 1978 by Rosalind Solomon. Kurtz is standing in the corner of a gallery in Washington, DC in front of two of her paintings, wearing a full length fur coat and hiding her face behind her hands as if in shame or embarrassment. The irony here is that this exhibit focuses on the work of Kurtz and twenty three other artists who share an interest in the language of art in organic forms and metaphors of nature.

Elaine Kurtz by Rosalind Solomon (1978)

During the 1970's Kurtz was living in Washington DC while her husband Jerome worked in the Carter administration. Her works from that decade are bold and geometric, abstractions and brief experiments with Pop Art. They are meticulously crafted and show a rigid methodology bordering on perfectionism. Some of these images have been described by exhibit curator Pamela Birmingham as having an "immaculate surface"... with "no brushstrokes, no sign of the artist's hand".The lack of emotion in these early images is as anonymous as the Solomon portrait.

In the 1980's Kurtz's work began a radical shift towards the organic. She started using sand and mica as well as metals to create flowing works that eventually moved into a semi-sculptural realm. Earth Series (1985) is one of the first major works in which Kurtz used sand with paint and the hypnotic blue painting has the effect of a Mandala. (The painting is behind Kurtz in the photograph below taken by Seymour Mednick in 1984) Later works from her Alluvial Series move deeper into spiritual and emotional levels as Kurtz, a lifelong atheist, began to investigate the subject of God. The show is a stunning example of transition and maturity in the life of a talented artist.

Elaine Kurtz by Seymour Mednick (1984)

This retrospective exhibit is beautifully and thoughtfully presented in the wonderful gallery spaces of the Woodmere. The accompanying group show, Elemental: Nature as Language in the Works of Philadelphia Artists feels a bit chummy and therefore somewhat forced. A single nod to photography, with three works by Diane Burko , seem hastily chosen. I much prefer the deliberate exclusion of photography in an exhibit than what can seem like gratuitous inclusion. A floor based sculpture by Dina Wind, Black Island (2012), while ecologically thought provoking, is absurdly out of place in this exhibit. On the other hand, there are more than enough very strong selections to maintain visual interest in this conversation between artists who were friends and colleagues of Kurtz. Look for wonderful examples from Edna Andrade (1917-2008), Thomas Chimes (1921-2009), Frank Bramblett (b. 1947), Neysa Grassi (b. 1951), and Astrid Bowlby (b 1961).

Exhibit Details

Unseen Color

2012-02-26T12:08:00.000-05:00

STEPHEN PERLOFF, “UNSEEN COLOR, PART I”
LIGHT ROOM GALLERY
2024 Wallace Street
Philadelphia, Pa

MARCH 10 – APRIL 14, 2012

In 1986, photographer and Photo Review founder and editor Stephen Perloff had a “30 YearRetrospective” at Haverford College, as he included a picture of his parents he made at the ageof eight with his Davy Crockett camera. Perloff actually started seriously making photographsten years later, in 1966, and has had a lengthy career that has included studies of the builtenvironment of Philadelphia, a rephotographic project in the city (Philadelphia Past andPresent), images made in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, and a multi-year study of the town ofCentralia, Pennsylvania, which famously had a coal mine fire burning beneath it. He has alsomade numerous portraits of people like photographers W. Eugene Smith and Emmet Gowin,monologist and actor Spalding Gray, feminist Kate Millett, poet Elizabeth Alexander — whoread at President Obama's inauguration — and dancer Lucas Hoving, among others. Most ofthose photographs were made with a 4x5-inch view camera. Among his 35mm work are imagesmade on travels to Europe and the Far East and a moving series of the last seven months of hisfather’s life titled “Dying at Home.”

But except for two SX-70s that were included in a Brooklyn Bridge centennial show in NewYork City in 1986, the work he has exhibited has always been in black-and-white. Perloff oftenshot color along with black-and-white, but he never really learned to print color and neverexhibited this work.

Automatic Bible Stephen Perloff

With the advent of digital technologies, however, Perloff has revisited this work, scanned theKodachrome slides, which are still pristine, and made new digital prints. “I always knew therewere wonderful images among my color work,” Perloff recalls, “but after looking at them acouple of times and maybe having a slide show once in a while for a couple of friends, the workwent into storage and was somewhat forgotten. I realized that with a high-quality scanner and printer I could bring these images back to life and the results have been everything I imagined.”

Movie Posters, Jerusalem Stephen Perloff

Perloff’s color work goes back to 1966, with images made in Philadelphia, at the West Virginia
State Fair in 1978, on his trips abroad, and especially to the Far East in 1977 and Romania in
1982, as well as trips cross country in 1970, 1978, and 1979.

“This show will have a sampling of some 20 images, but there are many more I hope will be exhibited,” Perloff says. “That’s why I titled this exhibition ‘Unseen Color, Part I.’ We’ll see!”

Stephen Perloff “Unseen Color, Part I,” The Light Room Gallery, 2024 Wallace St.,Philadelphia, PA 19130, 215/765-0262, www.thelightroom.org, Friday–Saturday 12–4 p.m., andby appointment, March 10 – April 14. Opening reception, Saturday, March 10, 2–6 p.m. Closing>reception, Saturday, April 14, 2–6 p.m., artist’s talk at 4 p.m.

Hello from the Future...

2012-02-24T15:28:00.003-05:00

Retro Vault

Sacrifice

2012-02-23T11:13:00.000-05:00

40 days away from Social Networking.... Facebook, Twitter, and Google+

Feeling Social Enough Yet?

Everything that we do during Lent is to make us aware of the Lord, and less focused on ourselves. In its perfection, Lent is a season for reflection upon and delight in the goodness of our God.

Zoe Strauss Lecture

2012-02-18T08:31:00.002-05:00

Cynthia by Zoe Strauss

Zoe Strauss – Lecture and Book Signing

Philadelphia Photo Arts Center

1400 N American Street

Philadelphia, Pa

Saturday, February 18th, 2012
Lecture: 6:30
Book Signing: 7:30

The Philadelphia Photo Arts Center is pleased to host a lecture and book signing by Philadelphia-based photographer Zoe Strauss. Her photographs portray under represented and marginalized people and places within the Philadelphia area and abroad. These efforts have culminated in a portrait of the region and nation that is both honest and inquisitive, revealing the beauty of every day life and it’s consequences.

Zoe Strauss, born 1970, is an installation artist and photographer living and working in Philadelphia, PA. She recently completed her 10-year I-95 project that culminated in an installation of photographs under interstate 95 in South Philadelphia. Strauss has exhibited in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Philadelphia ICA and had two solo shows at Bruce Silverstein Gallery. In 2005, Ms. Strauss was awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts and in 2007 she was awarded a USA Gund Fellowship. Her first monograph, America, was published in 2008. Her second book, 10 Years, will be co-published by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Yale University Press in early 2012.

PMA Portfolio Competition 2012

2012-02-17T10:49:00.000-05:00

Photography Portfolio Competition 2012

Contemporary Russian Photography

2012-02-17T10:35:00.003-05:00

I was delighted to learn that My Own Wilderness participant Denis Tarasov will be included in the upcoming Fotofest International Biennial exhibit Contemporary Russian Photography 1950-2012. Tarasov is among 22 photographers being featured in a special exhibit that showcases the Young Generation of Russian photographers.

Foto Fest International 2012
March 16- April 29th
Houston, Texas

Contemporary Russian Photography 1950- 2012

The Biennial explores modern and contemporary Russian photographic history over the last five decades, from the post-Stalinist period of the 1950s to the present day. Three main exhibitions, created for the FotoFest 2012 Biennial, present three periods of Russian modern and contemporary photography, with the works of 142 artists from Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine: After Stalin, “The Thaw”, The Re-emergence of the Personal Voice (1950s-1970s), Perestroika, Liberalization and Experimentation (1980s-2010), and The Young Generation (2009-2012). Of the works, on loan from private collections and the archives of the artists themselves, many are being shown for the first time outside of Russia.

With a population of 143 million people, Russia spans two continents and nine time zones, while its citizens speak 28 languages. It is a global powerhouse fitfully engaged with capitalism, consumerism and an ongoing struggle to define itself as a modern nation in the context of its own history and culture. FotoFest’s 2012 Biennial will serve to introduce an international audience to never- or little-before-seen contemporary Russian art practice and culture through the medium of photography.

Denis Tarasov from Dreams of an Oasis

The Young Generation - 2007-2012
FotoFest Headquarters at Vine Street Studios, 1113 Vine Street, Houston, Texas

Unlike their predecessors, the young generation of Russian artists today has little direct experience with Soviet Communism. Growing up after its collapse, they began their careers as part of a globally-connected, consumerist and individual-oriented society. Although some have the means to leave Russia to study art in Western Europe and the U.S., many others continue to work inside Russia. In contrast to the sharply ironic and outward-looking artists of the Perestroika periods, younger artists are looking inward, immersed in their own personal experiences and the psychological dilemmas of growing up in modern-day Russia. The artists in The Young Generation exhibit are:

Tatiana Antonuk
Oleg Borodin
Roman Bregman
Alexandra Demenkova
Kir Esadov
Maria Kozhanova
Vlad Krasnoshchek
Ivan Mikhailov
Karen Mirzoyan
Vasilisa Nezabarom
Alisa Nikulina
Margo Ovcharenko
Nikita Pirogov
Tatiana Plotnikova
Petr Rakhmanov
Dina Shchedrinskaya
Anna Skladmann
Alexandra Stukkey
Anastasia Tailakova
Denis Tarasov
Fedor Telkov
Daria Tuminas

My Own Wilderness

The work of Denis Tarasov, as well as many other young Russian photographers can be seen in the recently published book My Own Wilderness, produced by PHOTO/arts Magazine and edited by Christopher H Paquette. The book contains the work of 44 photographers from around the world, and 14 of the contributors are from Russia.

A full preview of the book can be seen here..... My Own Wilderness

More Art Galleries of the Public

2012-02-16T15:45:00.000-05:00

Richboro, Pa. (2012)

I've been re-thinking several previous photo projects and the ways that they connect with each other. One of them is Roadside Memorials. I always saw them in terms of vernacular folk art, and to me they were more than expressions of personal grief, but were also artistic. I see those same patterns in other roadside oddities as well. This framed section of plywood has an unmistakable element of contemporary art to it. To me it represents a receding roadway. (I've seen worse art in galleries.) With the American flags and the "For Sale" sign, the scene transforms into a statement about commercial art instead of the obvious indications to depressed real estate conditions.

Art Galleries of the Public

2012-02-15T08:16:00.000-05:00

Outdoor Advertising Association of America

Wall Street Journal, April 14th, 1960 , quoted Burr L Robbins as saying that “billboards are the art gallery of the public,” Mr Robbins is the President of the General Outdoor Advertising Co. Inc.
Mr Robbins suggested that since “billboards are the art gallery of the public,” his industry might enhance its public image by donating valuable billboard space in cities and countryside to display huge reproductions of such historic masterpieces as the “Mona Lisa”, “Blue Boy”, “Song of the Lark”, and “Lavinia”. Unhappily this promising campaign appears to have made little headway to date.

from God's Own Junkyard by Peter Blake (1964)

Pennsylvania Turnpike by Michael Ast (2012)

Currently Reading...

2012-02-07T10:06:00.001-05:00

Reframing The New Topographics

By Greg Foster-Rice, John Rohrbach

Center for American Places at Columbia College Chicago (2010)

ISBN 1935195093

"The New Topographics photographs are thought to possess a resistance or reaction to what was

then the prevailing tradition of landscape photography, the West Coast aesthetic as defined by artists such as Ansel Adams, Wynn Bullock, Minor White and Paul Caponigro. While the photographs associated with New Topographics knowingly exchange the sublime for the subtle, many carried an emotional depth and complexity as well as an overt moral position equal to, if not greater than, the work of these more popular and familiar photographers. They are anything but what might be considered dispassionate or documentary".

Same As It Ever Was

Toby Jurovics

Reframing The New Topographics

AASHTO #57

2012-02-04T15:58:00.001-05:00

False Mountains

New Poetry

2012-02-03T11:16:00.000-05:00

Poetry of Nowhere

Mos Hi Def

2012-01-31T09:58:00.002-05:00

Highest definition photo of earth ever made. The image is posted on NASA's Flickr stream in a variety of sizes, the largest being 8000 X 8000 pixels. You can zoom in on it to reveal incredible detail. I was asked by someone for my opinion on what sort of lens was used to obtain this odd perspective of the globe, it seems to be a very wide angle view, almost fish eyed perspective. Then we noticed the description of the photo provided by NASA...it is a composite image made from several swaths(?). I would love to see the NASA version of Photoshop that created this picture. And it would be interesting to see all of the exif data, but nothing is provided on the Flickr stream.

NASA description of the image...

A 'Blue Marble' image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA's most recently launched Earth-observing satellite - Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth's surface taken on January 4, 2012. The NPP satellite was renamed 'Suomi NPP' on January 24, 2012 to honor the late Verner E. Suomi of the University of Wisconsin.

Suomi NPP is NASA's next Earth-observing research satellite. It is the first of a new generation of satellites that will observe many facets of our changing Earth.

Suomi NPP is carrying five instruments on board. The biggest and most important instrument is The Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite or VIIRS.

NASA on Flickr

NASA website

Gong Hey Fat Choy

2012-01-30T11:03:00.001-05:00

These are really the first photographs I have made in 2012. (At least it is still January) The book is finished and I am spiritually and mentally liberated to make images again. I do not follow astrology, but the Chinese New Year had me wondering about my sign. I was born in the year of the Pig (Yin Earth) Honest, gallant, sturdy, sociable, peace-loving, patient, loyal, hard-working, trusting, sincere, calm, understanding, thoughtful, scrupulous, passionate, and intelligent. Can be naïve, over-reliant, self-indulgent, gullible, fatalistic, and materialistic. Some fits , some doesn't. Can't we find elements of ourselves in every sign of the Zodiac? One of the reasons I don't hold too much stock in it.

