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. 

Wednesday Work: Iain McKell

(source)

Iain McKell - The New Gypsies

(source)

Simply gorgeous.

Makes me hungry.

You?

See it at Clic Gallery, NYC. Opening August 29th through October 2nd.

(source)

Wednesday Work: Jon Rafman

(source)

Lack of privacy never looked so good!

For this week's Wednesday Work we bring you Jon Rafman. An artist out of Montreal, Canada, Rafman uses Google Street View as his image-capturing device (his camera). A concept which begs the question: what is a photographer? What is a photograph? As photographers, are we artists, or are were curators - editing a collection of images made by the world itself? (Or in this case Google Street View.) I've seen a lot done with Google Image Search, and conversation about the future of photography and the integrity of the photographic image in light of the internet and digital photography, abounds - but I've never seen it like this!

We truly do live in a terrifically horrifying and beautiful world.

See the project "9-eyes.com", here.

See more work by Jon Rafman, here.

(source)
(source)
(source)
(source)
(source)
(source)
(source)

(source)

Seriously - go see the whole thing! here.

Wednesday Work: June Yong Lee

(source)

I am a lover of film - good ol' fashioned hard and slow and wet photo process methods. The true power of digital - well beyond the fact that is is "easy" (I am aware of the misnomer) - is the power of digital photography as a new media, a new way of seeing the truth that lies before us.

That is precisely what June Yong Lee does with his series, Skin. Taking photographs of an individual's skin, but digitally removing the skin's form as it sits on an individual's frame- we see the skin only, the skin anew, as a vast landscape that begs to be explored.

See more of June Yong Lee's work, here.

(source)

Wednesday Work: Hilary White

(source)

Hilary White. Big deal round Fishtown this winter, with a beautfiul showing at Part Time Studios. 2D - 3D. Currently with work at Sweet Jane Vintage. Invigorating in person - so you should go.

Sweet Jane Vintage/ 1820 E. Passyunk Ave., Philly, PA 19148/Tues-Sat 12-8, Sun 12-6.

PS. Images look better when you click on them, than they do in the body of the post.

(source)

Wednesday Work: Hiroshi Sugimoto

Circling around to the grand unvieling of our big news, in excited anticipation we would like to "set the stage" with images from Hiroshi Sugimoto's theatre series. Shot with a large format camera in the late 1970s/1980s - Sugimoto captured in a single image the entirity of a movie watching experience. (So it is not an empty theatre or a blank screen, but a theatre which has both been filled up and emptied out, and a screen with a whole movie playing over top of it - over exposing the negative film to create an empty white glowing box). Experiments in time, but also begs to question: what does it mean to experience a thing?

Sugimoto has this to say about his work in the theatre: "I'm a habitual self-interlocutor. Around the time I started photographing at the Natural History Museum, one evenig I had a near-hallucinatory vision. The question-and-answer session that led up to this vision went something like this: Suppose you shoot a whole movie in a single frame? And the answer: You get a shining screen. Immediately I sprang into action, experimenting toward realizing this vision. Dressed up as a tourist, I walked into a cheap cinema in the East Village with a large-format camera. As soon as the movie started, I fixed the shutter at a wide-open aperture, and two hours later when the movie was finished, I clicked the shutter closed. That eveing, I developed the film, and the vision exploded behing my eyes."

Hold on tight to your seats, dear readers, the vision is about the explode behind your eyes - our experimenting towards realizing a vision and the grand unvieling - next, Wednesday Work.

Read more about Hiroshi Sugimoto and see more of his images, here.

Wednesday Work (Thursday Throwback?): Carleton Watkins: Yosemite (1863)

This past Saturday was "National Record Store Day", did you all attend to your neighborhood favorites? After feasting on bagel sandwiches overflowing with mozzarella cheese and marinated basil and tomatoes, we stumbled into a fairly new used records&books on 9th, down in Philadelphia's Italian Market. I couldn't decide on a record. But I did pick up a few used books. One, Susan Sontag's novel "America", has this Carleton Watkins image above on the back cover, and I was reminded: Susan Sontag can write, and: Oh wow - look at that photograph.

Carlton Watkins' photographs do what all good photographs should do (in my hungry opinion), they elicit adventure, they call for ambition, they show the viewer how much and how big it is out there - all the while without bringing with them any fears. There are no fears of falling in Carleton Watkins' photographs. We are viewing great feats of nature, but never are we at the cliff's edge. There is no physical danger here, nor is there chance of psychological or emotional harm. There are no others in Watkins' photographs with which we are to compare ourselves. We are not being watched or watching. The land is ours and ours alone, and the land is there to be taken.

Evading many of the trappings found in traditional formal photography, the rectangle or square, the whole thing placed behind glass - Watkins shot for stereoscopes (the View-Master, its like that), his images were cut down, placed in circle shaped mattes.

Watkins' worked on what he loved. He worked and worked and worked. He made photographs. I can't imagine he was thinking about a market, or an audience, (I could be wrong here, but let me have the dream, pretty please....)

I WANT TO BE (like) CARLETON WATKINS.

