"Daylight" Books & Magazine

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Anyone interested in photography that explores the elusive boundaries between conceptual fine art work and documentary should check out Daylight, which is a "non-profit organization dedicated to publishing art and photography books." Daylight's writers include Kirsten Rian, whose ongoing "Alphabet of Light" articles count among the most eloquent, thoughtful writing on photography that is being done today.

A talented writer/painter/musician/photographer, Rian makes connection between the

Kirsten Rian

photographer, the photograph and our internal and external world in ways that are extraordinary. I always end up feeling like I have learned something new after reading one of her pieces. A gift to the world....

Humor in Photography- Ivo Mayr

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It is not easy to make pictures that are humorous. I can count on the fingers of one hand the photographers who have made me laugh out loud when looking at their work. Elliot Erwitt has done it with single images, while Duane Michals has done it using multiple images in a series. German photographer Ivo Mayr does it, too, and in a fresh and exciting way.

What I find humorous about them is that the human being relates to something in her/his surroundings in a way that is either unexpected or imitative- and it's presented visually in such a way that it makes me think/laugh/wonder about it in a way that I never would if the person weren't placed and posed in exactly the way he/she is. All the elements come together perfectly for me in these. Love his work!

Challenging the Concept of "Sameness"

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German photographer Martin Schoeller's photographs of twins challenge our perceptions of "sameness".  Twins-Sal-Catalano-and-Joe-Catalano-34674

He states: "Questioning the principles that define the sameness and differences of identical siblings is a study of the core habits of perception—the extent to which our environment impacts our development and our expectations, our preferences, and our choices. We assemble impressions of and form mysterious attachments to universal features—hairline, forehead, eyes, nose, mouth, and chin. We take their arrangements to be unique. Identical twins dispute that assumption."

Twins-Carly-Ayer-and-Lily-Ayer-4354674This series can be found in the book "Identical: Portraits of Twins". I love how thought-provoking this work is, and its straightforward pictorial approach to the subject.

Twins-Kristin-Tynski-and-Daniel-Tynski-4367468

Photography Database- Luminous Lint

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One of my favorite databases on photography is Luminous Lint. It is unlike so many other databases, in that it is searchable in so many different ways- by photographer, technique, theme, date, geography... it's just amazing. It contains not only images, but short bios of photographers, and has lots of galleries that allow you to view these photographs in different contexts. It also contains images that you would rarely see in galleries or museums, plus articles on unusual topics such as non-canonical photography, sequences and series, and fabricated realities.

The site's creator, Alan Griffiths, is completely enamored with photography, and it shows! It is a fantastic research tool.

Thoughts on Writing

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Another excerpt from the interview with David McCullough from Yankee Magazine's Nov/Dec 2012 issue: "I think where history is going to suffer is that nobody writes letters anymore. And nobody keeps diaries anymore. Certainly nobody in public life keeps a diary anymore. They don't dare; they can be subpoenaed and used in court against them. So I don't know how future historians are going to write about is...I wouldn't be all that surprised if future historians don't have much about us to go on."

I've thought about that issue so often- how the written record of our lives and activities is so different than it was even in the 1970's and '80's. Will the e-mails and text messages of today be preserved into the future? Will our children's children have a written record of their parent's courtship? Their friendships? Something invaluable will be lost without those written records.....

And what about the visual record? With virtually all family snapshots taken digitally now, how will these treasures be archived, if at all? What will the visual record show about our family and social histories 200 years from now? Will there be much of one? Will these images even be accessible? How many of them will exist as prints? It makes me want to time travel into the future to see what the answers will be.

Working on a Project

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I just read an article in Yankee magazine in which historian David McCullough (author of Truman and John Adams, among others) states that "...writing is a bit like enrolling in college: I know I'm going to be there for four years, and just think of what I'm going to learn." EXACTLY! That's what it's like for me to start work on a new project. It's a major kick to think of all the things that I will discover along the way.

The Importance of Art

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Last September, Emory University in Atlanta announced that it was eliminating four departments, among them the Department of Visual Arts. Here was an interesting response someone wrote that resonated with me: "About a decade ago I was lucky enough to experience one of finest lectures that Emory University ever sponsored, which was through their anthropology department. It was by one of the great thinkers of our time, E.O. Wilson, the world renowned biologist and philosopher of science who was at the height of his career. In his fabulous book Consilience, that he was discussing, and in this lecture, he described the evolution and survival of our species from the perspective of creativity. He talked about how art has survived the test of time for a fundamental reason: it brings people together in co-operation in a way that nothing else, even religion, can do as well. He said that if this wasn’t so it would have been abandoned by humans in the beginning. At the end of the lecture, which was standing room only, he received a standing ovation."

Thoughts About Language

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I loved this excerpt from an article titled “The Long-Dead Native Language Wopânâak is Revived” from the Nov/Dec 2012 issue of Yankee magazine, and thought it was the perfect way to start the New Year: "The first gift we give our children is language. That whispered welcome between a mother and her baby when the child is first laid upon her breast begins a lifelong dialogue through which subsequent gifts are given. Our beliefs, our dreams, our heritage- we pass these things on through the spoken word. Biology gives us our body, but language delivers our soul."

