Since the “name all the photo songs you know” post a couple of weeks ago went over so well, I thought you all would enjoy this too. Although this quiz has been circulating a bit and it’s not too deep or rigorous, it’s still a perfect Friday post.
Answer questions such as this, “Which activity would interest you most?” and the quiz will spit out your photo doppelganger. I took it and was deemed Henri Cartier Bresson; Bruce took it and was dubbed Ansel Adams, go figure. Please share your photo-mate in the comments!
Click here or on the above banner to take the 7 question quiz.
Edward Winkleman, art dealer and owner of Winkleman Gallery, has an incredibly active blog. Not only does he thoughtfully blog almost every day, but he usually generates 100+ comments.
Edward’s honest and frank posts gives those on the other side an incredible insight into the gallery scene and business. Bravo for transparency!
Recently, he started a weekly post, Tuesday’s Aside, in which he answers people’s gallery and career questions.
Here are some recent gems:
1.) Investing in Yourself - what to do to advance your career when you come into extra $
2.) Political Correctness - in the gallery scene and artworld
3.) Studio Visit Strategies - what to do and not to do when a gallerist or curator visits and when, how, and even if to ask for one
In this last post, Edward introduces a fantastic metaphor, the art spiral pictured above, and goes on to share his insights on this process. It’s such a wonderful summation of the artistic process (which so often does have an artist coming back to the same themes and ideas again and again, just parsed differently) that I will quote it in full. Enjoy!
Anonymous you note: “I know the direction I’m (already) moving in, which is quite different.” In my experience, though, the direction most artists are moving in only seems different for a while. Here’s a simplified version of how I imagine most artists’ journeys/interests (as opposed to careers) would look if charted. [see above]
The spiral is the path I see/hear about repeatedly in studio visits. Obviously there are many more spokes to this spiral, different subjects that reemerge from time to time, points along the path where you adopt the influence or return to a subject (marked with the red asterisks) and others when some idea/subject/concern occurs to you but you press on ignoring it (where the spiral crosses a spoke but there is no asterisk).
I find this image useful, though, when I recognize during a studio visit that an artist has “returned” to an idea or introduced something that might seem entirely new until I see much older work and realize that for many artists they keep returning to the same ideas again and again, only with more insight/ experience than the last time. At such junctures, certain ideas might seem to be threatening what you’ve built perhaps because it’s been a while since Subject A was part of your practice/ consciousness. You might have dropped it off at one asterisk. But generally it’s radiating through your overall practice all the while. If you need it again, you can pick it up and use it.
An artist I showed this diagram to the other day suggested it’s actually much more complex than this. Rather than one two-dimensional spiral, each artist’s journey is actually a three-dimensional series of multiple interwoven spirals, and the intersections are not always so chronological. I suspect he’s right, but the whole point of illustrating this is to note that I don’t think dealers (or anyone else) should associate changes in an artist’s practice with a lack of seriousness. Not if they’re taking a long-term view.
It may not be easy even for the artist, at the point marked “Today,” to see how it’s all related (and how a drastic change in medium or practice will later be combined with other more thoroughly examined spokes and bring one’s audience back round). Personally I think what seem like dramatic shifts are OK so long as the artist has interesting ideas, is rigorous about exploring them, and has a solid studio practice. It will all come together again, and probably be much more interesting for pushing further out along the spiral, rather than sticking in one spot along it.
This is always an exciting time of year on Comm. Ave. While the rest of Boston is quiet, there is a beehive of activity going on at the BU West T-stop!
We have given over our gallery to the imagemakers of tomorrow (PRC Summer Photo Camp is halfway through!) and right next door there are young graduate students about to blossom.
Boston Young Contemporaries, organized by BU studio art graduate students, takes over the former Cadillac Building from mid July - mid August. Now in its third year, you can see witness vibrant talent, juried from 12 regional graduate and post-bac programs. You can read the Boston Globe’s review right here, or stop on by yourself! It’s up until August 22nd.
