Andi Schreiber

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!

Happy Holidays from PHOTO/arts Magazine!

Announcing AIPAD 2012

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

Christmas Tree by Andrew Wertz  (2011)

Irina Popova

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

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:

• Todd Hido
• Hiroh Kikai

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andreas Gursky, Rhein II, 1999

List of the highest prices paid for photographs

Murmeration

Happy 5th Anniversary PHOTO/arts Magazine!

First post.... November 6th, 2006

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

xoxo

My Own Wilderness

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

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

Festival Details

Through The Plain Camera

"My Own Wilderness" Countdown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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