Garrett Williams || CLOSED


Yes, by now we have seen many series of architectural photographs documenting the great recession. A certain fatigue sets in at the thought of ruin porn. But the recession lives on and store fronts remain closed. Garrett Williams reveals a fine eye for clean minimalism and subtle color in these images shot through the windows of empty retail spaces. They appear almost theatrical, as if waiting for the show to begin. I never get tired of peering into work with this sort of sublime mystery attached to it.

"I began shooting empty rooms through storefront windows about a year ago. These are a selection I took while traveling from Oregon to California last Fall. The simple aesthetics of these spaces pleased and surprised me, and the documentation of an economic cycle became secondary. The roughness of the images gives clues to the voyeuristic nature of the project. The glass was dirty, there were reflections, and my mobility around the subject obviously limited by a large glass plate. I plan to continue this series in my next trip back."    
- Garrett Williams
















Images by Garrett Willams from his CLOSED series

More about Garrett Williams:

"I am an American photographer based in Oslo, Norway. I was trained as a fine art photographer in San Francisco, and have worked in various facets of the branch both here and there. The more I shoot the more I am fascinated by the concept of creativity. It's a feeling about an image that simply falls into place. Combine this with an enormous curiosity about people and this world and these photographs are the result. With a documentary background, my photographs are normally untouched scenarios that hopefully show how I view this fascinating world. "

Garrett Williams Photography

Open Call For Work || FIF 2013


International Photography Festival - Belo Horizonte, Brazil 2013


Open call for artists - International photo exhibition

Artists are invited to submit their original work for the main exhibition of the 1st International Photography Festival of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Submissions are free and will remain open until May 20, 2013. Applications must include a series of 5 to 8 images, artist statement, technical specifications of the work, resume and portfolio. The works will be judged by the duo of curators Eduardo de Jesus, critic, essayist, board member of the Associação Cultural Videobrasil (São Paulo/Brazil) and professor of PUC Minas (Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte/Brazil), and Patricia Azevedo, artist and professor of EBA-UFMG (School of Fine Arts at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte/Brazil). Selected works will be presented at the exhibition of the festival, to be held from July 12 to August 6, 2013, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Online submissions, terms and conditions and more information on the website www.en.fif.art.br.

Miquel Galceran || Inèrcies


Barcelona based photographer Miquel Galceran recently submitted images from his series Inèrcies. I immediately liked the subtlety of these photographs. Translating the series title from Catalan to English I discovered it means Inertia. Ah, yes. I could see it as well as feel it. I almost could have known the meaning directly from the images before learning the translation. The inertia is soft and flowing with gentle movement. I asked Miquel to follow up with some thoughts about the series...

"I started this project about 2 years ago, coinciding with my last course at the University of Barcelona. During this time, besides relating to some different authors, more theoretical aspects of photography have aroused my interest, and all these things have been affecting my way of seeing."


 Miquel Galceran,  Inèrcies


"My work has an important autobiographical component, but not documentary. I'm not interested in explaining things with photography, for me, it's a tool to develop my feelings, and overall, in this case, to transform my thoughts, so I'm moving myself around or close to the suggestive. I think the verbal language tends to structure our mind in overly specific meanings. So, I don't want to do that with images. I suppose it's a base problem, words tend to repeat the same idea, filtering and immobilizing them again and again. However, there is a narrative."


Miquel Galceran,  Inèrcies


"What Inèrcies introduces is a kind of journey through a closed space, the space of a representation. So, it introduces and represents itself, as a group of decisions that our own reality dresses up, punctually or permanently. This flattens to understand, turns it necessarily to an object. In fact, the work is very rigid in itself. Maybe because it comes from the rejection of time, therefore it rejects the possibility and the wish."


Miquel Galceran,  Inèrcies


"Deep down, all these things have been pushing me to explore metalanguage, which in photography is something like talking about the invisible from the visible. And from there, be able to start drawing things beyond. Of course, I don't want to overload the reader with responsibility  I want to play with insinuation. In that sense, one of my best biggest influences is David Jimenez."


Miquel Galceran,  Inèrcies



"I think that is where I am right now, I suppose it has arisen in a natural way. It's something more free, confident and flexible, because it assumes my own doubt and indecision. Because I want to continue discovering things, I need to delete others. At the end of the day, it's about playing with that fragment you make visible and the rest which it hides. I try to notice all those less conscious things in my day to day life. So, I suppose what pushes me to take photographs, is the eagerness to ask myself questions. But, this has nothing to do with conceptual art. I simply stay within the abstract, because it's there where all these images are born."