Eating New Year's dinner in a vegetarian restaurant (House of Vegetarian, 68 Mott Street), the young children at the next table were chanting the Cantonese version of Happy New Year.... "Gong Hey Fat Choy" while they entertained us with small dragon marionette puppets and even a delightful display of Chinese acrobatics by a precious two year old named Ellery, who could spell her own name.

These are from Mott Street, Chinatown, NYC...

Chinese Zodiac

My Own Wilderness

2012-01-25T11:10:00.003-05:00

My Own Wilderness is a celebration of the fifth anniversary of PHOTO/arts Magazine, and a platform to connect with readers in a new way. In a sense, this was my emergence from the wilderness that is the day-to-day habitat of the soloist blogger.

Themes related to modern concepts of wilderness are familiar to readers of PHOTO/arts Magazine. New Topographics and the cultural landscape, environmental art, and traditional landscape photography are all recurring subjects. While developing the concept for this international competition, I was close to embarking on my fifth trip to the Boundary Waters area of northern Minnesota. This annual journey takes me into the wild and secluded pristine lake region along the Minnesota/Canadian border, and involves three thousand miles of driving alone in the car - itself a form of wilderness. I was doing a lot of thinking about the differences and similarities between wilderness of place versus wilderness as a state of mind.

Martin Buday

The call for work was worded as follows...

Wilderness has many meanings in this shrinking world we live in. The traditional definition is 'an area of earth untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain'. Where there once were immense regions on the planet that could be defined in this way, today there are fewer and fewer untrammeled places. But wilderness can also be more than a physical place. It can be a state of mind, a condition of loneliness, an economic or political status. It can exist within the most populated cities as a personal space created by the individual. How do you define wilderness?

I was looking for answers to the ways in which photographers interpret and sort through their own personal experiences with both the physical and the theoretical forms of wilderness. How would these conceptions look as photographs?

The answers are beautiful and profound. Some are haunting and difficult, others full of whimsy and irony. Almost all of the artists touch upon aspects of the mental and emotional experience of wilderness, and quite a few explore the blurred boundary between fantasy and reality. The wilderness of reality versus the wilderness of our minds. The internal and the external. The past and the present. These are the unifying elements of the photographs being presented in this book. Ellen Jantzen defines wilderness as a place of the mind rather than a physical place. Intrigued with parallel universes, space/time warps and other manifestations of altered realities, Jantzen invites us to step through the looking glass into another dimension.

Ellen Jantzen

Mark William Fernandes draws inspiration from the experience of his grandmother´s struggle with Alzheimer's disease, which led to a collapse of space and time. Manipulating the border between fiction and reality, Fernandes creates his own visual truth, away from a linear concept of space and time. In her artist statement, Alena Lobanova describes wilderness as ‘space without time limits...it exists where everyone and everything exists’.

We live on the ever expanding borders of wilderness, squeezing it into non existence. Wilderness has evolved for many of us into a place of nostalgic longing, and quite a few photographers use an element of nostalgia and memory in their work. Herve Demers’ work is from a series depicting the landscape of his youth, to which he is strongly connected and brings to him a sense of inner peace. Eamon Mac Mahon returns to the place of his childhood, growing up in small landlocked communities in Alberta, Canada surrounded by vast stretches of ‘forbidding and mysterious wilderness’.

Eamon Mac Mahon

We dream of being in the wilderness we long for. Or we replace our immediate surroundings with self-made metaphors for wilderness. Willson Cummer thinks of mountain trails when he is exploring urban parking garages. Denis Tarasov records images of wistful landscapes painted on the sides of industrial equipment within the barren desert of a bleak Russian factory. The series is called Dreams of an Oasis.

Does wilderness coincide with vulnerability? Real and imagined dangers are presented to us in the work throughout this book.The harsh reality of children living in the wilderness of drugs and alcohol. Children living amid the squalor of a waste dump. A child seemingly lost in the woods. Nudity would certainly represent the highest form of human vulnerability to the outside world, and this theme is presented in a number of photographs. There is an unmistakable loneliness in so many of these images. Moving beyond the uncertainties and the vulnerability and loneliness, there is also quiet placidity in virtually every photograph.

Five photographers were awarded special recognition for their remarkable depictions of a personal wilderness experience. I took into consideration their artist statements, the images you see presented here, and the full set of photographs they submitted. Simply put, this is the work my eyes kept returning to again and again during the weeks of assembling this exhibit. Katerina Bodrunova presents us with a fantasy world of a reversed role of hunter and victim. The series is inspired by the contemplation of a vegetarian lifestyle, and her surreal images touch upon almost all of the unifying themes in the book.

Katerina Bodrunova

Bernard Mindich explores big cities to go on what he calls 'urban safari' trips to find wild animals, and in particular, seeks ways in which these obsessively man made animals interact with unsuspecting humans. Agan Harahap uses images of live animals in anthropomorphic settings, effectively taming the wilderness while blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. Andi Schreiber shows us an exploration of suburban American family life. We see a wild child literally climbing the walls of a cage, and another has just fired a shot from a gun. Both images leave me confused, disturbed, and amused all at once. Irina Popova documents a small child living in a world of drug addiction. Popova’s artist statement spoke of the intense struggle between recording the reality in front of her versus intervening on behalf of the child. Popova received intense criticism over this series and in a sense was placed into her own solitary world in defense of her work.

Irina Popova

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all of the photographers who took the time to submit work to this exhibit. This was truly an international collaboration, as you will see by looking through the artist biographies in the back of the book. I have presented the book in an exhibition format, and it is meant to be viewed as if you were walking through a gallery. The photographs are displayed one to a page, in an order that I would choose for them to be seen on the walls. I think there is a lovely cohesion not only to the sequence of these images, but also to the body of work as a whole. Enjoy.

Christopher H. Paquette
Editor

Full preview of My Own Wilderness

murmuration

2012-01-21T01:32:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I briefly caught sight of a murmuration of starlings, but they moved behind some buildings and were gone. Today I saw this poem.

Sharon Brogan | SB | sbpoet

Jeanette May

2012-01-17T08:00:00.001-05:00

Jeanette May
Bachelor Pads
A.I.R. Gallery
Brooklyn, NY

February 1-25, 2012

Here is an interesting series by New York photographer Jeanette May inspired by 1960s movies and magazine spreads highlighting the phenomenon of the “bachelor pad”. May stages the contemporary bachelor in his metropolitan dwelling. The original bachelor pads were conspicuously heterosexual and masculine in design—filled with the latest gadgets and markers of hedonistic pleasure. Mayʼs photographs examine whether the current version evolved or if the reel-to-reel sound systems were merely swapped for iPod stations and large screen TVs. The pad may define oneʼs economic or cultural standing, provide refuge, or seduce potential lovers. Mayʼs images raise these issues while offering a voyeuristic peek into the private living space of single men. Bachelor Pads furthers Mayʼs investigation into the representation of desirable men and the development of the “female gaze” in contemporary visual cultural. (Her previous project was called Easy On The Eyes) In this recent project, she concentrates on bachelors: unmarried men who do not live with their parents, spouses, or lovers. Her bachelors identify as straight or gay, live alone or with roommates, and cover a range of ages and socio-economic groups. May poses the men in a formal manner; their gaze is never toward the camera, but they seem self-consciously aware of an audience. She produces photographs located somewhere between portraiture and documentary, that allow women (and men) to stare unabashedly at attractive bachelors and then visually rifle through their belongings. May presents her archival pigment prints in a scale that enables us to read the spines of books on the shelves or covet a particularly desirable apartment. What do we learn about these specific bachelors, how do men present themselves to the camera, and does the female viewer take pleasure in the sight?

images are from the series Bachelor Pads by Jeanette May

Jeanette May is a photographer using a critical, sometimes playful, approach to investigate representation itself. May earned her MFA in Photography from CalArts and her BFA in Painting from the University of Illinois, UrbanaChampaign. She has been awarded grants and fellowships from the NEA Regional Artistsʼ Projects Fund, Illinois Arts Council, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, and Ms. Foundation. Her work is exhibited in galleries and museums internationally, including New York; Chicago; Los Angeles; Toronto, Canada; Sandviken, Sweden; and Athens, Greece. May lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Jeanette May Bachelor Pads

A.I.R. Gallery

Family Dynamics

2012-01-16T09:39:00.000-05:00

Emmet Gowin

"I realized that my own family was as miraculous as the most distant people in the world and at the same time , the most available to me, and perhaps available only to me. I had not realized that art could be made by simply telling the story of your own life, of your own experience. I realized that telling my own story, using as subject matter the people I knew and loved, that this automatically involved an intimacy I could not have had in any other way." Emmet Gowin

Family Dynamics
February 6 - March 4, 2012
The Kiernan Gallery
Lexington, Va

Andi Schreiber, one of the My Own Wilderness competition winners, was selected by juror Henry Horenstein to be included in Family Dynamics, a group show at The Kiernan Gallery in Lexington, Virginia, opening February 6th.

Andi's selected image in the show is her wonderful image Injected...

Injected by Andi Schreiber

See the rest of the images in this beautiful exhibit by clicking the link below.

Family Dynamics exhibit

Andi Schreiber's website

La Corona by Zoe Strauss

2012-01-14T00:09:00.000-05:00

Zoe Strauss Billboard Project
La Corona (Reed & Passyunk Ave)

Here is Zoe Strauss discussing South Philadelphia, immigration, cheese steaks, and bigotry at the site of billboard #1 of her Bill Board project which is a part of Zoe Strauss: Ten Years, opening January 14th at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Why Zoe Strauss Matters

2012-01-12T15:50:00.001-05:00

From Next American City..... Why Zoe Strauss Matters

Cynthia, by Zoe Strauss

Bernard Mindich

2012-01-12T10:53:00.000-05:00

New York photographer Bernard Mindich was one of the selected winners of the My Own Wilderness competition. He is continuously on an urban safari, as he calls his wanderings through New York City and other places in his frequent travels. Bernard's work in My Own Wilderness is from a collection of "inanimate" animals that he discovers within the urban environment, interacting in strange and often whimsical ways with unsuspecting humans.

Here is a nice little series that Mindich calls The World at my Feet.

"The title refers to both the physical perspective of the images and their implicit metaphorical connotation suggesting the abundance of intriguing content and infinite stories suggested with virtually every every step we take -- if we are awake to what is there". Bernard Mindich

Images from The World At My Feet by Bernard Mindich

Bernard Mindich's website

Zoe Strauss: Ten Years

2012-01-10T10:20:00.000-05:00

Zoe Strauss: Ten Years

Philadelphia Art Museum

January 14 to April 22, 2012

Zoe Strauss: Ten Years is a mid-career retrospective of the acclaimed photographer’s work and the first critical assessment of her ten-year project to exhibit her photographs annually in a space beneath a section of Interstate-95 (I-95) in South Philadelphia. Strauss’s subjects are broad but her primary focus is on working-class experience, including the most disenfranchised people and places. Her photographs offer a poignant, troubling portrait of contemporary America.

Strauss (American, born 1970) states that her ambition is “to create an epic narrative that reflects the beauty and struggle of everyday life.” Zoe Strauss: Ten Years will offer one version of that narrative, presenting approximately one hundred and fifty of her photographs, along with slideshows displaying more of her imagery, and installations on billboards throughout Philadelphia that will extend the exhibition beyond the Museum. Between 2001 and 2010, Strauss hosted yearly day-long exhibitions of her photographs under an elevated section of I-95. She affixed prints to columns in an area roughly the size of a football field, providing visitors with a map keyed to a list of photograph titles.

Prints of the exhibited images were available for sale for five dollars, with Strauss stationed at a nearby table to sign them. These installations animated the site with art, commerce, and social interaction, transforming it into a vibrant public space. Zoe Strauss: Ten Years will examine how, for Strauss, the opposite settings of the abandoned urban zone under I-95 and the galleries of the Philadelphia Museum of Art complement each other. Her engagement with both places is deep and she highly values the Museum as a place for civic discourse, just as she strove to make the space under I-95 a place for social interaction.

Untrained as a photographer or artist, Strauss nevertheless founded the Philadelphia Public Art Project in 1995 with the objective of exhibiting art in nontraditional venues. She turned to the camera in 2000 as the most direct instrument to represent her chosen subjects. In 2006, Strauss participated in the Whitney Biennial. In 2008 she published her first book, America.

*above text courtesy Philadelphia Art Museum. Photos by C. H. Paquette (2008)

Opening Party (soldout)

Saturday, January 14th, 2012

8PM to 1AM

Levi Wedel

2012-01-07T10:37:00.000-05:00

Canadian photographer Levi Wedel creates his work in series that are thoughtful and concisely edited with a dream like quality to them. Be sure to look at his website as well as his beautiful collection of images curated on his blog. Links to both are at the bottom of this post. I was especially drawn to his Producing Landscape series. The blending of random organics with geometric framing results in a sort of inverted facade for the eventual completed residence being constructed. As if the house has been turned inside out to expose the surrounding pre-existing site. These images evoke a mixture of elements from the New Topographic school and in particular the work of Lewis Baltz and Henry Wessel Jr. who both focused on the relationship between construction and the immediate surrounding landscape features.

Levi Wedel describes his Producing Landscapes series as follows...

The wood framing stage in the construction of houses presents an unfolding of space, one which enframes the surrounding landscape as much as the surrounding landscape enframes it. This causes a production of landscape—a doubling of the existing landscape through the creation of a simultaneous perspective from the interior of each house, a view in which the outer landscape becomes framed by the space of each interior and reduced to an image.

Likewise, each photograph depicting these internal landscapes reduces this play of landscapes and images into a further image while simultaneously opening a new perspective, a new unfolding of space and landscape in the space in which a viewer observes each photograph.

all images by Levi Wedel from Producing Landscapes

After viewing this series and his other related work, I asked Levi to comment on the continuing and sustained influence of the New Topographic style of photography among many photographers today. He presents a thoughtful an well written response to my query...

