Photography 30
Perkins Center for The Arts
Moorestown, NJ

January 30- March 6th, 2011

Noah Addis. Future Cities: Lima



The thirtieth annual photography show opened yesterday at the Perkins Center for the Arts in Moorestown, NJ to a packed house of visitors who mingled among the gallery rooms on two floors. 82 works from 75 artists are now on exhibit until March 6th.

The show consists of an amazing variety of processes, and in my opinion this presents both the strength and weakness of a show of this type. While the majority of work in the show is digitally based, there is a strong showing of traditional and alternate processed work including Silver Gelatin work of course, but also the following processes; Polarized & Oxidized Gelatin Silver, Toned Silver Gelatin, Tea-Toned Silver Gelatin,Hand Painted prints, several Palladium prints, a Sheimpflug 4 X 5, and a Tintype Dry Plate 4 X 5. Among the digital formats there were Giclee prints, Sepia toned, Digital Construction/Illustration work, an HDR print, and more than a few pieces with obvious post production work.

It was wonderful to see such a variety of processes on display in a single show and it is a true testament to the hand crafted and artistic element that still remains in photography today in spite of the digital tidal wave. That said, I think shows like this face the danger of crossing into the realm of sentimentality and gratuity with regard to their treatment of the older, and even some of the newer alternate processes. Of the five juror awards given, one went to the only Tintype entry, and the other went to a large digital HDR print. It is my opinion that these awards were given solely as a reflection of their process, and not on artistic merit. If you go see this show, look for these two photographs and judge for yourself.

Beyond that small complaint, this is a wonderful and visually exciting exhibit, and I found several photographers whose work is really stunning. Top admiration goes to Noah Addis, whose print from his series Future Cities: Lima won a juror award as well as the Museum Purchase Award from the Philadelphia Art Museum. Other strong work in the show included Lisa Boutcher's Periphery, Jeff Martin's Deer Seasoning, Eduardo Lara's See Spot Run, and Sarah Bloom's And You're to Blame.

Something that struck me as amazing, especially in the context of viewing Palladium prints, Tintypes, and many other photographic forms from the olden days, is the fact that I can go to a show, find several photographers whose work I like, go home, Google their names, find their websites, locate them on Facebook or Flickr, all within hours of seeing their work for the very first time. This was inconceivable not too long ago, and it opens up an entire new world of exposure to any photographer or artist, regardless of their chosen process technique.

Go see this show and enjoy the wide open world of photographic technique

Noah Addis

Lisa Boughter

Sarah Bloom

Photography 30

This was one of the first books I ever read in my attempt to understand the cultural trends of homogenized branding and cloned franchise society. I haven't looked at this book in a long time, and this morning while browsing though it I noticed something I had underlined probably ten years ago; a reference to James Kunstler's book The Geography of Nowhere. So why did it take me almost ten years to finally read Kunstler's book ?

"The Kinko's, Starbucks and Blockbuster clerks buy their uniform of khakis and white or blue shirts at the Gap; the "Hi! Welcome to the Gap!" greeting cheer is fueled by Starbucks double expressos; the resumes that got them the jobs were designed at Kinko's on friendly Macs; in 12-point Helvetica on Microsoft Word. The troops show up for work smelling of CK One (except at Starbucks, where colognes and perfumes are thought to compete with the "romance of coffee" aroma), their faces freshly scrubbed with Body Shop Blue Corn Mask, before leaving apartments furnished with Ikea self-assembled bookcases and coffee tables."

-Naomi Klein
No Logo

minnesota. (2010)

c. h. paquette |2010


Photography 30

Perkins Center for the Arts
Moorestown , NJ

The opening reception will be Sunday, January 30, 2011
from 1:00 to 4:00 PM. Free and open to the public.
Gallery Hours, January 30-March 6:
Thursday and Friday, 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM; Saturday and Sunday, 12:00 PM - 4:00 PM

This is the latest piece in a series of sculptures created from found bird's nests and scavenged driftwood. I set these up as wall hung folk art and mount them fairly high on the wall near the ceiling, the way one would view a nest while walking through the woods. The architecture and meticulous construction of nests is endlessly fascinating to me, and I feel their beauty and simple elegance rivals any man made architectural structure. The simplicity and minimalism is something I am naturally drawn to, in the same way I love wabi sabi design elemants. This series is an exploration of my emotional involvement with the natural environment and the search for wilderness and solitude as a remedy to societal pressures. In addition to the nest sculptures I also manipulate scavenged driftwood and other items into self portrait studies.