Miquel Galceran,  Inèrcies

To see more from Miquel Galceran...









John King || Bonavista

John King  From  Bonavista Peninsula


"The Bonavista Peninsula is on the east coast of the island of Newfoundland, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean.  The peninsula separates Trinity Bay and Bonavista Bay and has about 30 small coastal communities. I live about 100 km. (60 miles) from the town of Bonavista and visit the peninsula fairly frequently.

My first visit was in 1995 with my wife whose family is from this area. We had been living in the Toronto area for many years and during our vacation trip to the peninsula I fell in love with the place. One sunny afternoon on that trip we hiked out to the headland past Tickle Cove and watched a huge iceberg break up off shore. It was that on day that we made a pact that when our daughter graduated high school and left home for college we would try to move here. Emily graduated in June 1999 and in July I started work at the college in nearby Clarenville. The power of will.

This is a very rugged landscape. Newfoundlanders often refer affectionately to their home province as “The Rock”.  On the Bonavista Peninsula it’s easy to see why. There is very little topsoil and lots of exposed geological formations. You rarely see a house with a basement.

Some of the oldest permanent settlements in the province were established in this area in the decades following John Cabot’s voyage of discovery in 1497. Communities were started near natural harbours where the fishing boats could shelter from the sometimes vicious North Atlantic Ocean.  Homes were simple wood structures usually built by their owners; churches and schools were constructed by community volunteers.

I see a simple but strong beauty in this area. There is a built environment but the natural landscape retains an equal voice."

-John King  March, 2013

John King  Handmade book details

John King’s images explore formal composition with themes that often include a sense of place and human presence in the landscape. His work has been presented in various group and solo exhibitions in Canada. He lives in a small town in Newfoundland Canada. John has produced a small hand bound book from the images he produced on the Bonavista Peninsula. You can see a full preview of the book and some interesting production notes on John's blog, The Occasional Word.

John King's work is included in the 2012 exhibit Self Contained.


Re-emergence

Medicine Wheel.  (2013)

In six years of editing PHOTO/arts Magazine I have never missed more than a week or two between posts. This is the first post of 2013, so it has been almost four months since I have written anything about art or photography. My mother passed away three weeks ago after a courageous battle with brain cancer. She started significantly declining just after New Year's day and died very peacefully at home on February 22nd.

One of the things we most shared in common was a love of art, and I consider my mother to be my most significant artistic mentor. She was a daily reader of this magazine and it stings to know this is the first post that she will not read and discuss with me. We shared countless hours talking about favorite photographers and exhibits. Her influence will always be with me.

Something that helped me get through the roughest stages of her illness was to spend time painting in my studio. I found it almost impossible to write about art, but the process of working with paints was very relaxing and cathartic. The image above is "Medicine Wheel", and will become a mixed media piece involving oil paint and metal sculpture. I have found it to be a very healing source of medicine indeed.

I am slowly emerging back into the world of online arts. I have lots of catching up to do. The Self Contained exhibit book is close to completion, but needs final editing. I hope to have it ready for publication by the end of this month.

Curated Trilogy


Tao produced The One
The One produced Two
Two Produced Three
Three produced the thousands of things.

          -tao te ching
                                                                                                                                              







Martin Buday
My Own Wilderness (2011)

Dan R Talley
Self Contained (2012)

Christopher H Paquette
All Our Relations (2013)




At What Cost?


The Syngenta Photography Award, is a new international competition that aims to stimulate  dialogue around key global  challenges. Open to professional and amateur photographers, the Award will explore a central theme each year. In its inaugural year, the theme is  “rural-urban”, exploring the relationship and tensions between rural and urban environments.


Marcus Lyon


“For the first time in history, over half of the world’s population lives in urban environments, which is increasing the competition for natural resources and labor,” commented Mike Mack, Syngenta CEO. “Finding a balance between these rural and urban tensions is critical. This new competition aims to establish an important platform to explore issues of global significance through photography.”

The competition will be judged by a  distinguished  international panel chaired by award-winning South African photojournalist  Jodi Bieber. The other members of the panel are: Irina Chmyreva (Russia)  curator and researcher of photography; Stephen Dunbar-Johnson (UK) publisher, International Herald Tribune; Milton Guran (Brazil) curator and photographer;  Malu Halasa (Lebanon) writer and editor;  Marcus Lyon (UK) photographer;  Mike Mack (U.S.) Syngenta Chief Executive Officer; and Liu Heung Shing (China) photographer and photo editor. 

