Boo

Elijah/This Morning Timothy Archibald

There is nothing to add. T.A.

Shen Wei

Barbara, Shen Wei

Take a moment to look at Shen Wei's updated website. He has added images to his Almost Naked series. It is also one of the most friendly sites I have navigated.

Skewing young?

Michael Rubenstein

The Wall Street Journal has an article on young buyers in the contemporary art market. I don't know if this is a new trend or not since these are circles I haven't traveled in. Thank god. But for me it is another sign of the apocalypse. See a slide show here.

Update: I visited the Martin Ramirez exhibit at the MAM yesterday after posting this and it hit me. This is the explanation for the chocolate horses and trains on a stick at the only way out exhibit gift shop! For the gummi bacon and bacon band aids at the Francis Bacon exhibit last year! Grab them young and pry the money out of their parents! It's not about the art or teaching appreciation, it's sell, sell, sell! (This is by far the most exclamation points I have posted to date.)

Tim Davis

Parsons from the My Audience series, Tim Davis

A fairly new blog, Ground Glass by the wonderful photographer Cara Phillips, posted on a new series by Tim Davis. I am entranced by his book My Life in Politics and this series, My Audience, taken while touring to promote it is the kind of full circle that adds depth to both projects . It is great to pick out familiar faces in the photograph from Columbia College (Matt Siber, Brian Ulrich and Jon Gittelson second row middle). I posted this picture from Parsons because I love the empty first two rows and all the posturing and hierarchy involved in choosing a seat in the lecture hall that it recalls.

While you are checking Tim's site be sure to look through his writing link. The "A Fluttering Knuckleball, Lunch with Stephen Shore and Tim Davis" piece from issue 26 of Blindspot is not only timely for October (World Series, yes baseball again) but struck a chord with me as I struggle with my latest project.

Subhankar Banerjee

I posted about the show at MAM Photographs from the Ends of the Earth, in which the above picture is included.. Here is a post from Exposure Compensation about Subhankar Banerjee's project..

Overwhelmed

It has been busy, busy times. The only thing more boring than a blog that doesn't update is a blog that is full of rampantly personal stuff. Here is a personal slide show of the opening of the building/gallery/studio/space (I only took 1 of these, the rest are by renowned photographers who will go un-named). For our grand opening we chose to hang the oil portraits of friend Frank Korb, whom we have known since he was a college student, teaches at our local high school and continues to make personal work. Back to much more edifying posts in the immediate future. I have at least 50 book marked.

Quote of the Day

I saw this ad in a magazine (Interview) as I was getting my hair cut today. In the first place I think it is the most appalling presumption in a real estate ad I've ever seen. In the second, just who are they quoting? If they aren't quoting then is this their new slogan? Was he saved from ignomy by want of this building? It seems to be Alfred Stieglitz week.

Six Degrees Game

PBS has a delightful diversion in the American Masters Six Degrees Game. There are only 4 degrees of separation from Richard Avedon to Bob Marley. On the other hand it takes all 6 to get from James Brown to Alfred Steiglitz.

David Goldes, the day after

plate trace David Goldes

water balance David Goldes

I had the distinct pleasure of spending most of Thursday with David Goldes before the lecture he gave for CoPA Thursday night. He is an artist and educator of great curiosity, interest and humor. As with so many of the best artists he was generous with his time, thoughts and process.

His presentation mainly covered two bodies of work Water and Traces. To watch and listen as some artists talk you though their creation of a project or series seems, to me, to be very much like winding yarn. I have the sense of a skein, loose loops with some order but needing to be re-formed. The end (or start) is chosen and then slowly the ball is formed, gathering more and more. The occasional tangle or knot that is worked out and back to the patient rhythm of forming the ball.

There are magical qualities imbued in these pictures that are intended to describe the nature of things but really seem to describe the artist. The Traces work has led to him creating an installation of the actual mesh sculptures, a laboratory setting, but in a closed room viewable only through a small window opening. He is thus able to control the viewpoint of 3 dimensional objects just as a photograph does. This, even though he stated he started making the mesh pieces in order to photograph all sides of an object at once. Fascinating.

Shadow World

Until reminded today by Zoe Strauss I had lost track of the link to Shadow World, a year long film project by David S Kessler. Life under the El in Philadelphia. The empathetic connection he has made to his neighborhood is as real and raw as it gets.

Nifty Plug-in

I came across this plug-in for iTunes, iConcert Cal. It searches your playlist and then searches the internet for album release dates as well as concerts in your chosen city. It is free to download and is available for Windows or Mac.

Now if somebody would just whip up a plug in for iGoogle that would make an iGallery Cal with the dates of exhibits in my chosen area. Would someone get on that?

New Project

I started shooting a new project on Saturday. It is something I have had in mind for a few months and the MARN mentorship program seemed like the time to bring it into reality.

This is what I must wear for a good portion of the work I want to make. It is very hard to frame images when you can barely make out, much less see through the view finder. On the other hand it is remarkably freeing.

David Goldes

Puddle David Goldes

David Goldes is coming to Milwaukee this week (Thursday, Oct 11 7:00 PM at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design) to give a lecture, sponsored by CoPA. I am so pleased he accepted our invitation and I'm looking forward to his presentation of his work and, I hope, insight into the transition he made from scientist to artist.

In an age of big science and specialist interpretation, I have turned to homebrew experimentation and observation translated through photography. – David Goldes

A New York Times review of a 2002 show at Yossi Milo can be found here.

Seventh Avenue

From the New York trip, shot from a cab heading downtown to Chelsea.

Free Burma

Free Burma

"No"

Elliott Erwitt has an interview at The Photoshop Blog upon the release of Unseen.

Do you 'know' when you've taken a great photo?
"No."

I'm not sure if it is age or reputation that allows such bluntness, but the first is inevitable and the second is a dream.

Kodak embraces schmalz

via Gallery Hopper. And to think I spent some of my formative years in Rochester.

Sometimes You Just Know

from Sometimes You Just Know Justin Visnesky

In my disorganized state of the past few weeks I am late in posting on Justin Visnesky. There is a subtlety in his compositions that is quite disarming. He has made a small book Sometimes You Just Know available here.

I had a little difficulty ordering, being unable to click the US price and ending up with the International Shipping price. It was a small difference of a few dollars and well worth the cost. Perhaps you'll have the same good luck since he graciously enclosed a small print of this picture for my trouble without my even mentioning it.

Lack of respect for rules

fig.4 (Turn) Chromogenic paper, scratched Marco Breuer

Issue 36 of Blindspot arrived today. The issue is devoted to photographic artists working in a range of approaches largely outside depiction. A short interview, Nevertheless a Photograph: A Conversation with Marco Breuer pursues his motives for the selection of artists.

" For me, a meaningful discussion of process starts at the other end, with the idea or desire of the photographer to force the medium to do things her or his way. It springs from a curiosity about the medium, about every step in the translation to an image, and from a healthy lack of respect for rules."

As I'm preparing this week to start shooting a new project it's nice to reminded that permission to explore the avenues and processes of expression comes from within.