I am drawn to these nests in the same way I am magnetically attracted to mini camping trailers or the idea of building and living in the smallest possible house with nothing but the bare essentials for comfortable living. A quick search on the internet will reveal I am not alone in the fascination for cabins consisting of less than 100 square feet; mostly being designed and constructed as rural weekend getaways. The human desire to nest...





Here is an Appalachian Trail nest I built and slept in with my dog back in October. It is nothing more than a log and stone hovel that kept us toasty warm on a cold autumn night. Fully inspired by bird created architecture...

the symbolic landscape. #3. (2010)

Axioms for Reading the Landscape...

1. The axiom of landscape as clue to culture
-The man-made landscape- the ordinary run-of-the-mill things that humans have created and put upon the earth- provides strong evidence of the kind of people we are, and were, and are in the process of becoming.


2. The axiom of cultural unity and landscape equality
-Nearly all items in human landscapes reflect culture in some way. There are almost no exceptions. Furthermore, most items in the human landscape are no more and no less important than other items- in terms of their role as clues to culture.


3.The axiom of common things
-Common landscapes- however important they may be- are by their nature hard to study by conventional academic means.


4. The historic axiom
-In trying to unravel the meaning of contemporary landscapes and what they have to "say" about us as Americans, history matters.


5. The geographic (or ecological) axiom
Elements of a cultural landscape make little cultural sense if they are studied outside their geographical (i.e., locational) context.


6.The axiom of environmental control
-Most cultural landscapes are intimately related to physical environment. Thus, the reading of cultural landscape also presupposes some basic knowledge of physical landscape.


7. The axiom of landscape obscurity
-Most objects in the landscape- although they convey all kinds of "messages"- do not convey those messages in any obvious way.


D. W. Meinig
The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes (1979)

the symbolic landscape. #2 . (2011)

bibliography of nowhere

the symbolic landscape. #1 . (2009)

Symbolic Landscapes...

Thus we come to the ineluctable observation that the key landscape symbol in late twentieth century America is not the home but the highway, and community is not so much a discrete locality as a dispersed social network traced on the landscape by the moving automobile. In many ways the automobile rather than the house seems the most powerful instrument and symbol of our basic values. Through it we express our individualism, status, freedom, love of mobility and change, as well as our search for security. It carries us effortlessly to all those amenities and services made familiar and profoundly democratic by the nationwide uniformity of the McDonalds, Holiday Inns, and a hundred other franchise operations. But a nagging question hangs over this scene: can this kind of atomized dispersal of people living in motorized and electronic connection with their environment and with one another be called a "community" ?

-D. W. Meinig
The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes (1979)

House next to Shopping Mall. (2011)

New Jersey (2011)

Deciphering the Cultural Landscape...

For the meaning of the ordinary is rarely obvious. We regard all landscapes as symbolic, as expressions of cultural values, social behavior, and individual actions worked upon particular localities over a span of time. Every landscape is an accumulation, and its study may be undertaken as formal history, methodically defining the making of the landscape from the past to the present. And every landscape is a code, and its study may be undertaken as a deciphering of meaning, of the cultural and social significance of ordinary but diagnostic features.

-D. W. Meinig
The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes (1979)


Reading this book of geographical essays edited by D.W.Meinig has helped me to better understand an underlying cohesion among many of the landscapes I have photographed over the past several years. I would not necessarily have grouped these images together for presentation or review prior to the conscious realization of their being cultural studies. This attempt at "deciphering the meaning" of the social landscape is for me directly related to what Stieglitz referred to as the "severe mental process, that taxes all the artist's energies". The day to day anguish in deciding "what you have to say, and how to say it". It is this taxing mental process that drives me to seek out books like this, and it is so rewarding to find the connecting narratives and theories behind those of us who visually search the cultural landscape for meaning.

