Wednesday Work: Jeffrey Stockbridge, "Kensington Blues"

Front Street

Jeffrey Stockbridge

Dolly

Jeffrey Stockbridge

Dennis

Jeffrey Stockbridge

I moved to Philadelphia in 2006, and before moving here took a lot of photographs of the people and places that made up my community. After relocating to the big city, I found myself unable to make the same kinds of images. I wasn't from Philadelphia, I didn't know how to approach those things I saw on the streets. Conscious of my outside perspective and my outsider status, I took my personal  work to the studio. It was a good move for me, though my interest in street photography lives on. Now, I like to see how others are able to do it. 

Since living in Philly, there have been photographers here making big headlines for the work they've completed in the neighborhood. Most notably, the work of Zoe Strauss. Strauss is born and raised Philadelphia, so the work, in a way, seems right and just. That being said, I am always left wanting more when viewing Strauss work. Asking myself who are the people in the photographs, and more, are the hard-luck portraits made of them helpful or hurtful?

I was turned onto Jeffrey Stockbridge, and his series Kensington Blues by a student of mine. Stockbridge works more like a Jim Goldberg, with his series chronicling those he comes across in the Kensington neighborhood via photographic works and interviews. Stockbridge talks to the people, he transcribes their stories, we are given more information. I enjoy the information. I enjoy hearing the individuals voice. It makes me feel less like I am taking from them as a viewing audience, makes me feel less like a voyeur. It feels more fair. 

Being a photographer myself, I know what the camera can do, the potential for it to take away from its subject. It is an argument I have with myself and photographs at large, often. Stockbridge helped me to articulate the side of the argument I am on. 

Plus, I live in a row home right down the street from many of his shots.; so there is that sensation - oh! look ma! We're on TV!. 

Check it out, here Kensington Blues. 

Shameless Self Promotion: Tamsen Wojtanowski

imprint, Lost/Found  -or- "To make a long story short, I love you."

New Works by Tamsen Wojtanowski; March 2012 @ Napoleon

Employing the photographic medium to explore an abstract narrative, I work in the studio to give my psyche form. Emotions become made of paper; dreams evolve as constructed landscapes made from found materials; disparate thoughts become one in the overlapping layers of collage. In this series "imprint, Lost/Found -or- 'To make a long story short, I love you.'", I work to find my way through a series of handmade "maps", which become cyanotype prints made from cliche verre, and document my destinations with a series of B&W photographs. 

First Friday Opening, March 2nd, 6-10pm

Gallery Hours, Saturdays & Sundays, 2-6pm

Napoleon

319 N. 11th Street, 2nd Flr.

Philadelphia, PA

www.napoleonnapoleon.com

www.tamsenwj.com

Roger Ballen: Die Antwoord

 

Roger Ballen directs Die Antwoord's "I Fink U Freeky".

Work!: Elin O'Hara Slavick

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One of the first classes I taught out of graduate school was a course called "Photo Process Workshop". In the course students learned a variety of alternative and experimental processes, including cynaotype, van dyke brown, cliche verre, modern tinype, book binding, appropriation, installation, ...the list goes on and on. Anyway, we all know what old photographic processes look like - they look old. I needed them to not look old, but new and exciting! to draw students in.

I scoured the internet and was rewarded for my time with these beauties by Elin O'Hara Slavick - not only a contemporary artist, but cyanotypes with CONTENT! It was like  dream come true. 

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Cyanoytpes are made by contacting printing either negative or object, meaning you place what it is you want to capture right on top of the sensitized material and let the sun make your exposure. What you get in return in less a photograph of the image, as we understand photographs, and more of an X-Ray of the image, in this case an image called a Photogram. A photogram simply meaning a photographic image made without a camera.

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Elin O'Hara Slavick created these cyanotypes at The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum  in 2008, using objects donated to the museum by A-Bomb survivors.

As an individual some generations removed from this event, trying to wrap my head around the reality of the atomic bombing is tough.  Rather than thinking about it as violence, carnage, heavy metal, and anger - as I tend to think about war - in the present, these cyanotypes deliver the heavier truth, war in the past tense. War as loss, as absence, as silence.

While researching contemporary artists working with the cyanotype process, I also came across the work of Robin Hill, she says something very insightful about the process, saying "cyanotypes show the potential of an object." Right - so instead of seeing an object in a photograph in the same way we see an object in life, the light bouncing off of the objects surface, in the use of the cyanotype process, the contact print/photogram, we see the light that passes through the object. ...We see not what is, we see more, we see - the potential.

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I got interested in the Photographic Process, beyond photography itself, when I got interested in experimental and alternative ways of making photographic images. Thinking about what went into the process, what you could change in the process, what that shift would create - - - - how much more (or less) artistic control you may (or may not) have - - - fascinating.

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While in Japan, Slavick experimented with other alternative photographic processes as well. Below are examples of frottages (rubbings), Slavick made of different elements in the museum. Thinking again how to capture the reality of the A-Bomb, Slavick made rubbings of a bank floor (above) and a fir tree (below), then used the rubbings like cliche verre (handmade negatives) to make contact prints onto B&W silver gelatin paper. ...

Okay, I am geeking out.

I love photo!

GO PHOTO!

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See more of Elin O'Hara Slavick's work, here, and here.

And work of the Atomic Photographers Guild, here.

Work!: Anthea Hamilton

 

The Piano Lesson.

I don't have a lot of words. But I am seeing a lot of great images.  Here, Anthea Hamilton - Enjoy!

Dance.

Gate.

Work!: John Jerome O'Connor

 

 Apophis

I wrote myself a note last year - (hehe, I love the calendar change...) okay, it was really only a few months ago- to make sure to share the work of this artist, John Jerome O'Connor.   And here it is!

The artist writes about this piece above: " Conceptually, this work is my attempt to visualize a prediction, by NASA scientists, that an asteroid called Apophis will strike the Earth in 2036. (more) ...."

....YesssssssssssSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSssssssssssssssssssssss!

1 Spin.

 

And there's more, see O'Connor's website, here.

A Good Idea.

A far-out way to start the New Year right.

What are your plans for the next rotation?

John Jerome O'Connor