photolucida: January 2009

Friday, January 30, 2009

show & tell: Pelle Cass covers Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin, Rape of the Sabine Women,1637–38 (Louvre Museum)

Hilarious. I don't know... if it's unintentional, we might be veering away from cover song territory and getting into ripping off, er "covering" this great Magnum competition, but let's keep it up. This is great. I've got a few more that have come in, but I'm going to limit them to one a day unless they start coming in like gangbusters.

I'm kind of surprised that I haven't been inundated with Avedon-ish portraiture. Come on, someone's got to have a wealth of that, right?

Thursday, January 29, 2009

cover songs: Shawn Gust covers Paul D'Amato

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

show & tell: cover songs

I won't go into all of the awkward details, but at one point over the weekend I found myself nursing a nosebleed in a vacant lot in a strange city. As I stood with my head tilted back, in the dark, blocks away from my car, I fell into kind of a trance as I watched the palm trees sway in the breeze and tried to make out the tune that was in my head. I realized that it wasn't just in my head, but in the distance, there was music, familiar music, live music; the high crash of the cymbals and the occasional substitution of enthusiasm for virtuosity giving it away. I don't know who the band was, just another college band on a Saturday night in America, but they were "Taking Care of Business."

The cover song is an important element of our Post-Modern existence (or wait, are we Post-Post-Modern now?), and not limited to music at all. In photography, for example, we've got a background of common images that we've been taught with and sometimes revisit and "cover," creating new renditions of popular images, or simply tipping one's hat to a picture that has inspired.

example A) myself, back in grad school, covering Stephen Shore:

mine. forgive the color/sloppiness. This is the only one scan I could find and it's not worth the time.

©Stephen Shore, Yosemite

example B) Brian Widdis covers Meatyard:

Brian writes, "At the time, I justified it by claiming that since it was for a band and the style suited their music, that it was a legitimate choice. Fair enough, I suppose, but not something I would feel comfortable with today."

example C) Justin James Reed sings the classics:

example D) you.

That's right, please, send in your photographs that honor and/or rip off images that have inspired. Make 'em 600 pix high, label them with your name, and include any title, link info, or public apology that you want run with it. (Just don't make me type or search for anything- this is a cut & paste operation) Also, make sure to put "cover song" in the subject heading and try to include a .jpeg for the image you're covering (or a link to it anyway).

send 'em my way: shawn@photolucida.org

Many thanks to Justin & Brian for helping get this started. By the way, if you teach, you should offer extra credit to students for creating/contributing. Maybe I'll assign that in class tomorrow...

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Book Award Finalists: Celine Clanet

In her photographs from her repeated trips to Máze, a small village in Norway, French photographer Celine Clanet shows us the past and the future within the present of this small Arctic community. Her subjects, whether they're animal and human, seem to always be looking, watching, peering. "Maybe they are suspicious," Clanet writes, "and stay on their guard." Thirty years ago, a great flood was planned to cover their homeland. While they successfully fought to stay above water, this small community can't help but see change on the horizon. "Nothing is ever certain in Máze," Clanet writes, "'Tomorow' is an uncertain future that is never told, and 'Maybe' is the word that ends each sentence."

I have discovered this unknown European Arctic, this surprising indigenious people that most people don’t know, or associate by mistake with Santa Claus, Inuit people or igloos.

I have seen ravages of cultural integration, this soft genocide that wears out spirits and floods souls with alcohol or self negation.

I probably made pictures of a reality that will be soon impossible to see, due to cultural integration and global warming disaster in Arctic.

Finally, I have tasted Ante’s and Ole-Ailo’s favorite season, when days get longer and temperatures get milder.
The perfect moment, when time doesn’t exist anymore and night is gone, when they immerse in their favourite strolling: fishing through an ice hole in Suolojarvi lake, or riding the snøscooter in the tundra. And all these hours spendt with friends, family, outside on a reindeer skin, in a hytte or a lávvu, talking, joiking, or laying down doing nothing, saying nothing. Just being.

