Shooting Wide Open

Susan Anderson

A while ago Conscientious linked to Susan Anderson’s High Glitz project along with the trailer for a show (on The Learning Channel, of all places!) called Toddlers and Tiaras. I don’t know what’s more disturbing, that they are dressed in that get up or that they’re so obviously fake smiling.

I would really like a reblog option for WordPress. I feel rather silly linking to Conscientious. Everyone has seen it, but I want it! What to do…

Livia Corona

Two Million Homes for Mexico and Enanitos Toreros, which is a portrait series on dwarf bullfighters, are both fascinating. What else can I say – take a look at the photos and statements for yourself.

“Being an active artist/photographer has such unpredictable ebbs and flows. In order to put 100% in, it seems you sometimes have to pull 100% back to stop and look at where you are. Perhaps this is all babble that others don’t relate to, but lately I’ve just really felt the strain of wanting to produce new work beyond the capacity I’m able to. In shooting lulls I’ve found such importance in looking back at work and reconsidering it. I’ve been reading, writing, watching for inspiration. It becomes so easy to want to shoot, shoot, shoot. I think often all these steps before and after get neglected due to time restraints.”
-Amy Elkins

“What do you do when you’re a photographer whose pictures are somewhat reminiscent of other photographers who have gotten more exposure than you?

“It’s a problem that I’m sure affects many photographers and I guess the only advice is to keep taking pictures and looking for places to photograph that differentiate your work based on the originality and freshness of the subject/location. In the face of so much photography, it is increasingly clear that we are in a post-post modern world where concept comes first followed by execution. After that it’s a race to the finish line. It doesn’t matter if you’re Hillary Clinton, the Zune, or ‘Infamous’. ”
- James Danzinger

“Photography is a reason to go somewhere and to develop a relationship with somebody or something.”
- Tema Stauffer

“Watch films. Track down some art films. Documentaries. Fantasies. Seek out your local art house cinema, or download some films that you’d not ordinarily put atop your list. Reach out to friends and colleagues for their most inspiring flicks.

“Become a voracious reader. I chow down on a steady diet of biographies of artists I admire, classic fiction, philosophy, books on cultivating creativity, and monthlies in design, obscure fashion rags, or inspiring foreign design magazines. Blogs too – especially ones that keep me guessing on their content – less how to and more ‘why’. Whatever your ‘thing’ is. Read about it.

“Do something creative everyday as a practice. If you sit around waiting for the perfect inspiration, you’ll make a lot less stuff, and the stuff you do make will be of a lot lower quality because your skills will be in the gutter. Creativity can be fostered.”
- Chase Jarvis

The only thing that I would add is just to take a look at what’s going on in the world and find something that interests you. Then creativity a focused and sometimes urgent process of making a statement about something you care about rather than a search for a new style or look. It is that too, but there’s nothing like having subject matter you care about to fan that fire under your ass.

Mike Sinclair

Mike Sinclair has been posting new photos from the Missouri State Fair on his blog.

Last Thursday Andrew Hetherington of What’s the Jackonary spoke at the Apple Store in SF. He showed a slideshow of his work – from his early fashion and ad photos to the personal projects (A Room With a View). He also showed a bit of the latest episode of Inside the Photographer’s Studio, featuring Philip Toledano, who is most entertaining. It was nice to see a blogger in person. The setting of the Apple store wasn’t too bad either. There was a small bank of iMacs where little kids were going full stream at RPGs, and the stairs looked like some sort of new age stairway to heaven. Geez, Apple, you’re making everyone else look bad!

An interesting thread in the talk was how the web has changed interaction and community. He mentioned the days when he had a roll of quarters, pager and a phone book instead of a website or blog, and meeting other photographers in the Print Space darkrooms, which were fully booked until the web came along and emptied them. (I wonder if Rayko saw the same drop off). The barrier to entry is lower, so that anyone can publish or show a portfolio, but you have to make a lot more of an effort to interact with others. There is something slightly intimidating about even a blog with a warm personal tone. Where all you had to do really was show up with your warm body and say hi, now you have to email or comment, which feels appropriate only if you have something to say unless you want to annoy. But in the end, maybe it’s not so different, and I’m just finding excuses for my introversion. I suppose it’s the trade-off for the low barrier to entry and the larger network.