The Syngenta Photography Award has two categories.  The Open Competition welcomes photographers of all levels, from professional to  amateur.  In addition, professional photographers are invited to compete for a  Professional Commission by submitting an original proposal that is related to this year’s rural-urban theme.The winners of the Syngenta Photography Award will be announced  at an exhibition in London in May 2013.

The Syngenta Photography Award is free to enter and has two categories: Professional and Open. Professional photographers are invited to compete for a Professional Commission by submitting an original proposal that is related to this year’s rural-urban theme. The first place winner will receive a US$15,000 prize, and up to US$25,000, to complete the commission. The second and third place winners will receive US$10,000 and US$5,000 respectively. The Open Competition welcomes photographers of all levels, from professional to amateur. The judges will award a first, second and third place winner who will receive US$5,000, US$3,000, and US$2,000. 

The deadline is January 15th, 2013

Competition Website


About Syngenta

Who wouldn't love a free competition with big cash awards??  PHOTO/arts Magazine is always looking for free and low cost photo competitions. The urban-rural theme of Syngenta's first competition perked my interest because it is closely related "My Own Wilderness".  Both explore the relationships and tensions between uninhabited versus populated environments. But I had never heard of Syngenta prior to learning about this competition. The old saying about "nothing is ever free" would seem to hold true in this case.  Syngenta is a global Swiss based chemical company that markets seeds, herbicides, and pesticides. Their seeds include both hybrid and genetically engineered varieties. Syngenta is a major global supplier of genetically modified corn and soybeans.There is a long history of legal issues and controversy involving Syngenta and the numerous companies it has purchased or merged with over the years.

I present this merely in the name of full disclosure. We've all experienced some very rough years in this recession. Artists especially have felt the pinch. The lure of cash prizes and no entry fee is very enticing, but I think it is very important to know where prize or grant money comes from. Concerned Photography is more than just what is seen through the lens. Choose wisely and responsibly.

The Dust Bowl

This is such a powerful documentary filled with very touching and emotional first hand accounts of survivors who were obviously children at the time. Their vivid memories and the emotional pain that still rises to the surface is heart breaking. If you missed part one last night, you really missed something special. Part 2 is tonight!

Dorothea Lange (1939)

From PBS.org....

THE DUST BOWL, a two-part, four-hour documentary series by Ken Burns, will air November 18 and 19, 2012, 8:00-10:00 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listings). The film chronicles the environmental catastrophe that, throughout the 1930s, destroyed the farmlands of the Great Plains, turned prairies into deserts, and unleashed a pattern of massive, deadly dust storms that for many seemed to herald the end of the world. It was the worst manmade ecological disaster in American history.
Until the arrival of European and American settlers in the late nineteenth century, the southern Plains of the United States were predominantly grasslands, the home and hunting grounds of many Native American tribes and the range of untold millions of bison. It was seldom used for farming. Bitterly cold winters, hot summers, high winds and especially low, unreliable precipitation made it unsuitable for standard agriculture. But at the start of the 1900s, offers of cheap public land attracted farmers to the region, and in World War I, in the midst of a relatively wet period, a lucrative new wheat market opened up. Advances in gasoline-powered farm machinery made production faster and easier than ever. During the 1920s, millions of acres of grasslands across the Plains were converted into wheat fields at an unprecedented rate.
In 1930, with the Great Depression underway, wheat prices collapsed. Rather than follow the government's urging to cut back on production, desperate farmers harvested even more wheat in an effort to make up for their losses. Fields were left exposed and vulnerable to a drought, which hit in 1932.
Once the winds began picking up dust from the open fields, they grew into dust storms of biblical proportions. Each year the storms grew more ferocious and more frequent, sweeping up millions of tons of earth, covering farms and homes across the Plains with sand, and spreading the dust across the country. Children developed often fatal "dust pneumonia," business owners unable to cope with the financial ruin committed suicide, and thousands of desperate Americans were torn from their homes and forced on the road in an exodus unlike anything the United States has ever seen.
Yet THE DUST BOWL is also a story of heroic perseverance against enormous odds: families finding ways to survive and hold on to their land, New Deal programs that kept hungry families afloat, and a partnership between government agencies and farmers to develop new farming and conservation methods.
THE DUST BOWL chronicles this critical moment in American history in all its complexities and profound human drama. It is part oral history, using compelling interviews of 26 survivors of those hard times—what will probably be the last recorded testimony of the generation that lived through the Dust Bowl. Filled with seldom seen movie footage, previously unpublished photographs, the songs of Woody Guthrie, and the observations of two remarkable women who left behind eloquent written accounts, the film is also a historical accounting of what happened and why during the 1930s on the southern Plains.