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Shaking out the cobwebs...

Grand Marais Lean...

Merry Christmas...

The Pole

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New Edit

Images from a year gone by.

in tre mese

Keyword:Emotions

Keyword:Pavlov

Six Years Ago Today...My View.

Keyword:Crock

Keyword:Resemble

Keyword:Opportunity

Keyword:Gone

Keyword:Releif

Keyword:Bait

Keyword:Crush

Keyword:Ruthless

Keyword:Desire

Love This Photograph

After Alec Soth's Flickrfest last week on his blog, I'm back with the keyword search.
In keeping with the visceral imagery and germain subject matter...any guesses?

This photo is by someone named supercapacity in NYC. This is her link.

This one has left a scar....

Muir Woods,Yoshi's, Stinson Beach

Muir Woods is a magical place...I don't mean with unicorns and druids and whatnot...just sheer humbling beauty.













Yoshi's in Oakland is a hip joint to check out amazing music. In this case: Marco Benevento.
Check him out.












The overlook from the campsite B&B and I along with new friends stayed. We were almost smote by a meteor. Honest. See here.



Thank you to Brian and Bekah for showing an accomplished (hrumph) photographer an amazing time on the west coast. I'll be back.

The Man Sitting in the Corridor

In front of them is the changeless rolling plain going down to the river. Some clouds appear and advance together, following one another at a slow unhurried pace. They're moving towards the mouth of the river, towards the unbounded vastness. Their dull shadows pass lightly over the fields, over the river.

From the house on the rise there comes no sound.
Marguerite Duras

Sardegna, April 2006

Flower Room

First trickle of imagery from my trip to the Dells.

Yardbirds 1966 Blow Up

Talk about status!

Michelangelo Antonioni

A friend informed me via text message today that acclaimed director Michelangelo Antonioni died...my heart broke. I had received a text from the same friend yesterday that Ingmar Bergman had passed on. Two masters of 20th century cinema passing on in one day. This made me think of the photography world recent loss of John Swarkowski and Ted Hartwell in the same week.

Back to Antonioni however: I first saw his 1966 masterpiece Blowup while living in Chicago, the Spring before I went off to graduate school. My friend Tom Arndt suggested it as something I should watch, and watch I did. I was not quite understanding of the nuances the first go-round, but I was extremely appreciative of Antonioni's deft interlacing of photography and music as metaphor for protest and apathy in a turbulent time.

Not until Carl Toth gave a lecture and screening of the film in graduate school did I feel like I had a firm handle on the power of this film, arguably the most "pop" of his work, but also the most subversive. At any rate, I now incorporate Blowup into the curriculum of a photographic design course I teach from time to time. Not only does it allow for students to be exposed to a representation of a time that fades more and more every day, but also to ideas of sequencing and narrative through closer exploration of their work.

Shooting Ducks...

Off to shoot after many months of editing Italy images...

I feel like this...(see left).

Independence Day

Found this gem after an Independence Day google search. It's a coloring picture for children. I'm not sure if this is quite the right message we want to get across from a "safety" standpoint, but it is funny. I will look for the French equivalent of this for Bastille Day on the 15th of July. I'm dubious at my prospects, but we'll see.

Event

I went to an opening last night at the Soap Factory in Minneapolis where my friends Tucker and Fiona work. What a show! It was the most raucous opening I have ever been to...with bands, art, and a scene I could only watch from the sideline and enjoy.

Couple of things...check out Burlesque Design out of Northeast Minneapolis...this company has their stuff together. They were selling screen printed posters, stickers, and shirts. I met Mike Davis, designer and hard bargainer (I still want the MM Food poster Mike), and had a great conversation about education and collaboration in the visual arts...it was really refreshing to meet someone so skilled and so low key. Made my night.

Next...the band Birthday Suits were simply amazing live. Check them out if you get the chance, you won't be disappointed.

And finally: Congratulations to Suz Szucs, who is moving on to greener pastures at R.I.T in Rochester NY to continue her professional quest of passing on her expertise in the photographic arts to students on the east coast. It's been a good run here Suz. Good Luck!

Bernd Becher, 75, Photographer of German Industrial Landscape, Dies











My photography professor from undergraduate school sent me this link yesterday from the NY Times. I remember being exposed to the Becher's work as an undergraduate photographer, and initially being underwhelmed. It took me a while to warm up to the cold facades of blast furnaces, water towers, and mines. However, once I did, I was influenced greatly by the full frontal no nonsense approach to seeing. My interest in their work however falls short at the word "typology", often thrown around when discussing the Becher's photography. The study of types. Well no kidding.

Google image search for "Typology" I found not one Becher photograph, but ran across this gem. I'm particularly enamored with the fact that Brooke Shields is the "artist" type.

Cold Feet

So, I am sitting in my apartment, recently vacated by the woman I love and couldn't help but think of the term "Cold Feet".

I'm not sure exactly why there is a negative connotation with having feet that are cold. I happen to like having my feet out from under the sheets or blanket when I sleep at night. Generally they are cold when I do this, and I sleep like a baby.

I tried looking for images pertaining to "Cold Feet" and found a group of images where the bride is trying to grab the groom as he heads for the hills. This is a misnomer as I have recently found out...the opposite can happen as well. This type of imagery leads a bad taste in my mouth, especially now.

So, instead of trying to find imagery by someone else, I am posting a set of photos I made while at Cranbrook Academy of Art, when my relationship was in full blossom, and trudging around our apartment making photographs, my feet were most definitely cold, and I was happy as I am when I sleep.
I seem to recall this work was critiqued as contrary to the work I had been doing in Flint, MI simultaneously. These photographs were of something being built not something that was crumbling and forgotten. I felt like this was an apt observation of this "side" project. In a way it seemed hopeful to me at the time, and with a couple of years hindsight, even now. The irony of course is that the stakes and column bolts were the foundation for cookie cutter architecture that defines suburbia. I like to think I caught the space when it was at it's most beautiful.

Loss

I am thinking about loss right now, having just experienced a painful loss. Doing a Google search, of photographs that deal with loss immediately spawned images of mens hair loss. Go figure. I then thought about one of my favorite photographers, Robert Frank. Of all of the iconic images Frank has made dealing with loss, this one stuck with me, punches me in the gut saying: this is what it is, neither positive nor negative, it just is. For me there is a tension in this photo that goes beyond what words can describe.












©Robert Frank


I find this image also ties in with something that Colleen Mullins is experiencing this week, however in probably a more somber way. For words and images that deal with the deep blue sea and what it invokes for her, check out FiveYearsAtSea.

I read A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis before I ever had a reason to do so. Now that I do I take comfort in his opening paragraph, which launches the tone of the book in the most poetic and visceral of ways:

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing."

MCP/McKnight Fellowship Results!

2007 MCP/McKnight Fellowship results are in....and the recipients are:

Peter Latner
Paula McCartney
Anthony Marchetti
Thomas Wik

Congratulations to you all!

On Saturday, August 4, MCP will open New Photography: McKnight Fellows 2006/2007, featuring the work of last year's Fellows--Kristine Heykants, Orin Rutchick, Mickey Smith, and Angela Strassheim.

bailliwik

Check out new work published this spring in Bailliwik out of Chicago, IL. Put out by Robert Hunt and Surabhi Ghosh, Bailliwik is a great venue for artists, writers, and photographers.

OK. I'm making an attempt to get this thing going. Those of you who have visited on and off since January...you're efforts have not been in vain. Stay Tuned.

New Year. Maybe a New Blog?? We shall see...