Lewis Baltz. Park City, Interior no. 70 (1980)

a visual bibliography

The New Avant-Garde
Issues for Art of the Seventies
Text by Gregoire Muller
Photographs by Gianfranco Gorgoni
Praeger Publishers. 1972

My second book purchase of 2011 turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. I bought this after seeing it in the bibliography of Landscape as Photograph by Estelle Jussim and Elizabeth Lindquist-Cock. The chapter on Landscape as Concept refers to Earthworks and the works of artists such as Robert Smithson and Micheal Heizer, and footnotes The New Avant Garde as a source. I found it listed on Amazon as a paperback for a couple bucks and after ordering it the seller notified me that it was actually a hardcover mistakenly listed as a paperback. Did I still want it? Of course! The book is an ex-library copy, mylar protective cover over the dust jacket, and in fantastic condition. But that wasn't even the surprise. The surprise was what a fantastic photography book this has turned out to be. The book features the innovative work of artists such as Robert Smithson, Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman, Joseph Beuys, Michael Heizer, and others who were taking art into some revolutionary directions in the early nineteen seventies. There is an essay by Gregoire Muller, and the remainder of the book is filled with beautiful black and white images by photographer Gianfranco Gorgoni. Gorgoni is an Italian photographer best known for his large scale portraits of icons of the art world.








Robert Smithson


Michael Heizer


Gianfranco Gorgoni

Little Brown Miscellanea


Limited edition book still available

first picture of 2011

Three upcoming group shows, each containing an image from my ongoing series... Poetry of Nowhere.



MAM 39
Missoula Art Museum
Missoula, Mt
January 7th- February 3rd, 2011









Photography 30
Perkins Center for the Arts
Moorestown , NJ
January 30th - March 6th, 2011







Onward 11
Project Basho
Philadelphia, Pa
February 10 - March 27th, 2011







Really energizing validation, and has me jazzed to keep moving forward with the project. I am reading and researching the related topics like a mad man. Just piles and piles of books and reading every spare minute of the day. I haven't been shooting much of anything... I actually made my first picture of the year just today. I hadn't even clicked the shutter since Christmas day. But I'm feeling really confident about what I am looking for, and my eyes are always open.


Poetry of Nowhere (series website)

One of the most important international photography events, The AIPAD Photography Show New York, will be presented by the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) from March 17 through 20, 2011. 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 19th century photographs, as well as photo-based art, video and new media, at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. The 31st edition of The AIPAD Photography Show New York will open with a Gala Preview on March 16 to benefit the John Szarkowski Fund, an endowment for photography acquisitions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The AIPAD Photography Show New York is the longest running and foremost exhibition of fine art photography.

“Photography has been less affected by the recession than other parts of the art world,” said Stephen Bulger, President, AIPAD, and President, Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto. “As a result, photography remains a growing market. Now more than ever, AIPAD is a must-do show for collectors, and clearly is the best show for photography in North America.”

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. An exhibitor list is available at aipad.com/photoshow.

Exhibition Highlights:

Deborah Bell Photographs, New York, will show black-and-white photographs by Andy Warhol (c. 1981-86). These are photographs that precede the stitched or sewn photographic composites and are primarily formal studies taken from street life, providing insight into "Andy's eye." Gary Edwards Gallery, Washington, DC, will show a portrait of Chairman Mao from 1963 by an unknown Xinhua Agency photographer. The portrait is said to have been printed in over 100 million copies. It is the basis of the gigantic portrait hanging on Tiananmen Gate, facing Tiananmen Square in Beijing; and Andy Warhol’s Mao screenprints of 1972 are based on this photograph, as well.