I think the effect of New Topographics never really dissipated and has continued to influence select individual practices through the years; it perhaps just wasn’t as popular or at least visible until the Internet allowed it to be widely reintroduced to new generations. I think the documentary style used in New Topographics continues to find relevance today, even if the landscape is no longer a newly-tamed frontier. I think it has particularly found new relevance within the context of postmodernism. New Topographics was never defined very strictly or concisely and that vagueness has allowed a flexibility as its influence has seeped into past and current practices. I think there still remains ample conceptual headroom to continue to explore, extend and redefine what New Topographics started.

There is a group of photographers I know in Hungary who are very interested in this style and last year they exhibited in a show called Hungarian New Topography, which is very interesting because apart from the documentary style their landscape is far removed from the new frontier that drove the original New Topographics. I wrote a foreword for their show.

Here is an excerpt from that foreword which I think is relevant:

“An important aspect of the New Topographics photography was the use of a documentary style which enabled the works to be viewed in a context of art. The photographs of New Topographics documented objects and places that seemed common, boring, peripheral and ugly—things not ordinarily documented. Walker Evans termed the documentary appearance found in such photographs as a ‘documentary style’. Evans used this term to differentiate between the document, which has a use value, and art, which is useless and only emulates the styleof the document through its presentation of factual information. Photography in an art context has no restrictions or guidelines regarding the information it frames or the way it frames that information because it has no use value.¹ The New Topographics photographs exemplified this lack of use value and embraced the freedom to frame their information in ways that avoided standard conventions and the idealized landscape models of their time.”

I think the new prevalence and use of digital images causes some issues for the documentary style and its future. The digital image is a different kind of document and far removed from the fixed artifact of the photograph, yet its manifested form (on screen or in print) bears a semblance strikingly similar to the photograph, allowing viewers to view them in a similar way, perceive similar images, and use them for similar functions (despite the other many differences between photographs and digital images, both ontologically and in potential use-values).

In being a different kind of document, even when manifested in print which forms a different kind of physical artifact, digital images invoke a different set of implications and potentials; they are documents not rooted in physical objectivity but in the subjective forces of language (which is sometimes then manifested in a physical document but a document of a strange sort: objective in what it is but with a difference in source and in what has been objectively documented from that of the photograph). The photograph’s document indexes light that reflected from what was photographed (often second-hand in a final print from crystals affected first-hand), while the digital image in print indexes a mechanical process (how ink was splattered from a print head in an inkjet print or how lasers interacted with silver crystals in a photographic print like Lightjet). The digital print is a simulacrum. With regard to the digital image file as a document, documents based on language have been around far longer than photographic documents, yet the digital image file is new in the sense that it is a hybrid of sorts because its language signifies visual values.

Just as the art photograph can be of a documentary style (that is, appears as a document through its presentation of facts but without a use-value), the art digital image is often of a photographic style (appears as a photograph through its presentation of visual qualities but without any facts).

It is probably too early to begin to define the ramifications of these differences and their effect, though there is some interesting work being produced which explores the possibilities, such as work by Jeff Wall and Scott McFarland. Each has made work manipulating the digital language to produce images in the style of the photograph that are anything but. Digital images allow one to build one’s own hallucinatory “reality” that has no truth value (facts) at all, yet looks as objective as a photograph.

On a side note, I find digital images fascinating and use them myself, both from DSLRs for what they are and as scans of film that represent physical photographs (which are also simultaneously their own new thing—a digital image). My preference is dictated by conceptual necessity, and sometimes both mediums can be used together for the same work.

I have purposefully scanned film to print digitally onto photographic paper to create a photographic simulacrum, such as for a show I did with my work from Invisible City. It is true that people are unlikely at a glance to determine what source the work such as my digital photographic prints for Invisible City originate from or how they were made, be they digital or photographic, let alone a photographic simulacrum produced by digital means, but I think this is ok and does not harm the work. I think people worry too much about what a viewer can discern from a work, which is unquantifiable and unpredictable anyway; I am more concerned with what things can potentially be, are becoming and what they are. When art is created with the focus on an audience that is already defined, the work becomes restricted and begins to cease as art as it conforms to a model, a parody of itself and its potential. I am interested in the work that builds its own model.

¹ Britt Salvesen, New Topographics (Göttingen: Steidl, 2009)

Lewis Baltz from Park City (1978-81)

Henry Wessel Jr. Tuscon, Arizona (1974)

Levi Wedel's website

Levi Wedel's Images Found blog

Agan Harahap

2012-01-03T11:18:00.001-05:00

Indonesian photographer Agan Harahap was one of the selected winners in the My Own Wilderness competition in 2011. Two of his images are included in the upcoming book and I thought it would be interesting for readers to see all of the images he submitted to the competition. Harahap's artist statement was very short and simple...

"In this series, various animals have been anthropomorphized and placed in common situations that we may face in our daily lives.I used a snapshot aesthetic, which further blurs the boundary between reality and my imagination."

This sense of confusion and the attempt to present a visual crossing over from civilization to personal wilderness was successfully achieved by many of the photographers who submitted work to the competition, and I think Agan Harahap's work really nailed it. In the next couple of weeks I'll show more examples from other My Own Wilderness photographers.

images copyright Agan Harahap 2011 from My Own Wilderness

Agan Harahap's website

Andi Schreiber

2011-12-27T10:08:00.002-05:00

My Own Wilderness competition winner Andi Schreiber received an a Honorable Mention in the Documentary category of Photography Book Now 2011 for her book WonderLust AT•A•GLANCE. This was the second Honorable Mention award Schreiber has received from the annual Blurb photography book competition. Her images of the everyday surroundings of suburban family life present themselves with a unique mix of sophistication and irony. They are such a pleasure to look at. Andi Schreiber's work will appear in the upcoming My Own Wilderness book, to be released in mid-January.

What is Wonderlust?

Wonder is a genuine feeling of awe brought on by something unexpected. Lust is irresistible desire. I'm attracted to subjects that make my heart beat a little faster. In a word, WonderLust.

My sense of wonder and the thrill of seeing brought forth this project. These photographs are made at home, at poolside, at parties and in parking lots, of family and friends, and people unknown to me. They are fragments of my small world.

My process is random. I fight the urge to pre-visualize; I'm struck by the accidental image. I need to experience deeply what is here, right now. The camera enables me to vanish into moments before they are gone.

This ongoing body of work, "WonderLust," embraces sensation and a passion for what's unseen. It's as if the subjects find me. I have no choice but to turn that irresistible desire into something tangible, into a photograph. I want to seduce the viewer to feel as I do – to know pleasure is to be alive.

andischreiber.com
andischreiberphotography.blogspot.com

WonderLust At A Glance

All images are copyright Andi Schreiber, from the series WonderLust At A Glance

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-23T10:49:00.000-05:00

Happy Holidays from PHOTO/arts Magazine!

Announcing AIPAD 2012

2011-12-22T11:29:00.000-05:00

The Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) will hold the 32^nd edition of The AIPAD Photography Show New York, one of the world’s most important annual photography events, March 29 – April 1, 2012, at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City.

More than 70 of the world’s leading fine art photography galleries will present a wide range of museum-quality work, including contemporary, modern, and 19^th-century photographs, as well as photo-based art, video, and new media. The AIPAD Photography Show New York is the longest running and foremost exhibition of fine art photography. The Show will open with a Gala Preview on March 28, 2012, to benefit InMotion, which provides free legal services to low-income women.

AIPAD 2012 will present four new member exhibitors: David Zwirner, New York; Sasha Wolf Gallery, New York; Paul Cava Fine Art Photographs, Bala Cynwyd, PA; and 798 Photo Gallery, Beijing.

“Numerous photography collectors have told me that they are marking their calendars for AIPAD 2012 in March,” said Stephen Bulger, president, AIPAD, and president, Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto. “There is no question that AIPAD is a prerequisite for both new and established collectors.”

EXHIBITORS

A wide range of the world’s leading fine art photography galleries will exhibit at The AIPAD Photography Show New York. In addition to galleries from New York City and across the country, a number of international galleries will be featured from Germany, Great Britain, Argentina, Japan, and China. An exhibitor list is available at aipad.com/photoshow.

EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS

The AIPAD Photography Show New York will offer museum-quality work from established and emerging contemporary artists to modern and 19^th-century masters. Among the highlights will be a selection of extraordinary portraits. Bonni Benrubi Gallery, New York, will show Linda McCartney’s photographs of Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix. One of Bert Stern’s famous contact sheet images ofMarilyn Monroe from her last sitting in 1962, which she famously crossed off, will be on view atStaley-Wise Gallery, New York.

Flip Schulke’s mural-sized silver gelatin print of Muhammad Ali jumping out of a hotel pool in Miami Beach from 1961 will be exhibited at Keith de Lellis Gallery, New York. The image was first published that year in Life magazine. Portraits of pioneer photographers will be shown at Charles Schwartz Ltd., New York, including a rare self-portrait by Herbert George Ponting from 1912 on the ill-fated expedition of Robert Falcon Scott to Antarctica.

Tam Tran is known for her self-portraits with provocative titles such as My Call to Arms, Retro Bitch, I Forgot Pants, Strip Tease, and When Are We Leaving? Her photographs were seen at the Whitney Biennal last year; at age 23 she was the youngest artist in the exhibition. This fall, her work was included in the recent exhibition Portraiture Now, Asian American Portraits of Encounter at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Her image entitled Youniverse will be shown by Gary Edwards Gallery, Washington, DC.

Kelli Connell creates portraits that appear to document a relationship between two women, caught up in everyday moments of pleasure and reflection. Yet upon closer inspection, the viewer will notice that the subjects appear to the twins: in fact, Connell has seamlessly created a photograph with the same model portraying both roles. At the forefront of digital technologies for the past decade, Connell addresses complex issues of identity and visual rhetoric. Her work will be exhibited at Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago.

Unique portraits of dolls by Fausta Facciponte will be on view at Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto. In her series Sleepy Eyes, 2011, Facciponte explores the human qualities of reclaimed dolls from garage sales and online auctions.

Steven Kasher Gallery, New York, will show new photo-based work by John Chamberlain. Created in 2010-11, Pictures is Chamberlain’s most candid, autobiographical, and intimate body of work to date. Departing from his sculptures in medium and imagery, these new works on canvas continue the artist’s powerful use of color and composition.

Karen Knorr’s series, India Song, 2008-2010, depicts tigers and other wild animals lounging in exotic palaces, mansions, and mausoleums. The stunning images reinvent the Panchatantra, an ancient Indian collection of animal fables, for the 21^st century, blurring the boundaries between reality and illusion. Knorr was nominated for the 2012 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, one of Europe’s most prestigious awards. Prints from India Song will be on view at Danziger Gallery, New York, along with work by Andy Warhol, Evelyn Hofer, and Hendrik Kerstens. Robert Burge/20^th Century Photos, Ltd, New York, will show John Woolf’s new color panoramas of classical theater interiors.

Compelling landscape photography will be on view at AIPAD. Mariana Cook, the last protégé of Ansel Adams, was at her home on Martha’s Vineyard on the day before Thanksgiving in 2002, when 56 cows strayed through a crumbling section of the stone wall she shares with her neighbor. Struck by the beauty of the wall, Cook spent eight years traveling to Peru, Great Britain, Ireland, the Mediterranean, New England, and Kentucky in pursuit of photographing dry stone walls. Her acclaimed book Stone Walls: Personal Boundaries was published last fall, and Lee Marks Fine Art, Shelbyville, IN, will exhibit a number of gelatin silver prints, including Modern Wall in Spring, Froggatt, Derbyshire, England, 2004.

A study of trees, c. 1910-20, by Maxfield Parrish will be on view at Paul Cava Fine Art Photographs, Bala Cynwyd, PA. Sasha Wolf Gallery, New York, will offer the diaristic photography of Elinor Carucci whose work can be found at The Museum of Modern Art and the International Center for Photography, New York. Gitterman Gallery, New York, will show the landscapes of Adam Bartos whose interest in 19^th-century travel photography has taken him to Egypt, Kenya, and Mexico with a large format camera. Robert Mann Gallery, New York, will exhibit landscapes and interiors ranging from 1940s work by Ansel Adams and Fred Stein, as well as new work from Julie Blackmon and Jeff Brouws.

In late June of 1964, three civil rights workers in Mississippi went missing, kidnapped by Klu Klux Klansmen. One man was black; the other two were white. Their names were James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Bill Eppridge arrived shortly after their bodies were pulled from the muck of an earthen dam in Neshoba County on August 4, 1964. His touching portrait entitledMrs. Chaney and young Ben, James Chaney Funeral, Mississippi, 1964 will be on view at Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe.

AIPAD 2012 PANEL DISCUSSIONS

An ambitious schedule of five panel discussions featuring leading curators, artists, dealers, and collectors will be held on Saturday, March 31, 2012, at the Park Avenue Armory Veteran’s Room. The panels are as follows:

10 a.m. | A Conversation with Rineka Dijkstra

Contemporary women photographers are being feted in a number of solo exhibitions at leading museums across the country this year. Among the most widely anticipated is a retrospective of the work of Dutch artist Rineke Dijkstra. This interview with the internationally-recognized photographer will offer a rare opportunity to hear her inspirations and thoughts before her upcoming exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in June 2012.

12 p.m. | Curator’s Choice: Emerging Artists in Photography

Two major exhibitions in New York City during the run of The AIPAD Photography Show New York are of note: the Whitney Biennial 2012 at the Whitney Museum and Perspectives 2012 at the International Center for Photography. To explore emerging artists in these exhibitions as well as broader trends, this panel will feature top curators and artists discussing their perceptions about new photography and video, moderated by Steven Kasher, Steven Kasher Gallery.

2 p.m. | How to Collect Photographs: What Collectors Need to Know Now

What important artists are being talked about right now? What do collectors need to know? What art fairs should be on your calendar? How has the photography market changed in recent years? AIPAD dealers and seasoned collectors will offer tips for both first-time and experienced buyers.

