Testing...Testing....the THEN.NOW.HERE. Project!

Two nights ago, a certain Photolucida board member and a certain Photolucida staff member put on their wool ski hats and hit the night streets of Portland. The moon was out and there was no rain to be seen.

Their mission? To test the upcoming THEN.NOW.HERE. project on various buildings around Portland. We are gearing up for Portland Photo Month!

What is the THEN.NOW.HERE. project? In a larger sense, it is an exercise about examining where we are now (Portland) and giving ourselves some historical context through photography. In a more specific sense, it is a slideshow of historic and contemporary photography submitted by the Portland public. It will be curated by our own Raymond Meeks, then projected in four locations around Portland (TBA) during the four weeks of Portland Photo Month.

Fun! Local! Free!

There are lots of good submissions rolling in, but we have decided to extend submission date through the week-end. If you are in Portland, hop to it!


*

Jennifer B. Hudson is Photolucida's Critical Mass book award recipient!

Announcing our Critical Mass 2011 book award winner - JENNIFER B. HUDSON. We are excited to work with Jennifer on a monograph of her series MEDIC. We first saw this body of work at our Portfolio Reviews event last spring, and then in Critical Mass last summer. We were happy that this series was also a strong favorite of our Critical Mass jurors.

Thanks to all the book award finalists that submitted such great proposals. It was an especially hard choosing process this year!

MEDIC is "a sensitive, intricate glimpse into human relationships during times of need and recovery and a complex, heartfelt exploration of sacrificial love....it is a collection of stories about great tests in life, purpose, and the most painful, but glorious, times to love."

Jennifer was a resident at the Santa Fe Art Institute when she made this series. She and partner Josh Kane created the staged imagery that was specifically designed and meticulously crafted for the series. They started with building a faux-concrete set with a skylight and went on to construct the "machines" that were used in the imagery.

To see more of Jennifer's work from this series, click here.

To see a video about the making of MEDIC, click here.


*

Photos from Critical Mass exhibit opening at PCNW last Saturday!

Photo credits: Circular image of Darius Himes by Ann Pallesen. All others by John Blalock.

*

Submissions Open for Then. Now. Here.

Portland Photo Month is on the horizon here in Portland (April!), and Photolucida is producing a multi-layered project called Then. Now. Here.

The idea is simple: people submit photographs of Portland and/or its people, either historic or contemporary, and images will be juried by Portland's own illustrious RAYMOND MEEKS. The slideshow will then be publicly projected (on the sides of buildings) each week in April. We'll also archive the selected images on the web site.

There is no charge to submit work and submissions are open to anyone, be ye an amateur, pro, student, or historian. Deadline is March 10th.

Click here for more information!

.

Jeff Rich's show 'Watershed' opens tonight at Jennifer Schwartz Gallery

We wish we could join Jeff Rich and the Jennifer Schwartz Gallery folks for Jeff's opening of his show 'Watershed' tonight in Atlanta! From the photos we have seen today, the exhibit looks gorgeous. Is it coincidence that the color of the wall is the same as the book cover's?

Some preview copies of Jeff's upcoming book are on hand at the gallery tonight and we look forward to receiving the bulk at the end of the month.

Stay tuned!


photo credit: Jeff Rich

Success Story - Evgenia Arbugaeva at Newspace!

I first saw Evgenia Arbugaeva's work at Lensculture/FotoFest in Paris year before last and was instantly intrigued. Apparently the other reviewers felt the same way as they awarded her, out of all the attending photographers, the 400 Euro prize from Blurb.

I was happy to see she submitted work from her Tiksi series to Critical Mass this year (2011), where she was one of the initial book award finalists. Evgenia gracefully declined the inclusion as she felt she is not done with this series yet - she still has a few more trips to Tiksi to build on this body of work.

Newspace's Laura Valenti Jelen saw Evgenia's work jurying Critical Mass and gave her a show which opens tonight - thank you, Laura!

Evgenia's work transcends "documentary" or "ethnographic" photography. It shows us a stage-like, playful world that seems to exist through a childhood vantage point. This might make sense as she grew up in Tiksi, which is located on the Siberian coast of Russia.

Evgenia's world is a magical, ethereal world (slightly science-fiction-y) that has been created through her poetic imagination, instead of the perhaps more realistic frozen, remote community that logistically is hard for a traveler to reach. To visit, one needs a special permit because of its strategic and military importance since the years of the Cold War.

Opening is tonight! See you there!

*

CALL FOR ENTRIES - 2012 Pacific Northwest Photography Viewing Drawers

Blue Sky established the Pacific Northwest Photography Viewing Drawers in 2007 to create a public archive of original prints by contemporary photographers based in the region. The juried Drawers program has become a favorite part of Blue Sky's programming, available to approximately 25,000 visitors annually.

To coincide with the upcoming Portland Photo Month (April 2012), Blue Sky is expanding the geographic scope of the Drawers to include up to 80 photographers from Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, British Columbia and Alaska. If you are a photographer in one of these states, this is a great opportunity to potentially have your work in one of the most esteemed photographic arts centers.

Jurors this year are Clint Willour and Laura Moya.

Deadline for submissions is Friday, December 23, 2011, and there is no entry fee.
Details can be found here!

.