New work by Abelardo Morell will be on view at Bonni Benrubi Gallery, New York, including images of a landscape in Florence and a rooftop view of the Brooklyn Bridge made with a camera obscura. Peter Fetterman Gallery, Santa Monica, CA, will bring work by Annie Leibovitz, Lillian Bassman, Sebastiao Salgado, and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Galería Vasari, Buenos Aires, will show the work of photographers, such as Annemarie Heinrich and Juan Di Sandro, who immigrated to Argentina between the 1930s and ‘50s. Originally from Europe, they belonged to a generation that had been trained at the most refined avant-garde schools and there is no doubt of their fundamental role in the development of modern photography in Argentina.

Michael Hoppen Gallery, London, will show work by the vibrant young Japanese artist Sohei Nishino (born 1982). This will be the first time his work has been shown in the United States. Nishino’s Diorama Map series is an ongoing project to map the world's great cities using his unique process of photography and collage. After an intense month of shooting thousands of photographs on black-and-white film from hundreds of locations across the city, he spends several months developing, printing, cutting, pasting and arranging of the re-imagined city into a huge photographic collage. The final piece is re-shot using a large format camera to create a single grand photographic print.

Niko Luoma is one of the leading professors at the University of Art and Design, Helsinki, and is an integral part of the Helsinki School. His series of abstract C-prints are inspired by nature in flux, every day events, chaos, chance, and time. Luoma uses a simple mathematical system in exposing negative space and composing each work based on ideas of symmetry. The photographs will be on view at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York.

Fiona Pardington's large-scale photographs in her series Ahua: A Beautiful Hesitation document the sculptures of indigenous peoples encountered during French explorer Dumont d'Urville's 1837 voyage to the South Pacific and will be on view at Lisa Sette Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ.

Panel Discussions:

The AIPAD Photography Show New York will present an ambitious schedule of panel discussions on Saturday, March 19, 2011 at the Veteran’s Room at the Park Avenue Armory.

The panels include PHOTOGRAPHY NOW: HOW ARTISTS ARE THINKING TODAY, which will discuss the issues contemporary photographers and artists are dealing with now. Among the panelists are Julie Saul, Julie Saul Gallery, and artists Sally Mann, Shirin Neshat and Alec Soth.

PICTURES INTO PAGES: PHOTOGRAPHY BOOK PUBLISHING NOW will explore how now more than ever, beautiful photography books are in demand, coveted by many, and considered an important part of a collector’s repertoire. Speakers will include Steven Kasher, Steven Kasher Gallery; Eric Himmel, Vice President, Editor-in-Chief, Abrams; Lesley Martin, Publisher, Aperture Foundation; Nion McEvoy, Chairman & CEO, Chronicle Books; Anthony Petrillose, Managing Editor, Rizzoli; and Gerhard Steidl, Publisher, Steidl.

NEW CURATORS/NEW DIRECTIONS will focus on the work of a photography curator at a top museum. Curators will discuss their goals and reflect on how photography has become more integrated into both exhibitions and collections over the last 10 years. The speakers will include Rick Wester, Rick Wester Fine Art, Inc.; Simon Baker, Curator of Photography and International Art, Tate; Roxana Marcoci, Curator, Department of Photography, The Museum Of Modern Art; Britt Salvesen, Department Head and Curator, Photography Department, Prints and Drawings Department, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Brian Wallis, Chief Curator, International Center of Photography; and Matthew S. Witkovsky, Curator and Chair, Department of Photography, The Art Institute of Chicago.

THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: BEHIND THE SCENES AT AIPAD GALLERIES will review how leading AIPAD dealers organize exhibitions and work with collectors. Speakers will include Jill Arnold, Director of Business Development, AXA Art Insurance Corporation; Howard Greenberg, Howard Greenberg Gallery; Peter MacGill, Pace/MacGill Gallery; Yancey Richardson, Yancey Richardson Gallery; and Martin Weinstein, Weinstein Gallery.

AIPAD AND THE IPAD: NEW TECHNOLOGY AND PHOTOGRAPHY will look at how all forms of new media technology are affecting the field of photography – from bloggers and Facebook to Flickr and YouTube. Speakers will include: Barbara Pollack, artist and arts journalist; Jen Bekman, Founder + CEO, 20x200 | Jen Bekman Projects; Bill Charles, Bill Charles Represents, New York, and Scott Dadich, Executive Director, Digital Magazine Development, Conde Nast.