4 p.m. | A Celebration of Diane Arbus and Francesca Woodman

To commemorate traveling retrospectives of Diane Arbus (organized by the Jeu de Paume, Paris) and Francesca Woodman (organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), leading experts, including AIPAD dealers, will talk about the importance of this these groundbreaking artists and their enduring legacies. Robert Klein, Robert Klein Gallery, will moderate the panel.

6 p.m. | Italian Contemporary Photography

During the run of The AIPAD Photography Show New York, an important exhibition at Hunter Art Gallery. Peripheral Visions: Italian Photography, 1950s – Present will showcase the work of major Italian photographers who have explored unconventional images of Italy. Speakers will include Maria Antonella Pelizzari, exhibition curator and professor in the history of photography at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY; Sandra Phillips, senior curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and other international scholars and artists.

Tickets are $10 per panel discussion. Seating is limited, and tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

SHOW INFORMATION

The AIPAD Photography Show New York will run from Thursday, March 29 though Sunday, April 1, 2012, at the Park Avenue Armory at 67^th Street in New York City. Show hours are as follows:

Thursday March 29 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Friday March 30 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Saturday March 31 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Sunday April 1 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The admission is $25 daily and $40 for the run-of-show. Student admission is $10 with a valid student ID. No advance purchase is required. Tickets will be available at the door. For more information, the public can call AIPAD at 202-367-1158 or visit www.aipad.com.

Andrew Wertz

2011-12-22T10:01:00.002-05:00

Christmas Tree by Andrew Wertz (2011)

Irina Popova

2011-12-21T09:53:00.000-05:00

My Own Wilderness competition winner Irina Popova is a current artist resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, and recently presented an exhibition at the annual Open Studio event held each year at the prestigious art academy. The photography of Irina Popova moves on the border between art and documentary. From her background in journalism Popova increasingly uses different media to tell her stories. She grew up during the post-Soviet era and the rapid succession of changes in Russia are a great source of inspiration. Popova has a keen eye on the fringes of society: immigrants, refugees, homeless and drug addicts. "By examining life through my camera, I try to show things that other people just pass by every day." For her latest project, Popova traveled to Morocco, where she wondered why the Arab Spring has left the country untouched. Her project is titled Narocco. A video of her unique installation is presented below, along with these photographs from the exhibit.

Images by Irina Popova from the series Narocco

Irina Popova's work was selected as one of the winners of this year's My Own Wilderness competition sponsored by PHOTO/arts Magazine. You can see more of her work and an essay she wrote reporting on the current trends in Russian photography in a previous post by clicking the link below.

Irina Popova on PHOTO/arts Magazine

Irina Popova at The Rijksakademie

2011-12-18T10:39:00.002-05:00

ONWARD Summit
Project Basho
1305 Germantown Ave
Philadelphia, Pa

February 11th, 2012

ONWARD Summit is an annual photography conference and networking event for those who are inspired by unique imagery and perspectives. This one-night event will bring engaging presentations by both established and emerging photographers along with an intimate party for photography lovers to socialize and share images and portfolios.

Keynote speakers:

Additional presentations:

Zoe Strauss and Peter Barberie on Ten Years – Strauss’ mid-career retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
The two winners of the ONWARD Compé ’12

Details here

My Own Wilderness update

2011-12-18T09:52:00.003-05:00

Currently in full on editing mode for the My Own Wilderness book and it is on track for publication sometime in mid-January 2012. There will be a large format (13 x 11) hardcover version, as well as a smaller (10 x 8) softcover version, which will provide a lower cost option for those who don't want to invest in the premium hardcover edition. I love self published books, and Blurb is wonderful, but the cost is much higher due to the production inefficiencies of on-demand printing. The hardcover version of My Own Wilderness should end up at around $80, and the softcover version at around $30. I haven't determined the final number of pages in the book, and that drives pricing levels.

In the meantime... have you watched the exhibition video? It's beautiful... and costs nothing!

ONWARD 12 Selected Photographers

2011-12-16T10:03:00.003-05:00

ONWARD Compé is Project Basho's annual international photography competition for emerging photographers. This year's juror was Todd Hido.

ONWARD 12

Missoula Art Museum 40th Benefit Auction

2011-12-15T10:52:00.000-05:00

Experience it Here (2011)

Proud to be selected by the jurors committee for Missoula Art Museum's benefit auction for the third year in a row. Previous selections were Goodwill in 2009, which sold for $375, and Popeye's Chicken in 2010, which sold for $500.

Robert Schlaug

2011-12-12T09:22:00.007-05:00

Serial Typology, in the style of Bernd & Hilla Becher, has been described as a paradox of complete boredom and visual delight. The conceptual act of assembling found anonymous objects into something greater than the sum of the parts is the underlying formula for explaining this paradox. The skillful eye of the photographer and the effort behind collecting the individual pieces in the series are often neglected by the viewer who simply enjoys the visual beauty and fascination of the resulting montage. Robert Schlaug’s contemporary interpretations of the serial typology continue the tradition of transforming the mundane and banal into something magical. These are wonderful assemblies.

Artist Statement-

My "Serial Typologies" deal with banal motifs we normally pay no attention to in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. In times of total visual overload, I would like to encourage the viewers of my pictures to take their time and to have a closer look, to compare and to discover subtle differences. At the same time, by their uniformity, even conventional architecture and everyday objects reveal their own distinctive form and surprising aesthetic quality.

The award-winning serial typology "Prefab Garages" illustrates what happens when we focus our view on anonymous and faceless utilitarian architecture, which only seems to be purposeful and cost-effective and without any artistic or creative value. The three-dimensional reality of the prefab garages becomes a two-dimensional surface that blocks our view from what is behind. The entire typology becomes a composed image of lines, colors, surfaces and geometries. The banal becomes something special.

This also applies to my other typologies. The typology "Seseña", for example, shows nine over-sized, drab and uniform residential buildings in the southern part of Madrid in Spain, which at first glance only differ by color and environment. Other peculiarities only reveal themselves upon closer examination.

The typology "Allotment Gardens" focuses on small fenced garden plots often found on the outskirts of German cities. They are arranged in perfect alignment. Their uniformity is emphasised by the barren winter landscape. The differences between the small huts are evident only upon close inspection.

All of these serial typologies require the viewers to take a closer look, to compare, to discover the uniform and the particular. They encourage them to take a new perspective on unnoticed motifs in everyday life."

Robert Schlaug is a photographer who earns his money as a teacher. He lives near Nuremberg, Germany.

Serial Typology by Robert Schlaug

Robert Schlaug's Website

Robert Schlaug's Books

Zoe Strauss: 10 Years

2011-11-17T11:16:00.000-05:00

Zoe Strauss
10 Years

Available Jan 23, 2012
270 p., 10 1/4 x 11
250 color + 15 b/w illus.
ISBN: 9780300179774
Cloth: $55.00

With little formal training as a photographer or artist, Zoe Strauss (b. 1970) founded the Philadelphia Public Art Project in 1995 with the aim of exhibiting art in nontraditional venues. Five years later, she began using photography as the most direct means of representing her chosen subjects. Zoe Strauss: 10 Years offers a midcareer assessment of Strauss's achievement to date, and the first full account of her celebrated ten-year project, beginning in 2001, to exhibit her photographs under an elevated section of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia.

Strauss's troubling and sometimes touching images focus primarily on American working-class experience, to convey what she calls "an epic narrative that reflects the beauty and struggle of everyday life." Generously illustrated, this book includes nearly 200 photographs—135 of them published here for the first time—along with images that document her I-95 exhibitions. With essays by Peter Barberie and Sally Stein, plus a text by the artist herself, a bibliography, and a chronology, this is the most definitive publication to date about this important young artist.

Peter Barberie is the Brodsky Curator of Photographs at the Alfred Stieglitz Center, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Sally Stein is professor emeritus at the University of California, Irvine.

Yale University Press

$4.3 Million

2011-11-11T10:58:00.000-05:00

Andreas Gursky, Rhein II, 1999

List of the highest prices paid for photographs

Murmeration

2011-11-11T08:09:00.001-05:00

Happy 5th Anniversary PHOTO/arts Magazine!

2011-11-07T10:27:00.000-05:00

First post.... November 6th, 2006

Thanks to all who spend time here! You are greatly appreciated!

xoxo

My Own Wilderness

2011-11-01T15:58:00.000-04:00

Here is the YouTube version of My Own Wilderness. The quality isn't as good as the Vimeo version, but if you are having any difficulty with slow loads on the HD version from Vimeo, this might be a better choice.

My Own Wilderness

2011-11-01T09:07:00.003-04:00

Katerina Bodrunova

It's been quite a ride since announcing the call for work back in August for My Own Wilderness. It was the first time I attempted something like this on PHOTO/arts Magazine. Would I get any submissions? Would anyone care about the theme? Would I get nothing but cliche landscape shots? All of those concerns were unfounded and the response was truly amazing. Submissions came in from day one and continued steadily throughout the month of September. 150 photographers from all over the world submitted over 700 images. Images that made it a joy to work on this project and a very difficult time narrowing down to an exhibition quantity. The result of my hundreds of hours of curation and editing time are on the video being released today. I hope you enjoy it half as much as I did creating it. I am looking forward to editing the book which will be published in January 2012.

Choosing five winners out of the 45 selected photographers was even more difficult than choosing the images for the exhibit. Any of the 45 could have been one of the winners as far as I'm concerned. Every one of these selected photographers submitted very thoughtful and personal projects to this call for work. In the video you are only seeing one or two images from far broader series with deeper meanings than I can reveal within the confines of a group show. It is well worth going to the individual photographer's websites and exploring the full body of their work.

The terms of the competition stated that five winning photographers would receive a free copy of the book when published. (All selected photographers will be able to buy the book at cost), so as difficult as it was to choose, those five photographers are...

Bernard Mindich New York, USA

Agan Harahap Jakarta, Indonesia

Irina Popova Russia

Andi Schreiber New York, USA

Katerina Bodrunova Russia

I will be posting some extended features on these five photographers in the coming weeks.

Here is a list of all photographers selected with links to their web sites

And here is the video of the exhibit. It is just under 15 minutes long. Pour yourself a cup of tea and sit back and enjoy it. Would love to hear your feedback. Thanks again to all the amazing artists who had the courage to write some very personal and intense artist statements and submit incredibly emotional work.

My Own Wilderness on Vimeo

InVision Photo Festival

2011-10-27T11:19:00.000-04:00

Festival Details

Through The Plain Camera

2011-10-26T15:29:00.001-04:00

"My Own Wilderness" Countdown

2011-10-25T09:17:00.001-04:00

One ~~week~~ day from today will be the release of the online exhibit for My Own Wilderness. 146 photographers from all over the world submitted images in response to a call for work examining personal meanings of wilderness...

Wilderness has many meanings in this shrinking world we live in. The traditional definition is "an area of earth untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." Where there once were immense regions on the planet that could be defined in this way, today there are fewer and fewer places 'untrammeled by man'. But wilderness can also be more than a place. It can be a state of mind, a condition of loneliness, an economic or political status. It can exist within the most populated cities as a personal space created by the individual. How do you define wilderness?

The answers from selected photographers will be released in a stunning video slideshow on November 1st in celebration of the fifth anniversary of PHOTO/arts Magazine. Mark your calendar!

Favorite Sites

2011-10-21T15:19:00.000-04:00

Favorite Art & Photography Sites

This is a work in progress open to anyone who wants to add to it. Feel free to add your favorite art and photography based websites to the list. Please keep the list focused on Magazine style sites, Museums, and non commercial venues. Please do not add individual photographer web sites or commercial and sales oriented sites.
Looking to develop a quality list of sites from around the world.

Zheng Yaohua

2011-10-20T09:20:00.000-04:00

On Their Sites: Landscapes With Private Moments

Zheng Yaohua has created a series and photo book in which landscapes and still lifes are juxtaposed with texts. These texts record average people’s memories that are attached to the photographed places or objects located in and around New York City.As Zheng has stated, this work was inspired by the book On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam by Joel Sternfeld, and imitates its form (even its title).

Sternfeld's project was about a series of places he could not forget because of tragedies that identify them. But most of these places were anonymous reminders of the events that took place. How can the photographer represent the tragic, if the site itself cannot? Sternfeld's series required the narrative story for each image to create a context for the viewer. Without the accompanying narrative, the meaning of Sternfeld's images could easily be misread. There is no sense of the tragic event without the narrative details. The work is about recalling and recording the tragic, as well as emphasizing significance and meaning in the landscape.

Zheng Yaohua uses random and mundane personal events and places in a beautiful ironic twist, trading this for their in the project title. The focus becomes very personal and introspective.The meaning barely extends beyond the individual. Zheng Yaohua writes...

I believe that some seemingly inconsequential personal memories stir people more frequently than significant historical events do. I also believe that most people’s lives appear completely uneventful to others. At the end of 2006, after reading for the second time Joel Sternfeld’s On This Site, a book juxtaposing landscape photographs with texts about a series of tragic events in American collective memory, I decided to make a book for another type of memories. I started photographing the sites where people's private memories were attached, recording memories that might be meaningful only to their owners.

Although “image-text” has not been a fantastic new idea, it naturally becomes a tool for a project that borrows a form of communication from tourism, — on the Lion's Mound, looking down at the lush plain, the battlefield Waterloo, where the topography has changed long ago, the guide counts the 47,000 dead or wounded and then the tourists sigh. The form helps to construct the project and to query the difference of reliability and significance to treat depictions of collective/public memory and individual/private memory as both of them are recorded in detail.

The ongoing project has also given me a chance to revisit this experience. One unconsciously seeks an awareness of being anchored. By attaching memories to places or objects where he/she settles or tarries, one builds the relationship of mutual recognition and confirmation with the world. An intersection, a mailbox or a tiny thorn therefore becomes his/her vessel of private memory or monument of personal history. I was amazed by some details while recording for this growing collection and was finally convinced that they had been or would be the irrefutable evidence of one's life in his/her memory.