Hetherington mentioned that he found in the blogosphere what had ceased to exist at Print Space, but I’m not sure that they are equivalents. If I want to meet working ‘emerging’ photographers online, the content I put online will be seen by them as well as everyone else. In addition to sharing finished work, I’d personally hope to share things that I may in the end decide are not usable, to be a little more open with the process of editing. That of course, is not necessarily what you’d want editors or curators to see. Does this mean you put up a portfolio site geared purely toward career-opportunities and a blog for personal stuff? But of course, editors and curators and whonot also read blogs (a photo editor warns against posting “things that will get you un-hired”). So do photographers who are still learning go to a place like Too Much Chocolate to show unfinished work in “safety?” Everyone knows that there’s much left on the editing room floor, to borrow a phrase from film and sound. Why should it be held against anyone that they are just open about the existence of these items, which can sometimes be illuminating about the work that is shown ‘officially’, about the decisions an artist has made?

I’m coming from a practioner perspective for sure. I can see why it might be too much work for curators and editors to weed out the chaff. Maybe the solution is more ability to filter blogs or streamlike media so that you only see what you’re interested in. I do wish blogs could be more like Facebook, where you can control what types of posts you see, with built in interactivity that news readers don’t have and one main page you can go to to see all sorts of activity. Tumblr comes the closest, but sometimes it’s nice to have the backend power of WordPress. It’s things like this that convince me we are only seeing the tip of the internet iceberg. In 10 years the web will be too so good our little brains can’t even comprehend it now.

David Trattles

David Trattles shoots in a fairly classic style.

In that vein, a reminder that you have til the end of the week to see Robert Frank’s Americans at SFMOMA. While you’re there, you can check out the Avedon retrospective as well as the double header with Georgia O’Keefe and Ansel Adams. I still have a lot of trouble at retrospective shows with keeping historical context in mind. It’s hard to get excited about Adams, having seen all the derivative work since. Where can I go to see a comprensive chronological history of photography?

I want to see the photo version of an unrealized idea I had for radio which is to play the entire history of music chronologically for an entire week, starting from field recordings of indigenous cultures through various folk music from around the world, to contemporary rock and pop. How great if a museum were to exhibit everything from Daguerre to Shore in one building? It would be a colossal effort, but I would go again and again. As it stands, there seem to be shows of living artists and there seem to be retrospectives but nothing really connecting the two, at least nothing beyond the occasional pairing of giants or contemporaries. The MOMA had a little room at the end of the Frank exhibit showing a few photos from his influences, but nothing extensive.

With a chronological showing, you could change the way people move through a gallery by drawing little colored lines on the walls for viewers to follow from artists to their influences and mentees. I like the idea of a museum as a playground where you run back and forth, where there is a sense of trying to follow clues, literally following a thread on the wall, or find things for yourself. Or this could be done with handheld devices that you can punch the number of an artwork into. It would then show you the numbers of relevent other works. Or, how about this for audience participation – viewers can program their own edited sequence of themed or related photos on the device and upload it into a database where others can download them. The museum curators could then pick one to feature each week. This could work well on the web too. I’d settle for a web version of this if the real thing is too difficult, but I assume that with copyright issues, it’s not something just anyone can decide to put together. Too bad.

Anyhow, I digress. A neat little video you should be sure to see while you’re gorging yourself on black and white photography is Joe Sola’s Studio Visit, which is a part of the Studio Sessions exhibit. He invites visitors to his studio to see a new piece and then… gives them a little surprise. Most of the time when I see a pair of headphones hanging next to a not so captivating video, it feels like an obligation to put on the phones and hear what’s going on, but in this case, it worked perfectly with the presentation. You see strange things going on in the video and cannot wait to hear what’s going on. I was suprised by flat most of the on camera responses were! I wish he hadn’t given them the “do not be alarmed” warning. (Would not doing so count as unethically putting them under undue stress?) You have to see it for yourself, but here is a not so subtle hint:

David Teter (+ Flickr)

Both these photos were shot on an iPhone. Phone cam art is already happening, but I wonder when it’ll reached critical mass and become par for the course. This week I’ve been finding photography on Flickr that I really like. It’s ridiculous to expect too much from Flickr, which is best for socializing and interaction, but once you’ve found a few good photographers, you fall into a comfy group of people you admire. Someone commented in a discussion thread that bashing Flickr is like insulting the phone book, and I have to agree. All kinds live on Flickr.