Do they include any from this excellent list of 10 songs with photographic themes courtesy of Photo Shelter’s most excellent Shoot the Blog?
Besides Outkast’s Hey Ya! and their iconic “shake it like a Polaroid picture” chorus, what else, pun intended, develops? (Be sure to also check out the above post’s comment section for even more photo songs and photo punniness.)
A mix of such tunes might just be the perfect soundtrack for the next PRC PhotoSLAM! What do you think?
While you contemplate, you can listen to Jack Jackson’sF-Stop Blues!
A couple of weeks ago, the Boston Globe had a huge story about the 14 Boston commercial galleries that are changing, moving, or closing. Read the piece by Cate McQuaid here and see a slideshow here. If you really want fancy, try out their interactive map here. This coming fall’s openings will certainly be different. We wish all the best!
For other perspectives - be sure to check out Greg Cook’s recent post, as well as his excellent overview and coverage of the breaking gallery news since the spring as it happened.
Over in Big Red, and Shiny land, Matt Nash posted his take on their blog Our Daily Red. Also in the last issue of Big Red, Jess T. Dugan has an interview with Joseph Carroll on his new gallery endeavor and and Steve Aishman gave a beautiful eulogy to Allston Skirt.
Above is just one of the many images featured on the hilarious blog photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com. Check back daily and be sure to browse their older posts, accessible at the bottom of the page. Do give yourself enough time to browse, you’ll be sucked in!
Below is their ode to post modernism that accompanies the above classic from Mexico’s Maxim as well as their open call for erased furniture, missing belly buttons, elongated body parts, and cloning gone wild.
“By renormalizing the model’s waistline, Maxim Mexico takes a bold socio-political stance in the ongoing battle of the politics of representation, clearly referencing the oppressive reification of male-gaze heteronormative modes of synthesis in a semiotic blancmange of post-structural teakettle barbecue hatstand fishmonger.”
Have you seen a truly awful piece of Photoshop work? Clumsy manipulation, senseless comping, lazy cloning and thoughtless retouching are our bread and butter. And yes, deep down, we love Photoshop.
If it is commercial and awful then please let us know! Anonymity can be arranged for the easily embarrassed/canned. Although I am hopeless at replying to email, be assured that each and every tip is followed up.
We hope all photo friends enjoy the long weekend and celebrate in your respective ways! The PRC will be closed the 4th and through the weekend.
Today, I begin to take down the PRC Juried Exhibition (a great run! - but all good things must come to an end). The gallery will soon be given over to Summer Photo Camp, so there will be no exhibition on display until early September. Make no mistake, we’re still here, busy prepping for the next year and our upcoming 2008 PRC Benefit Auction!
Above is a Flickr montage for your enjoyment and here are some tips for photographing fireworks from the Boston Globe. Have a safe and happy 4th!
In this feature, we showcase an image per week from our current exhibition, EXPOSURE: 13th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition, juried by Aperture’s Lesley A. Martin. In celebration of the last weeks of the show, we increased the frequency (and the excitement). This is the last image!
Today is the last day to see the PRC Juried show! We’re open today - Wednesday - from 10am - 6pm. (If you are out of town, browse our flicker set.)
This week’s image is from Ellen Susan and is a gorgeous wet plate image. Ellen has been getting a lot of attention as of late. Besides the multi-page spread in June’s PDN, American Photo’s excellent State of the Art blog has a very long post on her work. Congrats!
ABOUT : Ellen Susan (Savannah, GA) produces one-of-a-kind portraits of U.S. Army soldiers based in Southeast Georgia using the historical wet plate process. The majority of men and women in her “Soldier Portraits” have been deployed to Iraq two or three times since 2003. A graduate of MassArt and RISD, Susan has shown at the Houston Center for Photography; RISD|Works in Providence, RI; New Orleans Photo Alliance Gallery in New Orleans, LA; and has an upcoming solo show at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, OR this summer.