Words create worlds.

Amen to that.

A Comedian's Creative Process

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i just read an article on comedian Jerry Seinfeld in the New York Times. The author of the piece brilliantly conveys the behind-the-scenes work that Seinfeld pours into his stand-up routines. It convinced me once again, that, regardless of one's field, all creative endeavors follow a similar path: you have to spend time, you have to practice, you have to be willing to fail, you have to be open to what the world has to offer, and be able to pay attention to details. Read it- it's worth it!

Holiday Print Sale

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I was recently invited by Fraction Magazine's editor and publisher David Bram to participate in this year's Holiday Print Sale. (A portfolio of my work appeared in Fraction Issue #16 a couple of years ago.) If you are looking to gift someone with original photographic art for the holidays, there is plenty to choose from in this sale. This is the image that I am selling- one of my favorites from the "Secrets the Land Told Me" series:

 

Exhibition Review- Cincinnati Enquirer

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Nice to see that the media in town is still interested in photography after FotoFocus ended. Click here to read a review of the "Landscapes of the Mind" show that appeared in last Sunday's Cincinnati Enquirer. My work is mentioned towards the end.

Since the writer referred to "Red Inner Bag #1, Fall, Aomori Prefecture" but didn't print it, here it is:

Thoughts on How Creative Interests Change Over Time

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Having gone to the "Emmet Gowin and His Contemporaries" show up in Dayton recently inspired me to do a little more research on him. I came across an interview with him by Sally Gall (a great photographer in her own right) that appeared in Bombsite magazine back in 1997. When asked by Gall about his transition from family pictures to landscapes, Gowin said: EG: "...I always knew that it wasn’t going to last. You can’t be an artist and have your identity reside in only one thing. The thing that you master will become a stranger to you, and you will outlive it or you will need to live into something else. You will always need to be educating yourself to the complexity of your feelings as they grow, and you don’t want to do something twice, really. Everything that makes you an artist in a sense is the way things are understood; how they fit together in ways that have not been understood before. How can you discover the inherent value that’s hidden in things that you haven’t yet seen? It’s in that sense that you want to do something new. And you know that it’s chance that’s going to put those things together. Only chance can bring together new combinations in a way that is revolutionary. No one ever discovered anything really important intentionally."

SG: "You can’t will it into being."

EG: "If there were no problem there would be no discovery. But also, there has to be the confrontation with something inexplicable, something you didn’t intend to do and that has so much presence you say, “Okay, I don’t expect you to go away, but I don’t know what you’re good for.” Chemistry and the sciences are full of this kind of thing. And that’s what’s underneath the creative life for artists, how to grasp the interrelationships that exist in the world in a way that hasn’t been done before."

EXACTLY! This perfectly expresses my experiences in moving from one project to another over the years. I discover them, or they discover me. Sometimes an idea appears suddenly, seemingly out of the blue. Sometimes I think about an idea for a long time before I do anything about it, and sometimes I tackle it right away.

But there is always an element of unexpected awakening whenever an idea comes to me, a question in my mind as to what to do with it, and a sense of danger inherent in the risk I would undertake if I choose to actually address the idea. It's both exhilarating and scary, all at the same time.

The Value of FotoFocus

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I was on a panel at Xavier University last week that had as it's topic "The Future of Photography". Towards the end, we were asked what we thought the value of the  FotoFocus biennial has been. My answer to that is: It made so many people in this region aware of photography as a creative medium.

It pointed out the many different ways in which people approach this medium and proved that a photograph can be so much more than just a recording of something in front of the lens.

It introduced photographers to each other who otherwise wouldn't have met.

It provided networking opportunities to photographers, students, and others who love the medium.

Finally, it made photography important in a way that a million photos posted on Facebook, Pinterest, or other social media sites can't.

Kudos and many thanks to Tom Schiff, Cincinnati Art Museum Chief Curator James Crump, and their team of sponsors, supporters, and workers for the fantastic job they did at making FotoFocus be such a success.

 

FotoFocus Shows I've Seen- #3

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Here are two more FotoFocus shows that I found memorable: "The Evolution of Photo Bookmaking" at the Mercantile Library downtown. This show, curated by author and artist Nancy Howell-Koehler, was a look at the art of the photographic artist's book from the 1970's-2012. It included books that were both commercially and hand-bound, and which ranged from serious to humorous in content. Books by Bea Nettles, Les Krims, Diana Duncan Holmes and Timothy Riordan, Cal Kowal, Nancy Rexroth and Duane Michals were on view, along with those of many others.

Part of what made this show so great was that it was housed in the Mercantile Library. The books were, for the most part, laid out on tables in the center of the library, which made them both accessible and secure.

The walls of the space were of course lined with library books, which made me feel like the exhibition was right at home. Viewers could page through almost all of the books themselves, which does not always happen at artist's books exhibitions.  A real treat!