Follow your spring dreams readers. And read up on your history players. You can't hustle unless you know the game. These are my words of wisdom: T-Dubbya OUT.

(Carleton Watkins, photographs and info - here.)

[Aaaaand, if you're not into throwbacks (but really, either way) give this guy a listen: Hennesy Youngman]
Seriously.

Wednesday Work: Yamini Nayar

Do you see that little eye? From Nayar's website: "Yamina Nayar's work explores an intersection found between photography, sculpture, and the constructed moment. Her large-scale photographs are made from sculptures built in the studio on tabletops from found and raw materials, and documented with a large-format camera. Nayar's works draw from historical sources of art and architecture, and fabricate structures that explore the natures of experience and memory in a contemporary moment. Once recorded, the structures are disassembled and discarded. Only the photograph remains, as an object and entry point into a moment held together for the lens." This is my kind of work!

Yamini Nayar

Wednesday Work: Adam Smith

"One Foot In..."
five color (screen)print

He's a common fixture in my neighborhood.
I see his work at the same studio almost every First Friday and fall in love with it again every time.

He's Adam Smith. Of www.dearadamsmith.com and at Part Time Studios here in Fishtown.

"Nobody Ever Really Dies"

Three color screenprint on French Poptone paper.  12.5" x 19"

Thrillist just told me that you can now get ol' Ben here on a t-shirt at therethere:

"First American"

And in the spirit of the coming (Hallmark, albeit) holiday, this diptych makes our hearts go pitter-patter. 

Stay Soft (diptych) - Acrylic on panel.  12 x 30" each.

Buy a limited edition print here while the gettins' still good!

Wednesday Work: Tora Greve, you're in my dreams

(source)

Where to begin? Tora Greve was mentioned a few weeks back on a blog I follow fondly, Fine Little Day - and while I am not in the practice of re-posting, it piqued my interest, and I had to investigate more.

Tora Greve is an artist residing in the Netherlands, hand weaving these wonderful, weird, intriguing tapestries. Her site is largely committed to the Sirius Solar System - an extensive series of tapestries telling the story of the place.

(source)

I can't say I know anything about the Sirius Solar System, other than its moniker the Dog Star. But what I can say is this - I fell in love the minute I saw Tora Greve's work.

To work with such confidence in a seemingly free and playful way...well I want my studio practice to work like that. I am learning from you Tora.

(source)

I would like to have a cup of tea, or several with Tora Greve, discuss the "news, rumors and anecdotes about the star Sirius, its inhabitants and contactees." Discuss her adventures chasing the solar eclipse.

(source)

And see more of her Space Art. Then we should go to the flea market, look at the old and musty, while walking in the crisp autumn air, the browns and oranges and golden rod colors of the leaves on the trees, beneath our feet, crumbling, ... oh what a journey it would be.

(source)

Look at Tora Greve's extensive body of work, here.

And if you are on the East Coast today - put on your boots! It's snowy out there!

Wednesday Work: Robert Wiene: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Light!, Composition! Perspective! Oh My! It's never quite been done as Robert Wiene has done it, in his film noir: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. (1920.)

Having been said to be the inspiration for such contemporary film titles such as "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus", this film does not employ CGI, or any computer manipulation of the sort; this is real live set building, (tonal ranges painted in to play off of tonal ranges in the lighting (!)), real live film burning, capturing the exposure as the characters move across this surreal landscape in an early example of German expressionism.

There are not voices, nor is there dialogue, there are a few screens here and there of text, but mostly the film pulls you along via the visual experience with a classical musical score set over top.

I have to be honest, when I was made to watch this film early on in my schooling, I slept through it! Begrudging the experience even an ounce of my attention. Having grown older and wiser, now I look back at this gem of cinematography and shine in the afterglow of a masterpiece that is all but other-worldly.

(PS - It's available now on Netflix Instant Watch - you could see it for yourself while you eat breakfast!)

Wednesday Work: Ivan Liovik Ebel

No, I don't speak French, but hearing it makes me blush.

Yes, I do love minimalistic, geometric, pastel, low-fi, etc... reminiscent of Paris in the Springtime.... GUSH!

L’envers du corps II, 2009

huile sur toile (oil on canvas)

170 x 170 cm

St. Peter-Ording, 2010

huile sur toile (oil on canvas)

100 x 140 cm

Perspective cavalière IV, 2010

écoline sur papier (ecoline paper)

70 x 50 cm

Légère incertitude, 2010

huile sur toile (oil on canvas)

150 x 90 cm

Thanks http://thisisnthappiness.com for sharing.

Thanks Ivan Liovik Ebel, for bringing me back to down to planet Earth!

Wednesday Work: Speaking of Baroque - Modern Still Life Photography

(Sharon Core)

Though I referenced antique Baroque paintings in my last post about Alan Lightman's book, Einstein's Dreams, it should be noted that it was actually a contemporary still life photograph that I used as reference.

(Marian Drew)

The still life photographs of Sharon Core, Marian Drew, and Laura Letinsky, are gorgeous.

(Laura Letinsky)

Let's go eat a watermelon.