To simulate the look of uneventful lives, I waited for sunny days to photograph on the sites where various intimate memories were interspersed, hoping to avoid painting the images with the likely mawkish photographic expressions of a know-it-all. 4”x5” film, as deep depth of field as possible, wide framing, nonhierarchical composition, by which I offered audience a chance to retrace the artist's searching and, thereby, his imagination. When brightening the upper midtones, lowering its contrast, the highly detailed realistic sun drenched images were washed down, which offered me a world of memory, of lucid dreams. However, I cannot tell to whom the dreams belong.

#01
Beard Street, Staten Island, New York, 2008

On the evening of September 26, 2004 Gladys Ellison, a 43-year-old nurse, found a Metro, dated the 26th of the previous month, in the gap between the washing machine and the laundry sorter in the Ellisons' basement. Around the same time the paper was published, five months after their son, Sgt. Eric Ellison, 21, died in Gartan, Baghdad, her husband, Mart Ellison, a 49-year-old veteran, got a burn on his right shin by accident in their garage. A week after finding the newspaper Gladys Ellison moved in with her mother in Vermont where she stayed for 14 months.(Rachel Ellison, 16, the daughter of the Ellison's, mentioned the above circumstances in her schoolwork, by her parents' okay.)

#05
Bedford Avenue and N 7th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, 2009

At around 10 p.m., December 29, 2006, Juan Vargas, 19, was talking on his cell phone with his mother in the Dominican Republic when the smoke began to reek from the garbage can where his cigarette stub smoldered. A police officer got out of the patrol car that was pulled over across the street, approached with a bottle of water in his hand and poured the water over the red ash. Vargas was about to worry about his immigration status as the officer was called back by his partner who stayed in the cruiser. “Saddam…” said the partner.They must have been listening to the radio or something. Vargas figured later, it was Saddam’s hanging that saved him.(Saddam Hussein was executed on December 29, 2006, 10:05 p.m. ET (December 20, 2006, 6:05 a.m. Baghdad Time). However, there was a one or two hour delay before the news was broadcast all over the world. Juan Vargas seemed to have been mistaken.)

#07
Little Neck Parkway at Northern Boulevard, Little Neck, Queens, New York, 2007

Tony Brandon scraped his left knee on July 7, 1967, in a semi-serious fight with his classmate George Tenet, later a CIA director, on the sidewalk near the eatery that the Tenet’s used to own (“Scobee,” or the former “20th Century”). He remembers how badly it hurt and how George worried about his new shorts being torn, which were a gift for his birthday that day.(George J. Tenet served as the Deputy Director and the Director of the CIA from June 1995 to July 2004. He was born on January 5, 1953. It is likely that Tony Brandon’s memory of the date that had three 7’s is related to another event.)

#12
East 41st Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues, Manhattan, New York, 2008

It is the one with brickwork decoration beneath it. The window would be raised high at 11 a.m. in the morning and not periodically in the afternoon; a hand with a lit cigarette and wisps of smoke would loll out of the room. That started approximately six months before the New York City Smoke-Free Air Act became effective on March 30, 2003. The smoking lasted one or two months from the date, while the window opening did for a couple of further weeks.

About the Artist:

Zheng Yaohua was born in Shanghai, China in 1962. He studied Chinese language and literature at Shanghai Normal University where he received his Bachelor’s degree in 1985. He has been a video editor, motion graphic designer and a writer for more than a decade before starting to treat photography as a serious tool for his art creation. Zheng currently lives and works in New York City, U.S., where he has to be merely an on-my-way-to/from-office photographer, but as serious as he has been.
After spending a year in New York, 2004, four photographs from Zheng’s Under Manhattan Bridge were selected to be included in a publication 28mm: OFFLINE (Netherlands). In 2006, he was awarded first place in QMA Seven Train Photo Contest hosted by the Queens Museum of Art (New York City). His debut photo book Sleepwalk was published in 2010.
Zheng is an awardee of 2011 QCAF award, funded by the NYDCLA Greater New York Arts Development Fund, for his important project On Their Sitesstarted in early 2007. The work was sparked by his contemplation of mundane things and average individuals.

Zheng Yaohua's website

The North Woods

2011-10-15T09:09:00.000-04:00

Some of my images from Minnesota. Everything was shot with Ilford Plus 125 on my Olympus OM-1 with a 50mm Zuiko lens. As I've mentioned a zillion times before, I love the uniformity and consistency that a single focal length lens gives me. Most of my photographs from this year were taken from the boat, which can be quite a challenge to compose a shot. I am forever having to paddle forward or backward to line myself up and then quickly get the shot before the boat drifts out of position. Frustrating, but I love every minute of it at the same time.

North Woods Album

ONWARD Compe

2011-10-15T08:49:00.000-04:00

ONWARD Compé is Project Basho’s annual international photography competition for emerging photographers. Our main goal is to increase the exposure of talented image-makers and create new outlets for their work. Juried each year by a leading figure in contemporary photography, ONWARD Compé spotlights new envelope-pushing work that continues to further the medium. Now in it’s fifth year, ONWARD Compé has been steadily growing, drawing submissions from around the U.S. and across the globe.

The competition is not limited by theme and is open to all photographic media, from historical processes to new digital technologies.

This year's guest juror is celebrated photographer Todd Hido. First attracting the attention of the art world for his portfolio Housesitting in ArtForum (May 1998), Hido has since become one the most distinctive and inspired image-makers in contemporary photography.
Hido's landscapes and portraits examine themes of anonymity and isolation in American life. Shooting with available and low light, often with long exposures, his pictures are heavily infused with mood and tension without straying towards sentimentality.

ONWARD Compe

More on Russian Photography

2011-10-14T11:14:00.001-04:00

Irina Popova is a young Russian photographer who submitted some of the most haunting images I received from the My Own Wilderness call for work. Her documentation of a small child being raised in an environment of drug addiction left me so unsettled and difficult to forget about. One of the most powerful examples of wilderness I saw from the entire competition. Popova writes in her statement about the intense struggle between remaining an observer versus intervening for the safety of the child.

Irina Popova

In conversations with Irina Popova about her work I learned that she regularly contributes to the Russian photography website Photographer.ru and in reading her posts I discovered her account of the recent portfolio reviews conducted in Moscow. This is a great follow up to the post from several weeks ago regarding Russian photography today. More great incite into the current trends in Russian photography from a young participant on the Avant-garde. The translation is from Google. A bit rough around the edges, but I actually don't mind it that way.

Portfolio revue in Moscow. Message from the battlefield
by Irina Popova

I ride the subway in the morning, four days during the week. The train beats with frantic rhythm, syncopation, and the transitions in the crowd flows through the veins blood razed the city, and I dissect her arm to go across. I realize that the first time in Moscow trudge somewhere so early and regularly, both at work. I've been involved in portfolio reviews.

The form of portfolio revue - a rather new for Russia. We are accustomed to communicating in the kitchens, and afraid not ready - but we want to try and - try to show itself in all its glory and to hear the truth in just 20 minutes. But it's great. We are a discipline. The only pity is that we treat the event as the battlefield and look at him cause for gossip.

Who gave it all? Who and why? And most importantly - who all paid off? - Are the main issues, secretly stirring all the photographers present at the great event.

I give the rumors - idea and Eugene Irene Chmyrevoy Berezner, large but not fully seen in Russia, experts in the field of photography. In conjunction with the festival photography in Houston, who spend portfolio revue for 30 years, and know how to do it. It is done - the money garage, and in fact Abramovich. While this issue remains the most closed to the uneducated masses.

Who needs a portfolio revue? the organizers? Western critics? or by the photographers?

The organizers have spent great efforts - and it shows. The project - an excellent, top-quality site, where all is clear, all questions are answered. I thought I was in Russia that does not happen. Preparing for the winter (!), Was hired a few professionals on a permanent salary. And then - to bring revyuerov, to settle them, feed, well, probably pay a fee (it's the stars, critics and curators, and zaznayki opportunistic, and their simple gingerbread not fetch).

Schedule is made of specially developed computer program, running hither and thither pomoschnichki that helps, if you are lost. Each revyueru put in charge of an interpreter, the only thing that massage is not enough in between, and everything else is))

At the end of each session dealt bell, which resembles a school lesson. Only, unlike in the lesson, which lasts forever, in a portfolio revue is a feeling that as soon as you say "hello, my name is John, I'm a photographer and shoot dahlias in galoshes," at once the bell rings.

The best Russian photographers, color photographic community, large nerve is compressed folder. Who do I see? Mokhorev, China, Lovygin? They are on this side tables or on the other? Well, since I agreed to play by those rules - so, even when well-known maestro, should allow some punk to teach you align the horizon, or, even louder, say, your picture - not fashionable. What we must learn to take a number)))

And someone was going to pile into the smoking room and discusses: something fishy here, the participants selected unfairly, and in general, I think this is the Alien Conspiracy ...

Among the Russian photographer has an atmosphere on the shelf zasidevshihsya aunts, who are ready to jump out to marry anyone, blindly. Too long our photo sitting somewhere in the back of the global community, no one recognized. And now she has shed light on, and what happens? Beauty and the Beast it? Covered with pimples or through ill? No, just not fashionable, not of this party cool modern art.

Expectations for this event are directed sverhogromnye. And I have a feeling disillusioned bride cries - "he said, that have yet to learn! or - "keep on working, reported on progress". This is the same boorish, disgusting! "

The correct attitude to the event in a very few. For those who are sitting on the couch, drinking coffee, met with colleagues, and get pleasure from the process. It's a game - a fascinating, lively, but all the same game. And the main task - not to "win" and to unite and integrate. Be in the same space with people who have something to talk about. And then exchanged addresses, and go to each other at home, on the kitchen gatherings and more intimate shows of the portfolio.

"You are no longer a photographer. You - the one who should sell povygodnee. Or sell. Manager, Marketing, Sales-department. Who else but not the photographer.

The photographer should have four different professions. And it's not all photographers can. It does not know how one person on this earth "- confidently told me over a glass of champagne, Jim Kasper, founder of the site LensCulture.

And I said - the last couple of years when my pictures began to gradually exhibit somewhere, I do not have enough time to shoot something. But can it for the better. Then the cycle of preparation, filming and presentation becomes significant and meaningful.

- Tell me, you tried to change the world picture? Well, stop the war, shall we say? - Asked Bart Finger, director of the gallery «PhotographersDoNotbend» (Photographers do not bend).

- Well, actually I do believe that photography can save the world. I even have a slogan on your business card.

- Yes. You should go and stop the violence and injustice of his photography. That is the goal at least.

One interpreter said: "My revyuer says the same phrase to all photographers. "It's a good picture, but it already was. Painted pictures in the 30s of last century. "

To me, many said, "Well, you're still a beginner photographer. No need to hurry. "

I have the feeling that the longer doing photography, the more stringent criteria by which you get. And the status of young talent to flow smoothly into the enclave of timelessness, of whom you know somebody vytsepit and show the world.

And one revyuer asked me how old my husband. And if I take drugs.

During the breaks I'm keen to mahjong on the computer - perhaps to believe that the world photographic market, which seems heaven and earth, because of his extreme concentration here - even more artificial and schematic than this simple game.

At the end of the fourth day hits toppled to the ground not only photographers, but also to the curators.

"Call me, I'll tell you later, but now the language falls off" - I asked a Russian galeristka.

But older Uotriss Wendy and Frederick Baldwin (FotoFest, Houston, USA) keep a stiff upper lip and even promised to come for a visit to one generous photographers to the Far East.

They - some of those who were clearly excited about - photography, atmosphere, talking with photographers.

- How to select photos? Yes, it is difficult. If there was a series of at least one photo, which would look for a long time, it is something touches - hence, in this photograph there was something interesting. And wanted to talk to that person.

Photographers perceived as a zone revue competition with each other. They wanted to know who "won". Kharkov and Petrograd garde young talents deserve special attention at the conference. But overall - kept silent or spoke revyuery generalities for fear of offending.

- Photography is highly dependent on context, - said Charlotte Cotton of the British media museum. - We are all placed in a socio-cultural contexts, and this affects the photographer as he shoots, and the viewer who sees the work.

At meetings, she advised photographers to go to study abroad, "to immerse themselves in the international context."

And Frederick Baldwin was inspired by the case when he was visited by a young man, himself a photographer, but was not showing their work and the work of his father, a good documentary photos 60s.

"Photography is so different, how different our world, which can be imprinted on it", - concluded Eugene Berezner.

A question as to whether Russian photography world photography trends, remained unheard - perhaps because of ethical considerations.

So I ventured to analyze what he saw itself.

One day a big fair - photographers spread out their local produce - as if selling potatoes or onions, fresh from the garden. And all who came, arranged alphabetically, from 20 to 80 years, recognized masters and nuggets from the provinces, can be classified as the same vegetables.

I noticed four trends of Russian photography.

1. The so-called "documentary photography" (and in fact, the rigid social photography). We still shoot psychiatric hospitals, prisons and boarding schools, because we believe that this is important and can someone with something to open my eyes. It went from the Soviet era, when this picture was banned. All the foolish and anti-social elements crammed and shoved behind high walls in tridesyatoe kingdom, so as not to disturb the construction of the great common future. And the photographs in newspapers and on the rare exhibitions appeared well-built Pahari, the proud new tractor and busty milkmaids smiling. So we still think of inertia, we must take social programs, treshak. And then the photographer would look like a hero - has climbed, gained access, survived. Communal alcoholics, homeless people with transitions, homes with dying children, lonely old village with houses and boarded-up, delusional religious frenzy.

At a time when magazines want positive start - stories of young entrepreneurs, the positive outcome of the struggle against evil, or just funny stories. A conceptual picture they want and cold, which in these photographs do not.