-Celine Clanet

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Book Award Finalists: Jeffris Elliott

One need look no further than any day's headlines to recognize that Islam and the Middle East are key elements within the constellations of conflict of our age. Fueled by a desire to learn the facts for himself, firsthand, Jeffris Elliott has been working on a project based in the Arab world: "Another Face of Islam."

Having studied with Minor White in the 60's, Elliott writes that White influenced him greatly by introducing him to two simple concepts that still inform his work today: to "look for truth and the spiritual element." To this end, Elliott sought out authentic experience rather than relying on the "monochromatic, camouflage-tinted world" that seems to be drawn by the "Axis of Evil" rhetoric, post-911.

"While camping and photographing in the desert near the Saudi border, I was invited to have tea by a group of workers I had just met- an Afghani, a Pakistani, a Saudi Arabian, an Emirati, an Iraqi and a Kuwaiti. This group contained allies and enemies, past and present of the U.S. The only thing they all had in common which I did not share was their Islamic faith. We talked and drank our tea. We universally agreed that the horror of the war in Iraq is tragic, that the escalating price of oil is going to destabilize their and our part of the globe, and most importantly, the average citizens of all our countries are good, hard-working, honest people who simply want to raise our children in a free and peaceful world."-Jeffris Elliott

Friday, January 16, 2009

Book Award Finalists: Andy Freeberg

Guardians

In the art museums of Russia, women sit in the galleries and guard the collections. When you look at the paintings and sculptures, the presence of the women becomes an inherent part of viewing the artwork itself. I found the guards as intriguing to observe as the pieces they watch over. In conversation they told me how much they like being among Russia’s great art. A woman in Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery Museum said she often returns there on her day off to sit in front of a painting that reminds her of her childhood home. Another guard travels three hours each way to work, since at home she would just sit on her porch and complain about her illnesses “as old women do.” She would rather be at the museum enjoying the people watching, surrounded by the history of her country. - Andy Freeberg

Thursday, January 15, 2009

ALL MY LOVIN'

All My Lovin - A call for Artists

The relationships we engage in throughout our lives beginning with our Families provide a lot of the raw materials for how our characters form throughout our lives. These are some of the most challenging interactions we will engage in and the source of some of our greatest gifts, happinesses and likewise unhappinesses and burdens. Lodz Fotofestiwal Poland, Sirius Arts Centre Ireland, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien Berlin are searching for interpretations on the theme of relationships, family in all their multiple and varied forms that exist in the 21st century. Humour, passion, struggle, history and compromise are all subjects we'd like to see considered in these photographic and multimedia submissions. We're looking for new interpretations and fresh ideas concerning this subject. So enlighten us!

Submissions will be juried by the Directors of these institutions and be curated into an exhibition, to be premiered initially at Lodz Fotofestiwal in May 2010. The exhibition will then tour to the other partner organizations following the initial premiere - a publication will accompany the exhibition.

Deadline for submissions is 28 February 2009. Works will be juried in March 2009 in Berlin and announcements will be made in April 2009 to those accepted.

For more information, go here.

We are waiting for your works!

Lodz Fotofestiwal - Poland,
Sirius Arts Centre - Ireland,
Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin - Germany

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Book Award Finalists: Priya Kambli

"My move from India to the United States in 1993 left me feeling that I do not belong fully to either culture," Priya Kambli writes, "leaving me unable to anchor myself in any particular cultural framework." In her exploration of this dilemma, Kambli combines multiple images to patch together these distinctly different cultural identities, leading the viewer through a journey from here to there, as well as now and then.

"Photography has been a way of bridging the gap between the two cultures while coming to terms with my dual nature. Ironically, because photography appears to be "true", it allows me to create convincing fictional depictions of my new identity. My digital photographs reflect the tension caused due to the duality by piecing together fragmented images and by mingling family snapshots with carefully staged imagery."

Monday, January 12, 2009

Best of 2009

Have you seen this?

photo-eye magazine recently polled some of their favorite photographers, publishers, editors, and critics and asked each for their list of their favorite photo books of 2008. Chris Pichler, the publisher behind Nazraeli Press, selected two of our Critical Mass books, Amy Stein's Domesticated and Hiroshi Watanabe's Findings, among his favorites. Heather Prichard from photo-eye also has Amy's book on her list.

