Thursday, August 26, 2010
Weng Naiqiang A slim little book I picked up last year at 798 Photo. If you’ve ever see the drawings in elementary Chinese textbooks, some of the scenes Weng documented seem very familiar. I always thought those were idealizations, but from these photos, it looks like plenty were actually enacted. So sad that this year [...]
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Frederick Sommer Speaking of photobooks, Joel showed the work of Frederick Sommer, who does everything from painting on cellophane negatives to cut paper objects, and pulled out The Box, which is a little clear plastic box of unbound cards with titles printed on one side and reproductions of photos, collages and cut paper on the [...]
Thursday, January 14, 2010
I saw this in the New Scientist: This bacterial “photo” was created by projecting light onto bacterial “film” – genetically engineered E. coli bacteria. The film was infused with a sugar that turns black when digested. The bacteria in the dark parts of the Petri dish digested this sugar and so turned black, whereas in [...]
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Maohair Any Chinese readers out there? I’ve seen the work of expats or foreign photojournalists in China, but I wouldn’t really know where to start with native Chinese photojournalists, but in a bit of luck, the first story in Zachary Mexico’s China Underground is about the self-made photojourno using the pseudonymn Maohair. Check out the [...]
Colin and Joerg both commented on smiling or the lack thereof in portraiture, and I had a thought – can it be that our tendency to smile so much is influenced by exposure to the point of saturation to advertising? Aside from the usual moody blankness of high fashion, everyone in ads is smiling, having [...]
Phil Bergerson Seeing Bergerson’s fantastic use of color, the question that springs to mind is: What if, instead of taking candy from babies, you replaced their box of colorful crayons with a palette of subtle grays? Would they burst out into bouts of Greenbergian crying or become master black and white photographers?
Patti Hallock I saw Patti Hallock’s Wreck Room project a while ago and loved the geometry, for lack of a better word, of her work. I really enjoy these projects where we get a peek into a different world, which may not be all that strange, through little people-less scenes. On a tangent – NaBloPoMo, [...]
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Edward Burtynsky There are new photos on Burtynsky’s site. These are Australian mines. That first photo reminds me of Diebenkorn. The series in general recalls Maisel, of course. Not long after I wrote about how tired I was of large scale photos, my art history professor, knowing of my interest in Burtynsky, sent me a [...]
from Articles of Faith from Chanute AFB Last week I saw Dave Jordano‘s work at Verve Photo and really loved the Artices of Faith project. It’s rare that I like every photo in a series, but I liked everything I saw in Articles of Faith – personal and public spaces for worship, little messes and [...]
Paul Schiek Thanks to a heads up at Horses Think, last Friday I saw Mitch Epstein and Paul Schiek talk at a PhotoAlliance event at the Art Institute. Jim Goldberg and Kenro Izu are next on the Calendar, if you’re interested. $10 for the general public, half off for students. Looking back at the archive, [...]
Yao Lu I bought a poster of his from 798 Photo. I’d see his work before on the web, but online it is not impressive to me at all. The prints he has up in the gallery are so much more striking. The key is that you get a lot of detail when you lean [...]
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Chris LaMarca Saw this today at Verve and I love his work. A very eye-catching website too – one of the few well done Flash sites.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Lauren Greenfield Do believe Lauren Greenfield is looking for a new intern. While you’re checking that out, take a look at the new essay on Dubai, which is sprouting skyscrapers overnight. I’ve also just gotten the Kids+Money short she did for HBO, and I’m looking forward to and dreading watching the thing… it’s not supposed [...]
Vivian Maier John Maloof of Flickr’s Hardcore Street Photography group recently bought tens of thousands of black and white medium format negatives by Chicago street photographer Vivian Maier, who worked through the ’50s-’70s and died this April. The story, pieced together from the thread: I purchased a giant lot of negatives from a small auction [...]
Who can solve the remaining 5 items in Blake Andrews‘s photographic Google Trends quiz? The patterns are so distinct that they should be easy for someone who’s been following the industry for a long time… What occurs biennially in the first few months of the year, the last one being in 2008? What was a [...]