From Susan’s statement:
“Soldier Portraits” - The wet collodion process was the primary photographic method from the 1840s through the 1880s, encompassing the dates of the American Civil War. The men and women photographed for the Soldier Portraits project are members of the U.S. Army based in Southeast Georgia. Most have deployed to Iraq one to three times since 2003. Many are in Iraq now. Army deployments now last 15 months.
The necessarily long exposures of this slow process often result in an intensity of gaze, and the grainless, highly detailed surface brings out minute details of each individual. These attributes, combined with the historical military associations made me feel that the process could be a meaningful way to photograph contemporary soldiers and to provide a counterpoint to the anonymous representations seen in newspapers and on television. I wanted to produce physically enduring, visually arresting images of people who are being sent repeatedly into a war zone.
ABOVE IMAGE: Ellen Susan, SPC Shaun Kramer, 2007, from the series “Soldier Portraits,” Aluminotype, 10 x 8 inches, courtesy of the artist
In this feature, we showcase an image per week from our current exhibition, EXPOSURE: 13th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition, juried by Aperture’s Lesley A. Martin. In celebration of the last weeks of the show, we increased the frequency (and the excitement). This is the 2nd to last image!
You have 2 days to see the show - the last day is July 2nd! We’re open this week Tuesday and Wednesday 10am - 6pm. (If you are out of town, browse our flicker set.)
This week’s image is from Erik Shubert. Erik’s work, like the other Eric, is about work - and funny! Luckily, I haven’t had too many desk jobs, or these would hit even closer to home. I was thrilled that these two could meet at the opening reception.
ABOUT : Erik Schubert (Cambridge, MA), inspired in part by Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People and his businessman father, has been collecting and documenting scenes and ephemera of corporate aspirations and failure. A 2007 MFA graduate of MassArt, Schubert has shown in several juried student shows in Boston such as Boston Young Contemporaries and the 2007 PRC Student Exhibition. He has an upcoming solo show, Thinking Big, at the Slocumb Gallery at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, TN.
From Erik’s statement:
“How to Win Friends and Influence People” - Realizing that we live in an increasingly business-centered society, how we navigate as “businesspeople” may determine the success or failure of our aspirations and the ability to pursue them. I am interested in how this kind of society shapes our visual world and language.
At a young age it was instilled in me that the mythology from Dale Carnegie’s classic book, How to Win Friends and Influence People was one that predicated success and happiness in life. The book has been widely published and accepted by businesspeople and corporate planners all over the world, including my father.
Some images are documentations of found items, constructed on location. Other images are documentations of ephemera that I have collected from such places as expositions, infomercials, my family, and home. With these photographs, I try to explore and communicate metaphorically the success, failure, and complexity of corporate mythologies in society.
ABOVE IMAGE: Erik Schubert, Level II, 2007/2008, from the series “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” Archival Inkjet Print, 19 x 23 inches, courtesy of the artist
Last night at the Wonder Bar in Allston, the PRC hosted its 3rd PhotoSLAM! A PRC member program, the PhotoSLAM! is a digital slideshow of photographs submitted by members, a democratic showcase of the work and talent within the PRC membership. Participants came to narrate their work, and cheered on friends in a supportive environment! A good time was had by all.
Check out the pics online by clicking here or on the above montage. We hope that you can join us next time!
In this feature, we showcase an image per week from our current exhibition, EXPOSURE: 13th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition, juried by Aperture’s Lesley A. Martin. In celebration of the last few weeks of the show, we are going to increase the frequency (and the excitement) and share 2 per week - it’s a veritable photo frenzy!
Don’t miss it. The show’s last day is July 2nd! (If you are out of town, browse our flicker set.)
This week’s image is from Eric Percher. Eric’s work is colorful and graphically stunning - and funny! Luckily, I haven’t had too many desk jobs, or these would hit even closer to home. Eric recently participated in Review Santa Fe. You can see some of his work here.