Purpose - a protest against social injustice.

Photographers - the average age muzhchinki, sometimes with a beard, and punching young ladies of indeterminate age, sometimes similar to the cleaners, dyed blonde with regrown roots. Beige pants with wide pockets, jackets or even where hidden away a lot of lenses. Characterized by general sloppiness.

Landmarks - Cartier Bresson, Josef Koudelka and Salgado, but not achieved. Books - Kafka, Dostoevsky. Photos - black and white, sometimes color. Complicated, but still classic songs, caught the movement and emotion. Looking twists in the image.

The best representatives - Vladimir Semin.

2. Pictorial Photography. This phenomenon is, in fact, not the past, and even the last century. It started with the fact that the picture is not seen as art, but really wanted to become one. Photo replaced the painting, took up its main trends. Hence - fixed genres (portrait, still life, landscape).

Purpose - search for beauty or her creation.

Photographers - bearded uncle for 40 or 50, unsold in his studio, fans miss on a glass. Fans gather gatherings in the same studio, fans are women (amateurs make a compliment)

Landmarks - Moholy-Nagy, Josef Sudek.

Photos - erected a still life, portrait posing by the window, the absence of motion. Life of the photos are not in motion of an object and scene, and look at the motion on the image and examining the film grain, the smallest transitions between light and shadow. These photographers, unlike the first, shoot the film and always very careful to include printing (often manual). Possible interleaving with collage, photograms.

The best representatives - China.

3. The avant-garde photography. This species also originated in the hard ideological pressure. Photographers combining critical discourse left with a very personal, sometimes frikovatym inner world, and his attempt to convey. Goal - not a search of beauty, but not explicit protest against social injustice, but rather a desire to prove themselves.

Photographers - bearded uncle again, but with the "Circuits" - point to a button or braids in his beard.

Landmarks - Boris Mikhailov, Nikolay Bakharev. Mikhailov was the first photographer of whom I asked to the west, when I came to the residence in Rayks. This is the only "Russian" (actually, Kharkov), a photographer, about eccentric antics of which are well known in the west (to get vagabonds naked shot per bottle) or to arrange an exhibition on the ship from discarded feminine sanitary pads). Unfortunately, their time, too, like the other two, it took the departure of Soviet power, as frikovat no longer trendy, not cool, and nobody appreciates it now not as a gesture.

Painting - Late Picasso, Andy Warhol.

Photo - color by hand Polaroid paste black and white pictures treshovoy porn party in the Soviet manual on pregnancy. Capture one self-portrait every day for a year. To print are careless in andegraundski. Fingerprints do not value. Often use found photos.

Subject - often revolves around sex, perversion or transformed ego.

The best representatives - Andrew Chezhin.

4. Naive girly picture. She is young, and was born in the 2000s, respectively, when the basic contradictions of the Soviet state were removed, it was necessary to strive for something in the photo, such as its expression. These photographers have increased in relative abundance, and sometimes received a classical education. Their world is very delicate and fragile.

This photo is more in demand than the previous three species, in particular, it is often exhibited in every way and promotes FotoDepartament, but it's also sensual dry and devoid of analyticity as the first three types.

Photos - often the "nice" portraits of friends and friends with frank views. Sometimes naked, but not on an artificial background, and the rumpled bed. Furniture from Ikea. Sunbeam hits the window. Photographed on any Mamiya or any other medium format. The colors - muted, pastel (bedding), tender. Key - light.

Purpose - to overcome children's complexes.

Landmarks - the movie "Amelie", "Zabriskie Point".

Photographers - girls with hipsterskim views. Ringlets. Strange skirts. American jeans, bananas from the 80 with a belt high above the navel. Boys gay in funny hats.

Subject - tenderness, friendship. Lying in the grass. Dreams. Morning coffee. Little things that make your life atmospheric.

The best representatives - Margo Ovcharenko.

Branch - photo "stream of consciousness." It is confusing, the image is clearly not related to each other (for high-rises may follow someone's stomach), there is no plot, narrative, and a fair view of the world. Often carelessly, shot on various cameras (medium format up to a miserable soap dish with the flash on a drunken party).

Literature - Marcel Proust, James Joyce.

Platform for development - FotoDepartament

The best representatives - no.

Typical representatives - Alex Vanyushkin, Cyril Savchenkov.

This photo is close to a fifth type - obviously hipsterskoy photos. Unmarked on Holgu or Lomo, often with glare or the sun ray hitting the frame. Also about friends and acquaintances, and their world of fashion loafers. Purpose - to publish in her LJ.

This photo is not at all qualified to portfolio revue, and thus not recognized as worth at least a phenomenon on the Russian scene.

But - none of these currents (!) Does not intersect with the world trends in photography. No-one then!

"Everything is fine, but it was 15 years ago," - whispered to each other in a closed room revyuery for coffee breaks.

But there are exceptions to the rule. A pair of Russian fashion photographers.

When I was in Europe say that I'm from Russia, the first thing people ask me, "Oh, Russia. Gronsky! "

All they know Gronsky.
Cool, verified and neutral pictures. Zero emotion. Zero plot. Snowy landscapes with high-rises.

Russian photographer is hard to understand - why is it there so amazing?

Gronsky very conjuncture, is aware of the market (looking for, learn, ask about prices, profits in the conversation). He knows his worth. When portfolio revue ends, he carefully puts the prints as a jeweler - diamonds, and ends the conversation slowly.

But Gronsky - he's from Latvia, so that it belongs to Russia is of belonging to Europe.

The second - a conventional Russian photographer - Lucia Ganev, who has lived more than 10 years in Holland. She - the portraits of museum professionals in their halls of the Hermitage. Photo is as cold and verified, as well as herself a photographer. The large black-rimmed glasses, which are all current artists in the west. All of the roll out of suitcase.

There is much to learn.

There are a few names that were not in the list of participants, but they also have long spilled over to the west.

Broken out unrecognized geniuses have softened the exhibition opening of one - and an unprecedented number of eating caviar - without forks and even bread. Before the pictures Many never reached. To it formed a queue. Reminded all that standing in the church - kiss the icon.

She was in a dark room, under a black curtain, with a guard from the film "James Bond" or "Men in Black." None of the hall did not come back (there was another way), so the queue was exciting and scary. One prominent let actionists in the crowd hearing that we should go only naked. Many believe, be alarmed even more.

In a dark room barely illuminated only the work itself, walled in glass cube with a temperature sensor and the desired humidity. Line drawn in the middle of the hall, for which one can not even bend (immediately yells alarm). Meet with a wonderful person and get the right holy enthusiasm did not work - it was just an attempt to examine the naked body, nakollazhennye in image capture and symbolic meaning.

But if a picture is capable of causing such a stir, it may be worthwhile to continue to do that?

Irina Popova Photography

Photographer.ru

Read the previous post about Russian photography here

Portfolio Reviews

2011-10-12T11:23:00.000-04:00

PHOTO/arts MAGAZINE is now offering a limited number of portfolio reviews at no cost. This is an opportunity to receive thoughtful critique of your portfolio or project from an experienced point of view. You will receive a written response to your work with critique on multiple levels such as technique, aesthetics, and context among historical and contemporary trends.

If you would like to receive a portfolio or project review, please submit the following:

1. 5 to 10 images of your work. Do not send large files. Please keep images no larger than 800px on the longest edge, and set to 72dpi resolution. You could also send me a link to a specific grouping of your images on the web. For instance, create a set on Flickr or an album on Google+ and send me the link.

2. Include a statement about your work. Be as expressive as you can. Don't worry about writing style, this isn't a dreaded artist statement for a competition. Lay it all out there. What are your thoughts and concerns about the work?

3. Include background about yourself. Where you are now as a photographer, your experience level, your other projects, etc.

4. Be sure to include links to your website or other places where your work can be seen.

Send everything to:
Photoarts.Review@gmail.com

I'll take these on a first come first served basis until we see how much demand there is. If things get too backed up I might have to put a limit on entries, but for now it is an open submission policy.

And I should mention that the portfolios that interest me the most from month to month will be featured here on PHOTO/arts Magazine or the website Escape Into Life, where I'm going to be one of the photo editors starting in November.

Looking forward to seeing your work!

Seul Choix Point, Lake Michigan

2011-10-12T09:57:00.000-04:00

Returning

2011-10-11T11:01:00.000-04:00

I'm still in the mental fog that comes on every year in the attempt to transition back into Eastern urban society after spending ten days alone in a car or out in the middle of nowhere with one other person with nothing but lakes and trees around us. It is always so hard to give an answer to those at home who ask How was your vacation? I don't always know the answer myself. Five times now I have driven from Philadelphia to Northern Minnesota to spend five days canoeing in the wilderness. Three thousand miles round trip for each journey, it occurred to me on the way home this year that I'd driven a total of fifteen thousand miles in order to spend less than a month's time out in the woods. Why? I ask that of myself continually during the trips. We've been rained on for days at a time. Suffered cold wet nights. Literally hated parts of the time out there, such as looking up at yet another steep rocky incline over which your 60 pound canoe must be carried on your back to the next lake. Constant nagging worry about breaking down on a remote road hours from help and out of cell phone range. The internal doubt and questioning is a constant companion throughout the trip.

The simple answer is that the rewards must far out weigh the risks because I always return. The philosophical complexities, and the visual feast.The escape into a place that is indifferent to human foibles and concerns, politically uninvolved. Most of all the visual feast.

Selection Time

2011-10-10T10:54:00.000-04:00

Returned from the wilderness and three thousand miles of solitary driving with my usual new perspective on life in general and the renewed energy and spirit I always feel at this time of year. I was thrilled to see many submissions were sent in after I left town last week. I stayed up way too late last night reviewing all of the new images and beginning the selection process.

A total of 146 photographers from about a dozen countries submitted over 700 images to this call for work. Beautiful images and thoughtful statements that are going to evolve into a very powerful exhibit and book. I'll be spending the next two weeks on the curating and selection process, and then producing a video slideshow of the exhibit which I will publish on Vimeo. The exhibit will be released on November 1st, as well as the announcement of the five winning photographers who will receive a free copy of the published book.

My "My Own Wilderness"

2011-09-29T09:39:00.000-04:00

~~In two days~~ Today I am off on a road trip from Philadelphia to Northern Minnesota, 3000 miles round trip. Just me and my dog with the canoe on top of my minivan, meeting J Randall Updegrove, who is coming the same distance (but from Montana). This will be our fifth canoe trip into the Minnesota wilderness, always to a new location within the Boundary Waters area. But any road trip for me is much more than the destination.

1. Being on the road is as much fun for me as being in the wilderness. In the past I have driven west to Chicago, and then up through beautiful Wisconsin and on to Minnesota. Last year on my way home I drove up and around the northern shoreline of Lake Superior across the Province of Ontario and then down through Michigan. This year I will be driving west to Toledo, Ohio and then up through Michigan and west across the Upper Peninsula for my first visit to the area and the completion of driving around the entire coast of Lake Superior. Another part of the road trip involves doing some paddling along the way. I've got an ongoing list of bodies of water that I want to get my canoe into. The five great lakes are on that list and I'm going to make an effort to paddle in Lakes Huron, Michigan, and Superior during this trip. I think I have figured out a way to do that all in a single day, but that might be a bit of a stretch.

2. I am a fairly new Vegan (a little over a year now). And the challenge of doing a 3000 mile road trip while staying true to veganism is an interesting one in itself. The American Inter-State Highway system isn't exactly Vegan friendly, and camping in the woods is traditionally a time for lot's of meat cooked over the open fire. I bring lot's of good food in the cooler for the drive and I've also tracked down several promising Vegan restaurants in small towns across the Upper Peninsula by using this awesome web site...Veg Guide. Food out in the wilderness consists of my own custom blend of Lentils, Tofu, Seaweed, and dried Veggies that I package up in individual meals with my Food Saver (vacuum sealer). It's essentially eating the same thing for dinner every night, although I have daily variations of flavorings in each package to mix things up. The key out in the woods is ease of preparation and light weight. With these meal packs all I have to do is simmer everything in one pot. The meal is satisfying and full of nutrition. Breakfast is a similar portioned package of oatmeal or grains, to which I add raisins or other dried fruit while it simmers in the pot. It's all about feeding the body for a full day of paddling and portaging.

3. As a baseball fan, it is a big sacrifice to completely miss the first week of the playoffs, and as a Philadelphia Phillies fan, the angst of wondering how they are doing is a constant throughout the week without any electronic communication. Last year I missed the no-hitter by Cliff Lee, and in 2004 I completely missed the historic Red Sox comeback against the Yankees. This is a long and ongoing Fall tradition for me though. October is always camping season for me. As long ago as the 1970's I have missed critical baseball moments while heading off into the woods.

4. Of course, being in the middle of one of the last great wilderness areas of the United States is the entire reason for the journey in the first place. Serene and beautiful, October is past the prime season up there, so very few people means you can go an entire week without running into another human being. The sky at night is gorgeous, with full visuals of the Milky Way down to both horizons and regular displays of the Northern Lights. And it is the land of 10,000 lakes. Nothing but beautiful lakes and pristine woods for miles around on all sides. The call of Wolves at night and the siren of Loons in the morning are the music of the North Woods.

Lot's of photographs to come... I take digital images on the road, and use only my Olympus OM-1 while out in the woods. I feel that B & W film just captures the spirit of the place like nothing else can, especially Plus X 125. I use a very minimal system in the wilderness. The nice compact OM-1 with a 50mm lens in a small dry bag with a half dozen rolls of film ends up being the size of a large grapefruit. Light, easy and simple. There is no need for any extra stuff out in the woods.

My own photographs will not be included in the upcoming My Own Wilderness exhibit or book. I think it is important as a curator to detach from including personal work. (Maybe not always... I have seen many nice exhibits that included the curator's own work). For this particular call for work I decided from the start that my focus would be entirely on the submitted work and related artist statements. Trying to decide which of my own work to include would be a distraction and create a possible influence on the work I was reviewing.

