Photography + Glassworks
I posted one image of this dog portrait session, but by popular demand (and the fact that I’m about to go out of town for an art show and have nothing prepared to post) here are some more images from the session.
There are more pics of “The Hammer” in the dog portraits album.
If you happen to be on the Mississippi Gulf Coast this weekend come by the Ohr festival and say hi.
Tonight is the Jackson Arts Collective’s Showcase at Hal and Mal’s in the Redroom and super-huge backroom. Doors open at seven and we go until the music stops. I’ve got the super secret lineup, including all the misspellings: Continue reading ‘Collective Showcase’
As a Leica owner, I felt the need to post a link to an article over at The New Yorker. Sadly, my little M3 doesn’t get much use anymore, but every time I shoot with it I am impressed by both the results and the design.
Something interesting about this article is the lack of mention given to the M8 . . . not really that surprising though. I’m probably going to have to hold out until the M10 or M11 before I enter the digital Leica market.
In 1979 Kohei Yoshiyuki had a show in a gallery with all the lights off, if you came to the opening you were given a flashlight to look at the life size photographs hanging on the wall. After the show came down he destroyed all of the prints.
NY Times article on photographer Kohei Yoshiyuki the slideshow with audio commentary
I just finished a newborn photo session, which is a bit unusual for a Sunday. I normally don’t shoot on Sundays, but I didn’t have any Saturdays available for about a month, and the father couldn’t be there during the week. The session went well, great couple and cute baby.
While we were shooting the father was laying the child down and the mother commented on that she would like a photo of the father holding the baby in the same way he was setting him down. This pose happened to be similar to a shot that Jan Saudek did of his child (the mother has a good eye). But the thing I got to thinking about was why I hadn’t suggested a pose that I was very familiar with, and personally like. I have this habit (not sure if it is good or bad) of planning out my shoots, to a pretty detailed level, sometimes I will even sketch the poses out in advance so I can think about the design easier. Occasionally though I realize it limits my “on-the-spot” creativity, because I already have this plan in my head. Anyway, something for me to work on in the future (for when I don’t have a mother with a good eye).
Yesterday I participated in a radio interview at WLEZ (103.7FM) during the JFP radio hour. I was on during the second half hour with Daniel Johnson, and Kamikaze to discuss the Collective Showcase, which is this Thursday at Hal and Mal’s. It went really well, in large part because when you are on a radio show with Kamikaze and Daniel, you don’t have to talk very much.
This was the third time I have been on WLEZ. The previous two times have mainly centered on Light and Glass. The last one was an interview with Jerri and me on the Mississippi Arts Commission radio hour. MAC podcasts their interviews, so you can download the interview here, or off the MAC website. Thanks to Larry Morrisey for having us on the show.
Thanks to everyone who came out last night, the reception went really well. I took a little time before we opened to take some photos of Jerri’s work for the show, which I had sadly neglected documenting until that point. I also took a few shots of the gallery area of the studio, for those of you who won’t get to see the show. All of the photos can be found here.
If you notice the one table devoid of any art, that was the food table for the reception not a special minimalist piece.
The title of this post is a qoute from Rebecca Erbelding, who works for the Hollocaust Museum. She is discussing the recently donated photos of Auschwitz, which show the nazi officers daily lives. You can read more about it on the NY Times site. Make sure to listen to the audio with the slideshow.
EDIT: A well-read friend of mine emailed me this
[S]he’s likely alluding to Hannah Arendt’s book from the 60’s, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. It’s a damn amazing book. Eichmann was credited as being the bureaucrat who was the architect of the Final Solution.
http://www.amazon.com/Eichmann
-Jerusalem-Report-Banality -Evil/dp/0140187650
I have had brief email conversations with Jörg M. Colberg, who writes the wonderful blog Conscientious, about the slickness of current digital photography. I think Alec Soth described this same characteristic as “frozen perfection” on his blog. Colberg will tell you he doesn’t care about the slickness, just whether or not he likes the end result (he also doesn’t put much weight into process); Soth on the other hand seems to like process at times, and admits to even being frustrated by sterility in his own work. All this is simply an appeal to authority to say that current photographic art is overly slick, devoid of any imperfection, no film grain, no dust spots, etc. Continue reading ‘Slick vs. ?’