ABOUT : Eric Percher (Brooklyn, NY) considers the limitations we accept in order to obtain success. His series “Work” is in part a semi-autobiographical response to his seven-year experience in the financial offices and cubicles of Midtown Manhattan. A fine art photographer living in New York City, he recently received a CENTER (Santa Fe) Singular Image Color Award, Honorable Mention.
From Percher’s statement:
Work considers the limitations we accept in order to obtain success: the constraints erected by the desires and fears that drive our initial ambitions; the stricture of further aspirations that becomes necessary to maintain the success we achieve; and the restrictions inherent to a life in an office-cube, within a numbered building, on a gridded city.
The series reveals moments of limitation, as demonstrated by subjects who are themselves the hard labor and emerging leaders of New York’s most profitable enterprises. The project does not intend to repudiate individual pursuits of success but to illuminate the tensions and sacrifices required to achieve such success. Consequently, the viewer is asked to consider the same question as the subject: is there sustenance in your hard work and satisfaction in its completion, or is this simply an economic transaction, dollars in exchange for hours, security swapped for autonomy? Or as the subjects might put it, does the return justify the investment?
ABOVE IMAGE: Eric Percher, Untitled, 2006/2008, from the series “Work,” Digital C-Print, 30 x 40 inches, courtesy of the artist
In this feature, we showcase an image per week from our current exhibition, EXPOSURE: 13th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition, juried by Aperture’s Lesley A. Martin. In celebration of the last few weeks of the show, we are going to increase the frequency (and the excitement) and share 2 per week - it’s a veritable photo frenzy!
Don’t miss it. The show’s last day is July 2nd! (If you are out of town, browse our flicker set.)
This week’s image is from Ben Lowy. Ben’s work has been generating a lot of buzz here. The suite of 4 images are an interesting and different look at the war in Iraq.
ABOUT : Benjamin Lowy (New York, NY) captures everyday scenes in Iraq as seen through the lens of his camera and the inches-thick, bulletproof window of an American Army Humvee. A self-represented assignment photographer with stock syndicated through the VII Network and clients ranging from TheNew York Times Magazine to Newsweek, Lowy was named one of PDN’s 30 emerging photographers to watch in 2004 and participated in the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass. Granted the Eddie Adams/Carl Mydans Award for War Photography, Lowy’s work has received awards from American Photography, Communication Arts, World Press Photo, and Pictures of the Year International, among others.
From Lowy’s statement:
I began this project as a response to what I felt was the general inability of people back home to comprehend what Iraq is like. Most people have never really seen or felt the effects of war. Confronted by a level of violence so high that walking on the streets to photograph is tantamount to suicidal behavior, I found myself confined to working with American soldiers, spending most of my time going on various missions while looking at the landscape of this broken country. My only view was through the inches-thick bulletproof window of an Army Humvee.
Metaphorically speaking, these windows represent a barrier that impedes dialogue. These pictures show a fragment of Iraqi life taken by a transient passenger in a Humvee. The images are not intimate - they often show a distant and detached perspective of a country so empty, so desolate and of a situation so dire.
ABOVE IMAGE:
Benjamin Lowy, A U.S. Army tank patrols in front of an often bombed Iraqi police station in Abu Ghraib as seen from a passing army Humvee patrol on July 11, 2007, 2007, from the series “Iraq: Perspectives,” Archival Inkjet Print, 11 ¾ x 16 ½ inches, courtesy of the artist and VII Network
In this feature, we showcase an image per week from our current exhibition, EXPOSURE: 13th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition. However, in celebration of the last few weeks of the show, we are going to increase the frequency (and the excitement) and share 2 per week - it’s a veritable photo frenzy!
Get thee to the PRC before the show’s last day of July 2nd!