Beautiful work continues to come in from all over the world, and I want to thank every photographer who has submitted their work and artist statements. Reviewing this work on a daily basis for the past month or so has inspired me in so many ways as I have been preparing for my own trip to the wilderness.

There are two more days until the deadline of October 1st. I hope to find lot's of last minute entries when I get back to civilization. You can find details for submitting your work here... My Own Wilderness

Best to all of you! See you in a couple weeks... stay safe and warm!

Philadelphia Open Studio Tours

2011-09-28T23:55:00.004-04:00

October 1st & 2nd
Noon- 6PM

Garage Gallery
1909 Wilcox Street
Philadelphia, Pa

featuring the work of Ron Corbin, Josh Marowitz, and Al Wachlin Jr.

Light Room Gallery
2024 Wallace Street
Philadelphia, Pa

featuring work of Richard Boutwell, Genevieve Coutroubis, Annarita Gentile, and Erin Yard.

Kelli Connell

2011-09-24T10:39:00.000-04:00

Kelli Connell lecturing at
Philadelphia Photo Arts Center

I've been fascinated with Kelli Connell's Double Life series ever since first seeing it in the 2007 Aperture publication PHOTOart: Photography in the 21st Century. Connell's repetitive use of a single model to tell the fictional story of a relationship between two women is both beautiful and visually confusing all at once. Are these images of two sisters? Twins? Self portraits? What is going on here?

Kelli Connell discussed her series and process methods during a recent lecture at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center. Especially interesting to me were slides of the hand cut montages Connell creates from cheap drug store prints that allow her to visualize the final composition. The work is pure fiction. A single model is used in a complex arrangement of scenes with Connell acting as director, photographer, and sometimes stand-in model for staging purposes. Everything is shot with a medium format Pentax, and then the quick prints are made in order to manually compose and visualize the final digital result. The negatives are then scanned and processed in Photoshop to achieve the seamless results.

I also liked Connell's inclusion of historical reference in her lecture. She showed Henry Peach Robinson's 1858 image Fading Away, made from five negatives, and Oscar Gustave Rejlander's 1857 image The Two Ways of Life, made from at least 30 negatives. Those of us who tend to dismiss Photoshop usage, and Connell admits to a previous bias against the software, tend to forget that it is simply a modern day version of well established photographic processing technique.

Henry Peach Robinson, Fading Away , 1858

Oscar Gustave Rejlander, The Two Ways of Life, 1857

Double Life is a series that began in 2002 and is now almost ten years old. Connell spoke of the subtle pressure she has begun to feel from the art world to move on to other projects, mostly stemming from the inevitable aging of the model. Personally I would love to see this project continue for many years to come. The themes that run through this conceptual series; narcissism, identity, gender roles, etc., do not end with the transition into middle age. Hopefully, even if Connell takes a break from Double Life to explore other projects, she will return to working with this model and continue documenting the resolution and exploration of those issues within this fictional relationship into its golden years and beyond.

Kelli Connell website

Fine Photographs

2011-09-23T15:27:00.001-04:00

Sally Mann, Candy Cigarette, 1989
est. $12,000 to $18,000

Fine Photographs

at Auction

Swann Auction Galleries

New York, NY

Tuesday, October 18th, 2PM

Details

Russian Photography Today

2011-09-23T10:47:00.000-04:00

A link to the ongoing call for work "My Own Wilderness" made it's way onto the Russian art website Art Nagrada, and as a result over 35 submissions have been received from that country. The submitted work has almost entirely come from young photographers living in Moscow and St Petersburg. I started to wonder about the current state of photography in Russia, so I asked a few of the contributors to send me their thoughts on the subject. I have corrected a bit of the English translation here only when necessary, leaving as much of the direct information from the photographer intact. I think these are marvelous windows into the world of Russian photography. Many thanks to Katya and Alena for sharing these well considered essays, and to all of the amazing young Russian photographers who have contributed to this call for work.

Commonness, Russia, Kostrova
by Alena Agadzikova, Moscow

Alena Agadzikova, 18 years old, Moscow

I can not say what the situation of photography is in all RUSSIA , because I live in the capital, Moscow. You know, in Russia there is a joke - "Moscow - Russia is not," And indeed it is. Moscow - a lively city where people live in the information. Province of Russia live quite differently. In some cities, living as if still the Soviet Union. However, a mistake to think that the Russians go with the bears and vodka. Of course, we love vodka! But even in the remote province of many appropriate people. It was not long since, as Russia has to keep pace with progress. At the far ends of the country's Internet appeared only a year ago. And mass-regarded photography, art, people have started too recently.
Because of the Internet, to be a photographer in Russia has become fashionable. Buy cameras, even those who do not know how to use them. In small towns, "photographers" are beginning to respect and be invited to various events. Although images poorly photographed. They become local celebrities. But the same province and the people have no taste. Someone has taste, but there is not enough. In Moscow, everything is different. 100% of photographers shoot only 8-10% because it is their vocation, and passion. These people take pictures good. all the other 90% do so for the sake of fashion.
Recently, a good many photographers are returning back to film photography. It takes a lot of money, but it paid off. Photographers are increasingly taking pictures with old Russian cameras, "Zenith", "FED", "Lyubitel'"
Moscow is now actively promoting the art of photography. In the center there are two places where young writers can exhibit their work (if they approve, if they are talented). There are hundreds of small galleries, but they are not the same.

1. "Contemporary Art Center Wine Factory" - "winery," because the center is built right into the former factory where they made wine. In Moscow there is an entire government program from the Department of Culture, according to which all former factories in places rebuilt Culture.

2. "Moscow House of Photography" - State Exhibition Hall, the largest in Moscow.Brought there by Fellini, "More than fashion," Jurgen Taylor and many other photographers. The permanent exhibition there are always works of the famous Russian photographer, in whose honor and created the "Moscow House of Photography." This photographer named Alexander Rodchenko. He photographed in 1920-1940 years. His most famous portraits - a portrait of the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and Lili Brik women. Portrait of Mayakovsky, Brik and a portrait of Lily, where she puts a hand to his lips -

But in "Moscow House of Photography" is difficult to exhibit their work. There may exhibit only the students' school photos. "School of Photography Rodchenko " - the only serious Academy pictures in Russia. They are taught the most powerful Russian photographers. The Academy is notable that students learn (they are trained for two and a half years) there for free. .In September, ends in a set of portfolios. Each year the academy are trying to do about 700-800 people. Of these, 30 people are choosing to do.

I came to the academy for two years. Unfortunately, unsuccessfully. But the teachers explained the reason: they choose the students who graduated from university and engaged in photography professionally. I do not really understand this principle, I think it's wrong, because you have to enable even the youngest photographers. For example, I'm 18 years old. I came to the Academy at seventeen and eighteen years.Incidentally, in this academy despise fashion photography. They consider it a bad grade. With this, too, is debatable. Teachers Academy is very outdated attitudes, they are professionals, but do not look at the present.

Katya Deriglazova

Katya Deriglazova, 30 yrs old, Moscow

Russian Photography Today

From the Point of View of a Spherical Cow

Who is a Spherical Cow, you ask? That’s me. Not an art expert, neither a student nor a bachelor of art, I have never had a personal exhibition or a display of my photographs and I earn money from a partly art-related job, rather than art itself. I don’t consider myself a follower of any artistic schools and I seldom, if ever, appear at the photographers’ hangouts. I mostly sit on the sidelines and watch what is going on with Photography in Russia these days.

It will be only logical to ask why I, being interested in photography as an art, haven’t got a solid opinion on many of its aspects. I guess the answer lies in my living right on the borderline of two different generations. While born and raised in the Soviet state, I’ve spent my mature years in the current Russia, and these are two completely different cultures.

Photography has never been considered an art among the Russians. A hobby or a part of journalist’s work: that’s what a photographer’s options were in the Soviet times. But even now there are no schools or colleges suitable for a person willing to become a photo artist. It seems all they teach these days is either how to become a photo journalist or how to win a grant for studying or working abroad.

I guess it was only after the Perestroika that photography was allowed to “become” an art. Then post-modern artists appeared, seeking not only “pure art”, but commercial success as well. And then it turned out that the only way to reach the latter was to go west and try selling your art there. But what does the Western world buy from a post-Soviet photographer most willingly? That’s right, the “social exotics”: abandoned villages, communal apartments, beggars and prostitutes, bums and lunatics. Everything that shows that life in Russia is not as good as the Soviet propaganda used to say. Sadly, this demand is still up even twenty years after.

As an ex-journalist and as a person I can’t but respect social art; I truly believe that the world can be changed for the better if we don’t turn a blind eye to what is not right. But I cannot approve of the fact that “social art” and “seamy side” are becoming more and more synonymous.

Sometimes I wish there were at least a few people among the modern photographers who would show us the bright side instead… but no glamour and Gucci suits please.

Besides social and documentary art there’s another group of photographers well-known both in Russia and abroad: the so-called “actual art”, e.g. AES+F group. They are indeed actual, with a little bit of politics, a tiny bite of scandalousness, a great deal of multi-media and a truly remarkable zoom. These artists are supported by both the Government and Moscow House of Photography, but unless anybody powerful approves of you, there is no way you will be considered “contemporary”. The line between art and advertising looks really vague in this case.

Of course, there are the “Pure Art” oriented photographers in Russia. But I am unsure whether they can even be called photographers. They are just artists, with a camera as their tool. Many of them print their photos the old-fashioned way. By the way, in Russia it’s cheaper to cyanotype or oil-print your pictures at home than to order high-quality pics from a public photo lab.

There are also avant-garde photographers, able to manipulate reality on a photo image without using computers or any other tech means.

“Female photography” needs to be mentioned as well, although it is often taken lightly by many fellow photo artists. These works are usually simplistic, with the photographers themselves and their friends as models, streets, parks and old apartments as backgrounds, focusing on self-reflection and on finding beauty in mundanity and everyday life.

Lately, analog technology in photography has become popular again both among amateurs and professionals. As today’s digital cameras allow anyone to make high-quality photos, people tend to look for some craftwork, for unique and hand-made photographs.

One of the most acute questions is whether Russian national photography exists at all. I can see why the question appeared in the first place. Seems like these days everybody’s talking about studying abroad, working abroad, leaving Russia for a place where one’s talent would be valued… This is a defeatist’s tactics, but unfortunately that is what on many of the younger photographers’ minds now. It pains me to see that most of them don’t see any prospects or possibilities in Russia. That’s why we are importing cultural trends rather than exporting them.

Тhat's why the Russian photo considered unfashionable. Many young artists are trying to work on those trends that have been marked abroad.

Katya Deriglazova

Sarah Bloom: Totally Exposed

2011-09-18T18:38:00.004-04:00

Totally Exposed: A Solo Exhibit by Sarah Bloom
Sept 3- 30, 2011

Da Vinci Art Alliance
704 Catherine Street
Philadelphia, Pa

Installation view
Sarah Bloom: Totally Exposed

I was really impressed by this solo show after the pleasure of walking through it with the photographer as personal tour guide.The intimate space at Da Vinci Art Alliance is just right for an exhibit of this size. It's a clean, well lit space that enhances the experience of viewing the work on the walls. I had seen Sarah Bloom's work many times previously; first discovering her on Flickr about five years ago, and now keeping up with her almost daily updates on Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, etc etc. In fact, it was by way of her increasingly popular web presence that Sarah was able to fund this show in the first place. A well run Kickstarter campaign raised all of the funding required to rent gallery space for a month and obtain some impressively large prints to put together the current show.

Sarah Bloom adjusting a print

Wasted Knowledge is the largest image in the show at about 30 inches high by 90 inches long, it is printed on silk, giving it a look closer to tapestry than photography, and reminded me of the work Chuck Close has done with woven fabric.It's a perfect image for this type of experimental printing. Every slight breeze in the gallery causes the image to slowly undulate against the wall for an interesting optical effect.

Wasted Knowledge by Sarah Bloom

The Earth is My Body is one of several very large square format prints that looked stunning and really anchor the remaining images in the gallery.Other favorites of mine were prints on translucent paper hanging in the two front windows of the gallery.All of these images are from Sarah's ongoing series of nude self portraits, mostly taken in abandoned and decaying buildings in various cities such as Philadelphia and Detroit. Lot's of people take photographs of abandoned buildings, especially in Detroit, but few people get naked and crawl around among the rubble and grime of these buildings in order to pursue an intensive photographic project.

The Earth is My Body by Sarah Bloom

The project explores concepts of age and body image, the confrontation of mortality, and a search for beauty among decay. Sarah Bloom's artist statement includes the following summary.. "I began shooting self-portraits in abandoned buildings in 2007. My work is raw and brave, but there are moments of shyness and vulnerability. More than anything, my self-portraits are about dichotomy. I fall and I rise; I rise and I fall. I try to look towards the light no matter how seductive the dark can be. I confront my own mortality with both fear and defiance. Akin to the stages of grief, I face the idea of aging at first with dread, then resistance, and ultimately acceptance. In my experience, these stages are non-linear."

Sarah Bloom: Totally Exposed

The work is beautifully displayed and thoughtfully hung on the walls. This gallery experience is a reminder that no matter how well you think you know someone's work, no matter how familiar it becomes on a daily internet basis, there is nothing like seeing work first hand. Photography is still about the document. The print will always reign supreme. Last year I saw Edward Steichen's actual prints for the first time at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. I never thought I was a huge Steichen fan until seeing those documents on the wall. I fell in love with them, and it re-confirmed the truth that we can't always trust the internet or even books to represent photography for us. Photography as art must be seen first hand in order to be fully appreciated.

Sarah Bloom: Totally Exposed

This is a top notch exhibit on so many levels and I highly recommend a visit to see it before the end of the month. Check out the link to Sarah's website below for updates on the show and where you can find links to her facebook and flickr pages.