Aside from our Critical Mass books, there are many other folks on, or composing, the various lists who've taken part in our Reviews and/or Critical Mass as well: Dan Nelken, Jessica Todd Harper, and Julie Blackmon as photographers, and a whole slew of folks who've reviewed for us: Raymond Meeks, Jeffrey Ladd, Darius Himes, Michelle Dunn Marsh, and more. The site's really great. Spend some time with it and follow the connections.

And hey, congratulations to all of you.

Friday, January 9, 2009

Book Award Finalists: Pablo Lopez Luz

I feel like I should apologize here... to both you and our next Book Award Finalist, Pablo Lopez Luz. You see, small jpegs on the web just don't do this work justice. This work is about scale, but I'm afraid this blog can only handle these small little jpegs. Well, click on these to blow them up a little more and look close... as they grow larger, you get smaller.

That is, Pablo Lopez Luz photographs the big picture- vast landscapes shot from a distance, with cities, towns, freeways, and people in perspective. Clearly marking that separation between "man and his surrounding space," the "central core" of Lopez Luz's work, Lopez Luz shoots from a distance, yet these are shot still close enough that we can make out the individual people and/or the details of individual lives that continually bring us back to that question of scale. For me, it's not so much the scale of the picture itself, but that of life: how grand is one person's life next to another; next to nature?

From Lopez Luz's statement: "The landscape has played a titanic role historically and keeps on doing so in contemporary times. Man has always had the necessity to portray his surrounding space, be it in a purely natural, contemplative gaze, or as a narrative or document for something else. On the other hand, man has always had to adapt to this same space to live within it. Therefore, any image, carries a specific weight within itself. Any image will “mean” to a specific audience differently to a different one, in social, historical or political terms. The most difficult thing, I believe, is to strip the landscape from these meanings, and this is what I intend to accomplish with my work."

Thursday, January 8, 2009

And we're back... Book Award Finalists: Graham Miller

Sure, lots of fun & family & travel etc. over the Holidays, but it's time to get back into it, isn't it?

First off, thanks for the Holiday Show & Tell, that was super fun. We'll do more soon- maybe Valentine's day?

Here, in photolucidaland, I'm trying to wrap up Critical Mass 08 and have now started sending comments out to all you Finalists. If you haven't received yours yet, you'll get them soon.

Laura's deep in the midst of planning our big Spring Reviews. Which reminds me, I haven't exactly kept up on the blog world, but I did notice that over the break there was a three part series of posts over at Conscientious about having your work reviewed. Definitely worth reading for those of you who are considering coming to our reviews or any of the others at FotoFest, Center, PCNW, SPE, etc.

A great interview with Amy Stein over at Michael Werner's Two Way Lens also.

Of course, the other big business around here is that we've been going through the book proposals for Critical Mass 08. It's a tough, but safe decision-making process for our Board as ultimately, they're all so good. I tell you what, that'll be next here for this blog, let's give a little attention to each of the six book award Finalists, one at a time, in reverse alphabetical order to shake things up a bit:

Graham Miller's "Suburban Splendour" takes its inspiration from cinema, literature, and of course, direct observation from daily life. But chief among his specific inspirators is short story writer Raymond Carver. From Miller's statement:

"Carver’s vision of ordinary blue collar people living lives of quiet desperation, seems to me to tap into a sense of contemporary isolation that reflects the anomie, uncertainties and vulnerabilities of existing in the contemporary world, and on a planet which contemplates an undecided environmental future."

"Like Carver’s stories and Hopper’s paintings, these images depict everyday struggle and ordinary tragedy. They touch upon areas of experience simmering just below the surface, and explore the notion that the lives of others, no matter how close we are to them, will always remain fundamentally unknowable to us. That, in essence, we all exist as unitary individuals."

"These characters are troubled, but not irretrievably lost; they carry a dignified endurance and a sense of bruised optimism. These people are survivors. They have a desire, as we all do, to be transported from darkness into light."