Originally from Spain and trained as an architect, Marta is a 2nd year graduate student at one of our member schools, Rhode Island School of Design. Marta’s work has been striking quite a chord with our visitors and we’ve been getting a lot of inquiries. In her series “On War,” Marta takes images depicting war or conflict in art and photography. The recognizable images include Goya’s The Third of may, 1808; Picasso’s Guernica, 1936; Robert Capa’s Death of Militiaman, 1936 (seen above); Richard Misrach’s Submerged Trailer, Salton Sea, California, 1983.
From Marta Labad’s statement: The following project is composed of crumpled-up familiar images that depict conflict. These images belong to my visual and cultural heritage and allow me to talk about the world surrounding us, especially conflict and aggression related to war, catastrophe, and the landscape.
ABOVE IMAGE: Marta Labad, ON WAR #5 (Robert Capa’s Death of Militiaman, 1936), 2008,Digital C-Print, 20 x 20 inches, courtesy of the artist
The blog Cigarettes and Purity has been on a Boston kick as of late (thanks for the shout out!). Leave it to Wisconsin to point us to a new blog in our own backyard, “The Big Picture” from the Boston Globe!
When they say big pictures, they mean BIG! While most blogs resize pictures to around 450 pixels wide, these are a whopping 990 pixels - it’s great to see images at this size! Keep checking back for news and photojournalist images, there is a new one almost daily. I am sharing the above image from the Chinese earthquakes as startilingly, I haven’t seen too many of them and I think we should see more. You can explore more in this album.
From their mission:
The Big Picture is a photo blog for the Boston Globe/boston.com, compiled semi-regularly by Alan Taylor. Inspired by publications like Life Magazine (of old), National Geographic, and online experiences like MSNBC.com’s Picture Stories galleries and Brian Storm’s MediaStorm, The Big Picture is intended to highlight high-quality, amazing imagery - with a focus on current events, lesser-known stories and, well, just about anything that comes across the wire that looks really interesting.
ABOVE IMAGE: A couple reacts immediately after an earthquake struck during their wedding photo shoot at a deserted catholic seminary in Pengzhou in southwest China’s Sichuan province Monday May 12, 2008. Five couples were having wedding photos taken when the earthquake struck, and all escaped without injury. The century-old seminary was destroyed in the quake, which left tens of thousands dead in Sichuan. (AP Photo)
In this new feature, we are showcasing an image per week from our current exhibition, the 13th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition. Molly Landreth is our 9th to date. Don’t forget, there is only 2 1/2 weeks left to see the show!
From Molly Landreth’s statement: “Embodiment: A Portrait of Queer Life in America” - This series of photographs is an archive and a journey through a rapidly changing community and the lives of people who offer brave new visions of what it means to be queer in America today. To be visible is to become both empowered and vulnerable, even in a world where progressive attitudes are beginning to take hold. These images depict subjects who meet my gaze with a rare combination of forthright self-awareness and total abandon, as if standing in for something much larger than themselves.
ABOVE IMAGE: Molly Landreth, Lindsay and Tina, Mills College, Oakland, CA, 2005, 2005/2008, from the series “Embodiment: A Portrait of Queer Life in America,” Digital Pigment Print, 20 x 24 inches, courtesy of the artist
Boston Photography Focus is a blog dedicated to Boston photographers, Boston photography exhibitions and education, photo enthusiasts, and all manner of photo-based activities, news, happenings, topics, and ideas in and around Boston, New England, and beyond. It is sponsored by the Photographic Resource Center (PRC) at Boston University, New England's center for photography. The PRC is an independent non-profit organization that serves as a vital forum for the exploration and interpretation of new work, ideas, and methods in photography and related media.
Boston Photography Focus is a blog dedicated to Boston photographers, Boston photography exhibitions and education, photo enthusiasts, and all manner of photo-based activities, news, happenings, topics, and ideas in and around Boston, New England, and beyond. It is sponsored by the 
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