 

 

 

Another exhibition that was the perfect marriage of location and art was "Light Castings" at Voltage Gallery. Located on the second floor of a contemporary furniture store, this gallery featured photographic installations by Jordan Tate and Anthony Pearson. Although their work is very different, both artists pose questions about the role that reproducible processes play in today's world. Because of this, their work coexisted comfortably throughout the space.

 

Although a wall separates the gallery space from the store, having to pass through part of the store in order to get to the exhibition set the viewer up for a certain kind of visual experience that did not disappoint.

FotoFocus Shows I've Seen- #2 (Sheilah Wilson)

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Another show that made a big impression on me during FotoFocus was "Sheilah Wilson: If Becoming This" at the Herndon Gallery at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH. This exhibit contained a variety of work by the Nova Scotia native, who currently teaches at Denison University. She states that her "...photographic, video, social practice and performance work is interested in narrative and how to create ruptures in our understandings of narrative." That perfectly describes the work in this show. To that, I would add that she is interested in how history and memory are intertwined. One example of that is  "The Invisible Inside the Visible". This piece consists of one photograph, a written piece, and a sound recording. The large aerial color photograph  shows a bit of ocean, the shoreline, and a piece of farmland that has meandering white lines (cow paths) through it. The eye is drawn to another white line, this one a large, regular oval that disappears as it gets close to the shore. This is what remains of a racetrack that used to be there. The written wall plaque explains how Wilson found the racetrack, and on the sound recording, you can hear the voices of  the locals who are describing how she could find it. The combination of sound, writing, and visual evidence compels the viewer to think about the shifting nature of memory, and of how the land itself can be a powerful repository of memory.

Another piece, made for the series "You Are My Favorite Photograph", was the result of a performance that Wilson did when the show opened. Viewers wrote down a significant memory on a piece of paper. Wilson then laid down a piece of traditional light-sensitive photographic paper onto a bed she had installed in the gallery, put the written sheet under it, and slept on them overnight. (Multiple prints from this series are seen below.)

The resulting crinkly print, when developed, revealed mysterious shades and streaks of black, gray and white, which suggest the nebulous nature of memory itself.

I could write far more about other works in this show that were entirely different than the ones described above and just as powerful, but suffice it to say that the work of Sheilah Wilson is inventive, thought-provoking, and entirely alive.

The show is up at the Herndon Gallery until November 16. Go if you can!

FotoFocus Shows I've Seen- #1

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Of the over 70 photography exhibitions being shown in Cincinnati and surrounding regions this month, I've been able to see a little over two dozen. Not nearly enough! But with only 24 hours in the day, that's all I've been able to manage. Here is one up in Dayton that I found memorable: "Emmet Gowin and His Contemporaries", at the Dayton Art Institute. Housed in the wide hallways of the lower level of the DAI, viewers first encounter the work of Gowin's influences and contemporaries, including Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, Frederick Sommer, Minor White, and others who formed the canon of great, primarily white male photographers of the mid-to-late 20th century. (It should be noted that the work of two women, Linda Connor and Olivia Parker, was also included.)

The first hallway curved around to reveal the work of Gowin himself. One wall had pictures he took of his family during the years they were in Dayton (1967-71). This body of work was one of the first to legitimize one's personal life and family as a legitimate source for subject matter by serious photographers. It paved the way for the work of later photographers such as Bea Nettles and Sally Mann.

The other wall included other types of images Gowin had taken during the Dayton years. This wall also held prints by his DAI students, which was totally unexpected, and which were fascinating in terms of trying to see how much Gowin's style had influenced that of his students.

Just beyond the final images in the hallway, one could watch a moving 20 minute documentary film that included interviews with Gowin and his wife Edith. Made just for this show, it confirmed the impression one gets from his photographs that Gowin is a deeply caring, compassionate person.

 

Anyone seeking to understand the major impulses of photography in the mid-to-late 20th century, and who wants to learn more about Gowin's work in particular, would not go away from this show disappointed.

 

Kudos to curator Tracy Longley-Cook who drew all the various threads of the show together to create a powerfully felt experience.

"Landscapes of the Mind" Show Opening

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The final show that I have up during Fotofocus Cincinnati is "Landscapes of the Mind", which opened last Friday at the YWCA Women's Gallery on Walnut Street. Curated by Judi Parks, it is a look at how metaphor and symbolism has expressed itself through the photographs of Nancy Rexroth, Judi, and me. The show is up until January 10, 2013.

Both Nancy and I presented work that was culled from projects that had been thought complete. In her case, she went back into her negative archives that had resulted in her book "Iowa". Printed in the late '70's, "Iowa" became a defining body of work for anyone working with simple lenses or toy cameras. It legitimized them as a serious tool for the photographic artist. For the YWCA show, Nancy took another look at what she had shot back then, and presented a series of images that shed new light on that series.

In my case, I exhibited work that took a completely new look at what I had shot while in Japan a few years ago to photograph the process of apple growing in Aomori Prefecture. Rather than focusing on the process itself (as I had originally done when choosing the pictures of the "Seeking Perfection" series), I this time focused on the impact that the process had on the land and trees themselves. Amazing what you can discover about yourself and your work when you take another look.