Tickets are $10 for the panel discussions and are available on a first-come first-served basis.

Show Information
The AIPAD Photography Show New York will run from Thursday, March 17 though Sunday, March 20, 2010 at the Park Avenue Armory at 67th Street in New York City. Show hours are as follows:

Thursday March 17 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Friday March 18 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Saturday March 19 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Sunday March 20 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.

I submitted this trio of images to a juried competition today...

someone's bedroom. 2006

This has always been a powerful image for me. I came upon it in a parking garage near Chinatown in Philadelphia. Walking around a corner I got the unexpected jolt and feeling of mistakenly walking into someone's bedroom, and my focus was solely on the bed in the corner of the room. It wasn't until after seeing the photograph that the back walls unveiled as metaphoric curtains. This is one of the most rewarding elements of photography for me; when I am drawn very strongly to compose a picture for one or two reasons and then the finished photograph reveals deeper elements that confirm and reinforce the initial attraction. Those secondary elements must play a role in the first magnetic pull, but they are somewhere below the conscious level of the human eye. It brings to mind the words of Minor White...

Blank, as the creative photographer's state of mind is, uncritical as it is while photographing, as sensitized, as prepared for anything to happen, afterwards with prints safely in hand he needs to practice the most conscious criticism. Is what he saw present in the photograph? If not, does the photograph open his eyes to something he could not see himself? If so, will he take the responsibility for the accident and show it as his own, or will he consider it as a sketch for his subconscious to digest?

-Minor White

Best Photo Books of 2010

New Topographics
Robert Adams. Lewis Baltz. Bernd and Hilla Becher.
Joe Deal. Frank Gohlke. Nicholas Nixon.John Schott.
Stephen Shore. Henry Wessel, Jr.
Steidl Press. 2009

First book purchase of 2011 is one that I have been lusting after since it was issued last year to coincide with the exhibition. It has all the image plates from the exhibition, an extensive new essay, as well as a fully reproduced catalog from the original 1975 exhibition. Fantastic.

Utopia? by Mike Callaghan 2010

Photo Review web exhibition Signs
curated from the 2010 competition entries

Goodwill by C H Paquette 2009

Coca Cola - Sonepur. by Maciej Dakowicz

The longer I have intensely studied photography, the less interested and enamored I have become of street photography as a genre. One of the major reasons being the phenomena of the universal camera. We are all photographers now; ergo, we are all street photographers now, and the overwhelming majority of us suck at it. Keep in mind that I am currently in one of my reoccurring cynical photographic moods where almost nothing excites my eye. I'm not shooting anything myself and the majority of work I see from other photographers leaves me stale. These moods come and go throughout the year, and I suspect they are brought on to some degree by over exposure to images. Just before the holidays I had promised myself I would retreat from the internet. I managed to do that for about three days, and I did spend most of the holiday week with my head in a book instead of in front of a computer screen.

Getting back to street photography, beyond my own current cynicism lies the sad fact that most people walking around with a camera these days have nothing much to say and therefore shoot anything they see that appears visually exciting. There is an old saying... "Say not always what you think, but always think about what you say". And I feel very strongly that this notion can be applied to the craft of photography, and explains most of what is lacking in mega-photography today. Most of what is out there is merely feeble attempts at trying to record what is pretty, quirky, ironic, sad, happy, etc. I'm not against having fun with a camera. We all like to shoot wistful sunsets and bunnies and flowers and pets when the mood strikes us. We're talking about what is being passed off as street photography here. Where is the human condition, the decisive moment, the velvet hand and hawk's eye? Story telling. I want a visual narrative. I want to be confounded and confused. I want to reply with many questions.

This photograph by Maciej Dakowicz did all of those things for me today, and I am slightly less cynical because of it.

Maciej Dakowicz website

Happy New Year! 1. 1. 11

mummers parade. 2008