David Teter

While we’re on tech, over the weekend, it occurred to me that the next big photographic revolution will likely be holographic cameras, 3D photography. You can already buy holographic photos and videos done basically with a stereoscopic or multi-camera / multi-angle set-up. Remember CNN’s election night faux-holographic coverage? Is it physically possible to produce true holograms from a single camera with a single-click? Some brief googling turned up a patent for a digital holographic camera filed by a Stanford professor who runs a laser lab.

From the description:

The holographic recording subsystem of the present invention can comprise, for example, a low-power laser and a spatial-light modulator. Multiple holograms can be recorded. The storage device may take the form of a monolithic card. The removable holographic storage device can be transferred to a dedicated reader. The reader can connect to a computer as a peripheral device or may be integrated into a computer. The reader can also be integrated directly into other devices, such as a printer dedicated to printing out photographs.

From a user’s perspective, the digital holographic camera of the present invention can operate in a manner similar to a conventional film camera. The capacity of each cartridge can be based on current film packaging, which emphasizes film speed and count. For example, cartridges can be differentiated according to resolution in a manner similar to the distinction between high-speed and low-speed film. By providing predetermined picture counts, e.g. 24 or 36, required capacity is based on count and resolution.

This was in 2002. You’ve gotta figure someone’s closer to cracking this nut by now.

Kirill Kuletski

Kirill Kuletski’s website is very minimal, I kid you not, but there is a lot more on Flickr. Most are found interiors and exteriors, I’m particularly curious about his new work in progress (second photo shown) which seems to be about some sort of mining operation in the Ukraine where the workers sleep underground.

Beatrix Reinhardt

I’d hoped for some explanation of Coca-Cola houses in India. Are these salvaged billboards? Or is Coca-Cola actually paying for or providing these paint jobs and signs?

Justin James Reed‘s New Cities

Kirk Crippens‘ Foreclosure, USA

Andrew Phelps‘ Higley

Jeff Brouws delivered a lecture at the SPE conference in Dallas in March, and American Suburb X recently published a transcript: “It Don’t Exist”, The Impact of Sprawl and Suburban Build-out on Inner City America. It is a great read. He discusses transportation infrastructure and different zones – industrial, commercial, residential. Here’s an excerpt on the development of the highway system and the implications of the integrated garage:

Prior to the 1930s there was no organized infrastructure of highways across America; unmarked roads and scarce services for the motorist were the norm.

When Eisenhower signed into law the The National Interstate and Defense Highways Act in 1956, construction of a freeway system linking all major cities began, fueled by this idea of growth. In this way, decentralization became a guiding principle for not only developers who owned land on the periphery they wished to sell, but for a federal government who in the final analysis thought a low-density lifestyle, dispersed population and scattered infrastructure would be less vulnerable to a paralyzing nuclear attack.

Notice the garage integrated right into the design of the house; this type of home reinforced individual automobile usage and discourage pedestrian activity; people could drive right into their home without interacting with their environment, which is totally different then living in the city.

He also mentions why corporate chains, with Walmart as an especially egregious offender, are bad for local economies.

Historically, locally owned downtown businesses paid local taxes; money generated from that business stayed in town and re-circulated there. With sprawl and the growth of multinational chains the majority of what you spend at Wal-Mart today gets sent back home to a out-of-state home office or funneled through tax shelters in Michigan, Delaware or Nevada — states that charge no corporate income tax.

I wonder why more books like, say, What’s the Matter With Kansas don’t include photography. Is it out of some ridiculous belief that adults don’t look at books with pictures in them? That reading books with pictures in them makes you a simpleton who can’t understand the words without the pictures? Too bad. There’s the reading about the Walmart’s slow community attrition and then there’s seeing photos of a small town transformed in a decade because a Walmart moved in. Maybe I am a simpleton, but it’s just easier to believe it when you see it. It’s like standing there in person, right?

Thobias Faldt

I saw a coupla these photos while browsing the La Pura Vida blog. The occasional photo makes me want to stare. When it works, it really works, but some them seem to be held together in a grudging coherence by the look of the flash, which unifies subjects which don’t always have a lot in common.

When I see a host of photos like Faldt’s, I’m simultaneously excited and bored, and I think of a line from Saramago: “It’s a risky venture and it could end badly. But as we’ve seen, even things that aren’t risky can end badly.” So you might as well. Better to be a risk taker.

(I am digging through my notebooks of passages transcribed from books in an attempt to get my verbal chops going, so don’t be surprised if quotes here and there muscle in on the photos. All those years of bookwormery will finally be good for something!)