Archive for the ‘Art’ Category.
6th July 2011, 05:38 pm
I’ve been perusing Gerhard Richter’s Atlas over the last few days — an overwhelming collection of snapshots, newspaper clippings, photos from books, photographic experiments, and family photos from 1962-2006. I used to cut photos out of magazines and make collages. Now I just right click when I see something interesting that I think I’ll want to see again.
Occasionally I’ll browse through these images when I need inspiration, or run them as my screen saver. After spending some time with Richter’s collection of photos in book form, perhaps I’ll be inspired to group some images by theme and print proof sheets. How do you organize and review the images that catch your eye? I prefer to group images together instead of using the one-at-a-time approach on Tumblr. Perhaps I’ve answered my own question with this gallery of 15 photos that recently went into my digital atlas.
21st June 2011, 09:12 am
My presentation at last week’s Mono Lake Night Photography Festival was about the value of cultivating a diverse set of artistic influences. You are already doing this informally. The idea is to talk or write about your artistic input, as a playground for better understanding how these things are influencing your artistic output.
I had 45 minutes to talk, and spent just under 2 minutes talking about how each of these artists has influenced my night photography. As the presentation was both fast and media intensive, I’ve reproduced the list of artists below for those who attended the conference.
I encourage you to make your own list of influences. This could be a desert island list of your favorite films, photography books, novels, museum exhibits, dance performances — whatever you’re into. Making a list is the first step — the epiphanies are born out of process of articulating why you love this work, and how the work has influenced you. The writing doesn’t have to be lengthy — start with one sentence for the why, and one for the how. Have fun, and feel free to share your list.
- Gordon Matta-Clark: Conical Intersect [video on UbuWeb] [photos & bio on artnet]
- John Divola: Vandalism Series [photos on divola.com]
- Roger Ballen: Outland | Shadow Chamber | Boarding House
- John Pfahl: Altered Landscapes
- Draw on your image: To be discussed in a future blog post
- Gaspar Noe: Enter the Void [Netflix]
- Matthew Barney: Cremaster Cycle
- Werner Herzog: Of Walking In Ice
- Mark Rothko: Rothko’s Rooms [Netflix]
- William Vollmann: Imperial
- Michelangelo Antonioni: Red Desert [Netflix]
- David T. Hanson: Waste Land
- Flotation Tanks
- Haruki Murakami: A Wild Sheep Chase
- Ikeda Carlotta: Butoh Dance
- Yasujiro Ozu: Tokyo Story [Netflix]
- Master Musicians of Jajouka: Apocalypse Across the Sky | Pipes of Pan
- Lotte Reiniger: The Adventures of Prince Achmed [Netflix]
- Caspar David Friedrich [friendsofart.net]
- John Hind: Our True Intent Is All For Your Delight
- Chris Verene: Family | Chris Verene
- Jacques Tati: Playtime
- Erik Kessels: In Almost Every Picture #9 Black Dog
Note: Book and movie links go to Amazon, and help put a few extra pennies into the epiphany research jar.
12th January 2011, 08:51 am
Second generation operatives of the BLF ponder their next mission in an outtake from Hi-Fructose Magazine #18 — by Joe Reifer
Issue 18 of contemporary art magazine Hi-Fructose hit the streets recently, and features a 6-page piece on the Billboard Liberation Front (BLF). I’ve been a huge fan of the BLF’s advertising improvements for a long time, so it was a big thrill to photograph 3 generations of BLF operatives for Hi-Fructose. BLF honcho Jack Napier found this amazing empty warehouse location, which I scouted a few days before the shoot. I was really fortunate to have friend and talented photographer Riki Feldmann on this assignment to help with the lighting.
We used the huge 86″ Alienbees PLM with a diffuser on the key light, and then kicked a bare-bulb fill light off the floor from the other side. A Canon 5D Mark II with a 24-70/2.8L was tripod mounted for the group shots, and a second 5D II with a 70-200/2.8L was used for the individual portraits. PocketWizards were used to trigger the strobes, and everything worked without a hitch. The shooting time was about 2 hours for 25 portraits and 4 group shots.
As expected, the BLF was a rowdy and hilarious group to photograph. Riki and I were about to mark where to stand for the portraits with tape on the floor, and then someone spilled some whiskey. When people asked where to stand for their portrait, we told them “between the puddle of water, and the puddle of whiskey.” In the large group shot in the magazine, there is a dead bird on the floor. One of the BLF members made an amazing disguise out of a bucket and a cardboard box while he was waiting to be photographed.
In addition to the piece on the BLF, issue 18 of Hi-Fructose features some really amazing art — I was particularly blown away by the eerie, futuristic ruins of Jean-Pierre Roy. The interview with Mr. Roy is superb — he speaks very eloquently about his work, and I found some interesting artistic parallels to abandoned places night photography (more on that later). Attaboy and Annie Owens put out a really fine publication — look for Hi-Fructose at a bookstore, gallery, or museum near you.
6th December 2010, 10:03 pm
18th July 2010, 05:25 pm
Lewis Baltz — North Wall, Semicoa, 333 McCormick, Costa Mesa 1974
New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape opened yesterday at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and runs through October 3, 2010 along with the companion exhibit, Picturing Modernity. I visited the museum yesterday, and really enjoyed the show. I’ve spent quite a bit of time with the superb New Topographics book — viewing the actual prints was exciting.
Most of the exhibition contains small silver gelatin black and white prints with an open, low/medium contrast style of printing that is befitting of the subject matter. A few of the Lewis Baltz prints are a notable exception, with very deep blacks and stark high contrast printing. Stephen Shore’s photos are the only color images in the show.
Seeing the Joe Deal aerial subdivision views all together on the wall gave them a lot more weight than in the book. There is so much tension in not having any sky or horizon line. My eye wants to see something in the image as the horizon, which gives an off-kilter feeling to some of the images.
Finding a photographic approach that deferred and complexified meaning rather than specifying it, is what made these pictures interesting to me. — John Schott
John Schott’s work was also better on the wall than in the book. His accompanying audio segment is especially poignant. I’m still puzzling out how Nicholas Nixon’s Boston rooftop images fit into the show – they’re dense with the detail of the city skyline. Gohlke’s irrigation canal image is a deceivingly simple image that reflects the man vs. nature theme of the show so well with the beautiful sky and reflection balanced by weeds and tire tracks in the mud.
After seeing large prints of the Becher’s Industrial Landscapes a few years ago, the smaller prints in this show seemed lackluster, and a few are in need of conservation. This re-staging of the 1975 exhibit really shows the modest scale of the prints in the current era of giant 10 foot prints that are trying to compete with painting. After spending a considerable amount of time contemplating these intimate black and white prints, the large scale of the work in the Fisher Collection seemed rather ostentatious at times. Perhaps you’ll want to save that exhibition for another day.
Tip: Pick up the free audio tour to the left of the staircase as you walk into the museum. The New Topographics exhibit features about 2 minutes of commentary from most of the photographers.
Books from the Photographers in New Topographics
The New Topographics book is outstanding. Published by Steidl this year, the title seems to regularly go in and out of stock with each press run. I recommend reading the essays before seeing the show. The reproduction of the original catalog in the book is very cool. Below is a selected book list of photographers in the show, some with brief commentary. If there are photographers in the show that you’d like to investigate further, hopefully this list will save you some time.
Robert Adams
Lewis Baltz
Bernd and Hilla Becher
Joe Deal
Frank Golhke
Nicholas Nixon
John Schott
- No monographs other than inclusion in the New Topographics book.
Stephen Shore
Henry Wessel