Sad and Beautiful World

(As always, just click on the images in this post to enlarge them for a better view)

Moonstone Arts Center opening reception

2011-09-11T21:43:00.000-04:00

Harvey Finkle, Irv Ackelsberg, Sanford Schram
Moonstone Arts Center, Philadelphia, Pa.

Class Warfare in Philadelphia
Moonstone Art Center

Class Warfare in Philadelphia
Moonstone Art Center

Photos from September 8th, 2011 at Moonstone Arts Center in Philadelphia for the opening reception of the Class Warfare photography exhibit and lectures by Sanford Schram and Irv Ackelsberg. Also presented was this animation by David Harvey...

Class Warfare

September 8- November 3

Moonstone Art Center

110 South 13th Street

Philadelphia, Pa

Moonstone Arts Center

The Earth Reclaims It

2011-09-09T23:25:00.000-04:00

New York City and Yellowstone (2001)
J Randall Updegrove

I posted these images a few years ago and they are still as incredible to me as ever. These are accidental 35mm double-exposures taken by Missoula, Montana based photographer J Randall Updegrove, who was in New York City in the Spring of 2001 where he shot a roll of film, which included these two images from the top of the Empire State Building. Somehow the same roll was re-exposed, upside-down, at Yellowstone National Park. In fact, Updegrove is not certain if the Yellowstone images were shot before or after the New York trip. This roll of film then sat in a drawer for eight years, and in 2009 were developed to discover these stunning results. The apocalyptic images of the Twin Towers suspended from the heavens over the violent geography of Yellowstone just six months prior to their actual collapse. These photos are straight out of the camera with no post processing whatsoever.

Check out the whole series of images from this roll of film...

The Earth Reclaims It

False Mountains.... cont'd

2011-09-06T09:36:00.002-04:00

from False Mountains series (2011)

Announcing

2011-09-02T10:58:00.000-04:00

2001-2011 A Decade of Photography in the Aftermath of 9/11

Ruben Natal- San Miguel

Greenwich House Music School
46 Barrow Street
West Village, NYC 10014

Please join us on Monday, September 12, 2011, from 8-10pm as we kick-off September's art season with a special curated projection by Ruben Natal-San Miguel, "A Decade of Photography in the Aftermath of 9/11." Natal-San Miguel has prepared the following artist statement:

As a survivor of attacks on Sept 11, 2001 and now a photographer, curator and an influential figure among fine art photography community, I want to celebrate life and commemorate the 10-year anniversary and showcase how photography, as an art media and derivative works, have changed the face of America and the WorldIt is a demonstration of how our life, a worldly vision manifested through the use of the photographer’s lens and accompanied by all the technological advances, has evolved since right after 9/11 until today. It will reflect the new sensibilities in this art medium, created by the war, the economy and the advances in the technological landscapes. The exhibition will also highlight some of the most iconic images over the past decade. These photography images over the last 10-years will be on exhibition display via the World Wide Web as a unique virtual gallery and as a special slide/musical presentation to be held at the historical Greenwich House Music School. Let the healing begin!

As part of the evening, Finch & Ada will be exhibiting a September Salon, a group show of selected photography and photo based work by featured artists, who have also been influenced by a decade of change among the visual arts landscape.

False Mountains.... cont'd

2011-09-01T07:15:00.005-04:00

from False Mountains series (2011)

Kelli Connell

2011-08-24T10:05:00.001-04:00

Carnival by Kelli Connell

Philadelphia Photo Arts Center
1400 N American Street
Philadelphia, Pa.

Artist Lecture & Book Signing: Kelli Connell
Saturday, September 17th, 2011

Lecture: 6:00 – 7:00pm
Book Signing: 7:00 – 7:30pm

The Philadelphia Photo Arts Center is pleased to host a free lecture and book signing by photographer Kelli Connell. Connell is known for her well-crafted portraits that on first glance appear to be familiar scenes of two women caught up in tender, playful everyday moments. Upon further viewing it becomes apparent that these women are identical, and so perhaps sisters, who are engaged at times in such intimate positions as to create a sense of unease. Connell has actually been photographing one female model and then stitching together scenes which never actually occurred, where the model is twinned and interacting with her mirror image. Connell’s work moves beyond flawless Photoshop dexterity, though, and into a place of introspection about relationships, identity and “the multiple sides of the self in the overall human experience”.

Kelli Connell received an MFA from Texas Woman’s University in 2003. Her body of work Double Life has been included in numerous national solo and group exhibitions. Connell’s work is included in the collections of Microsoft, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Recent publications featuring her work include Auto Focus: the Self-Portrait in Contemporary Photography, Photo Art: The New World of Photography, and Vitamin PH: New Perspectives in Photography. Connell teaches at Columbia College Chicago.

Connell’s brand new monograph Double Life will be available for purchase at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center.

This event is part of the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center free lecture series by visiting contemporary artists. Lectures are open to the public and serve the educational purpose of cultivating an active dialogue about photography.

West Mt. Airy

2011-08-21T22:37:00.001-04:00

West Mt Airy, Philadelphia (2011)

Class Warfare

2011-08-21T10:12:00.000-04:00

Class Warfare in Philadelphia
Moonstone Arts Center
110A South 13th Street
Philadelphia, Pa.

September 8th- November 3rd

Experience It Here

Edge

The current economic hard times Philadelphians and other Americans are experiencing share many features with earlier times like the Great Depression. In other respects, today’s problems are very different. During the Depression era, there was great interest in discovering how the hard times affected real people, which led to the rise of programs such as The Farm Security Administration, whose Photo Department became famous for thousands of images that profoundly changed how Americans looked at themselves and at the poor in their midst.

This upcoming photography exhibition evoking today’s economic hard times will be a backdrop to a five-part series of educational programs called Class Warfare In Philadelphia, which is being held between September 8th and November 3rd. There will be an official opening for the exhibit as part of the September 8th Forum on Foreclosures being held at Moonstone Arts Center, 110A South 13th Street in Philadelphia. Topics of additional forums will include vacant land; public unions; financial institutions (a la “Inside Job”); community organizations involved in local class warfare; and a debate by candidates for Sheriff of Philadelphia.

With photographers Ashley Angert, Justyna Badach, Angelo Benedetto, Kevin Cook, Harvey Finkle, Harris Fogel, Michele Frentop, Mira Gohel, Celeste Hardester, Chris Hill, Eric Mencher, Kevin Monko, Caitlin Morris, Christopher Paquette, Maria Petrone, Stuart Rome, Sherry Ruczynski, Horry Rumph Jr., April Saul, Daniela Sessa, Ed Snyder, Phil Taylor and Ted Adams

Goodwill

Moonstone Arts Center

Brad Moore

2011-08-19T10:24:00.000-04:00

Family Rescue Center, Westminster, Ca
Brad Moore (2006)

Brad Moore

Call for Work...."My Own Wilderness"

2011-08-18T10:26:00.001-04:00

Toledo, Ohio (2010)

PHOTO/arts MAGAZINE is pleased to announce its first juried photography competition as part of the fifth anniversary of the blog this coming November. PHOTO/arts MAGAZINE was started in November 2006, and to celebrate its fifth birthday is making an international call for work seeking photography related to the theme My Own Wilderness.

About the theme:

Wilderness has many meanings in this shrinking world we live in. The traditional definition is "an area of earth untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." Where there once were immense regions on the planet that could be defined in this way, today there are fewer and fewer places 'untrammeled by man'. But wilderness can also be more than a place. It can be a state of mind, a condition of loneliness, an economic or political status. It can exist within the most populated cities as a personal space created by the individual. How do you define wilderness?

I am inviting photographers to submit up to five images that illustrate a response to the meaning of My Own Wilderness. The best images will be presented on November 1st on PHOTO/arts MAGAZINE as an online exhibition and will also be published in a photobook. The top five photographers will receive a free copy of the book. The photobook will be published by Blurb in early 2012, and will include a bio and artist statement for each included photographer, and will be entered in Blurb's annual Photo Book Now competition for 2012.

Deadline for Entries: October 1st, 2011

Notification of winners: October 21st, 2011

Publication of winning entries: November 1st, 2011

Publication of Book: Early 2012

Submission Guidelines:

1. Submit up to five images related to the theme My Own Wilderness. All formats are welcome including film, digital, color or B & W. If you send more than one image, they should all be part of a single series. Please do not send multiple images showing different interpretations of the theme.

2. Do not send large sized files. Please send files no more than 1000 pixels on the largest side, and set to 72 dpi resolution. Winners will be asked to send full sized files for book publication.

3. Please name your files with your own name like this... JaneSMITH_01 JaneSMITH_02 etc.

4. Send a short bio about yourself. Winners may be asked to elaborate on their bio for publication. Include link to your website or blog with your bio.

5. Send a brief statement describing how your images define My Own Wilderness. This statement is not a requirement for entry, but will definitely help your chances of selection.

6. By submitting images you are agreeing to allow publication of your work on PHOTO/arts MAGAZINE and in the Blurb photobook to be published in 2012. You retain all copyright and ownership of your work. All published work will identify you as the photographer.

7. There is no entry fee. Top five photographers will receive one free copy of the book. All photographers selected for book publication will be able to purchase the book at the author's price set by Blurb at the time of publication.

8. Winners will be selected by Christopher H. Paquette, Editor of PHOTO/arts MAGAZINE

9. Send Images, bio, and statement to:

MyOwnWilderness@gmail.com

Call for Work

2011-08-16T08:44:00.003-04:00

2001- 2011 A Decade of Insanity: Still Searching for Healing

Hope by Ruben Natal-San Miguel

This is an opportunity to participate in an online group show with some well known names in the photography world. Artist, blogger, and collector Ruben Natal-San Miguel is curating an online photography exhibit to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11, celebrate life, and to show ways in which photography has changed the face of America and the world. Photographers are being asked to submit up to three images that fit this overall theme, with the opportunity to have one image selected for the exhibit. Chosen images will be presented on Ruben's blog Art Most Fierce starting on September 11th, 2011. Art Most Fierce is widely read and highly respected among the photographic community.

Submitted sample images should be no larger than 480 pixels on the longest side, and 72 dpi resolution. Images should be sent to Artmostfierce@aol.com before August 31st, 2011. Best of all, there is no entry fee !

Have a look at Ruben's blog for more details...

Art Most Fierce

Gone

2011-08-15T09:47:00.000-04:00

This building stood in a half-demolished state for several years... three exterior walls... no roof... no front facade... just a modern day ruin. Over the weekend I noticed a bunch of construction equipment on the site and the structure is completely gone.

Late Socialism

2011-08-12T09:30:00.002-04:00

"It's the rich people... the people who've got businesses. We're just showing the rich people we can do what we want"

The world is going to pieces and people like Adams and Weston

are photographing rocks!

- Henri Cartier-Bresson ( 1930's)

*Collection of images from a "London Riots" google search

The more things change...

2011-08-10T10:31:00.000-04:00

the more they stay the same.

1978

2011

Ellen Jantzen

2011-08-09T08:54:00.000-04:00

Point & Shoot @ 70 MPH

Photographer Ellen Jantzen has produced a beautiful series of images taken with a point & shoot camera while on a 3000 mile road trip through the American West in 2010. The series moves beyond the cliche of what we typically see from road trip images of the west, reducing the landscape to the simple blur that is left in our memory banks when we return home. The panoramic views Jantzen captured become gorgeous contemporary interpretations of classic western landscapes.

Wyoming

California

Utah

New Mexico

Point & Shoot @ 70 MPH by Ellen Jantzen

Sarah Bloom: Totally Exposed

2011-08-07T10:13:00.005-04:00

Totally Exposed: A Solo Exhibit by Sarah Bloom
Sept 3- 30, 2011
Opening reception Sept 3rd, 4-9PM

Da Vinci Art Alliance
704 Catherine Street
Philadelphia, Pa

Sarah Bloom's website

Escape Into Life

2011-08-05T10:28:00.002-04:00

I feel so honored to have my work featured today on the gorgeous art website Escape Into Life. Many thanks to Teia Pearson !

Poetry of Nowhere on Escape Into Life

Photo/arts Magazine

Roadside Aesthetics

Force Of Nature

Unseen Color

Hello from the Future...

Sacrifice

Zoe Strauss Lecture

Zoe Strauss – Lecture and Book Signing

PMA Portfolio Competition 2012

Contemporary Russian Photography

More Art Galleries of the Public

Art Galleries of the Public

Further reading....

Currently Reading...

AASHTO #57

New Poetry

Mos Hi Def

Gong Hey Fat Choy

My Own Wilderness

murmuration

Jeanette May

Family Dynamics

La Corona by Zoe Strauss

Why Zoe Strauss Matters

Bernard Mindich

Zoe Strauss: Ten Years

Levi Wedel

Agan Harahap

Andi Schreiber

Happy Holidays!

Announcing AIPAD 2012

Andrew Wertz

Irina Popova

My Own Wilderness update

ONWARD 12 Selected Photographers

Missoula Art Museum 40th Benefit Auction

Robert Schlaug

Zoe Strauss: 10 Years

$4.3 Million

Murmeration

Happy 5th Anniversary PHOTO/arts Magazine!

My Own Wilderness

My Own Wilderness

InVision Photo Festival

Through The Plain Camera

"My Own Wilderness" Countdown

Favorite Sites

Zheng Yaohua

The North Woods

ONWARD Compe

More on Russian Photography

Portfolio Reviews

Seul Choix Point, Lake Michigan

Returning

Selection Time

My "My Own Wilderness"

Philadelphia Open Studio Tours

Kelli Connell

Fine Photographs

Russian Photography Today

Sarah Bloom: Totally Exposed

Moonstone Arts Center opening reception

The Earth Reclaims It

False Mountains.... cont'd

Announcing

False Mountains.... cont'd

Kelli Connell

West Mt. Airy

Class Warfare

Brad Moore

Call for Work...."My Own Wilderness"

Call for Work

Gone

Late Socialism

The more things change...

Ellen Jantzen

Sarah Bloom: Totally Exposed

Escape Into Life