senza-titolo (untitled)

Viaggio Opening

2009-04-23T21:04:00.003+02:00

Hello to Everyone!

I hope the change in the weather to the warm is bringing happiness in sloughing off this long winter.

Two things about my upcoming exhibit Viaggio con Le Viste:

I was interviewed this morning by Marya Morstad, host of Art Matters at KFAI radio. It will be played on air this evening (90.3 Minneapolis, 106.7 Saint Paul) from 7-7:30 pm. For those of you out of the range of radio signal, you can go to http://www.kfai.org/node/97 to listen online.

Secondly, the exhibit opens on Saturday! I hope to see you there!

Many thanks are in order to many people who have made this exhibit possible: David Heberlein, Morgan Clifford, Tim Old, Tom Arndt, Carl Toth, Margherita Guerra, Valeria Cossu, Archivi Alinari, Christian Korab, Gary Wolfe and Art Holdings, Nassim Rossi and the Italian Cultural Center, and many many others who have touched me and left a mark. Thank you for your friendship and support over the last four years of this project.

Brett

Solo Exhibition

2009-03-24T02:14:00.008+01:00

Please join me on the evening of Saturday April 25th from 6-9pm to celebrate the opening reception for the first solo exhibition of my photographs made in Italy entitled:
Viaggio con Le Viste (Journey with Views).

The Italian Cultural Center of Minneapolis/Saint Paul is the shows sponsor, and the venue will be The Dining Studio in Northeast Minneapolis. My work will be up from April 24th to June 21st, and I will be giving a talk about the work on May 19th from 7-8pm with a reception to follow.

I hope to see you there!

Brett

Happy New Year!!!

2008-12-31T18:11:00.002+01:00

For the sake of a new year...

2008-12-19T13:56:00.001+01:00

Happy Holidays!

2008-12-13T16:01:00.002+01:00

It's been a busy year....I'm generally not a fan of the "once a year catch up letter"...it's in the same ball park as Larry David's "stop and chat". So I'm not going to write one. Against my principles.

Here's a card instead. I hope everyone is well, and best of wishes for this new year and all that it brings!

Take a looksee...

2008-11-20T20:50:00.001+01:00

Hello everyone!

My assistant has been hard at work and the big reveal of my website is now ready! To view it, you can go to www.brettkallusky.com. I have photographs dating from 1999 to 2008 (the span of almost a whole decade…) on the website. I am very proud of this work and hope you all enjoy. *

Regards,

Brett Kallusky

*dictated, but not read by Brett Kallusky

Keeping with Halloween

2008-10-28T22:12:00.003+01:00

Can you tell me why in the Pampas, ay and elsewhere, there are bats that come out at night and open the veins of cattle and horses and suck dry their veins, how in some islands of the Western seas there are bats which hang on the trees all day, and those who have seen describe as like giant nuts or pods, and that when the sailors sleep on the deck, because that it is hot, flit down on them and then, and then in the morning are found dead men, white as even Miss Lucy was?"

"Good God, Professor!" I said, starting up. "Do you mean to tell me
that Lucy was bitten by such a bat, and that such a thing is here in
London in the nineteenth century?"

From Bram Stoker's Dracula

Not as gruesome as you might think....

2008-10-23T18:09:00.003+02:00

This is a photograph made at St. Roch in New Orleans this past spring while teaching a Photo Essay class down there....

About the saint himself: A french nobleman who gave up his wealth at a young age to look after the sick, specifically those affected by the plague. The story goes that he himself came down with the plague, went to the forest to die, and met a dog. Apparently the dog brought him food, and nursed him back to health.

Upon recovery he returned to his home town of Montpellier and was promptly arrested for spying. He was jailed and died in prison five years later.

He is known as the patron saint of invalids, and dogs...

The Monster

2008-10-22T18:34:00.007+02:00

I remember a photograph made by Dan Estabrook of his studio in the late 90's. It was the most frightening shot of a view camera I had ever seen. Dan explained to me the feeling of immobility in the face of trying to create in his studio. At the time I was incredulous at the fact...I thought if you have your own studio, everything must be great. Today I get it.

I made a similar photograph at Cranbrook in 2003...it has poignancy for me today as i strive to create new work. Everything you may want, or may be afraid of lie under that dark cloth, in that space that has been carved for light.

Seven Years and a day ago...view from my apt. rooftop in Brooklyn

2008-09-11T22:21:00.002+02:00

Google Search: Disingenuous

2008-08-09T20:45:00.002+02:00

Disingenuous

adj.

Not straightforward or candid; insincere or calculating: “an ambitious, disingenuous, philistine, and hypocritical operator, who … exemplified … the most disagreeable traits of his time” (David Cannadine).
Pretending to be unaware or unsophisticated; faux-naïf.
Usage Problem. Unaware or uninformed; naive.

Recent, Upcoming and Current Events

2008-02-27T14:53:00.004+01:00

Last Saturday I took part in the MCP Portfolio Review along with gallerist and photographer Kathleen Day Coen. This was a great opportunity to see the work of several photographers with different bodies of work and give feedback. I would encourage anyone looking for some outside perspective to what they are doing to give this a try. Two peoples work who I was not familiar with but enjoyed....Michael McGraw and Aaron Bommarito.

Today I am a visiting artist at Bethel University and will be sharing my experiences from Cranbrook and the Fulbright with undergraduate students in the photography program under the charge of Lex Thompson.

Friday...Colleen Mullins will have a lecture and opening at 9th Street Gallery in lowertown St. Paul. The lecture is at 6pm with the opening to follow. In addition there are all sorts of photography shows going on right now in the Twin Cities...

Paul Shambroom at the Weisman Museum, August Sander at Weinstein Gallery, The Populated Landscape at Flanders Contemporary Art, JoAnne Verburg and Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscape at the Walker Art Center.

Also...don't forget to see Mica Lee Anders work in the group show Soul on Ice at the Soap Factory!

More Cuts

2008-02-04T15:14:00.001+01:00

Fontana at work

2008-01-30T19:06:00.001+01:00

Photographed by Ugo Mulas

Lucio Fontana and Francis Bacon walk into Mussolini's Kitchen...

2008-01-26T19:14:00.000+01:00

Upcoming Event

2008-01-26T18:47:00.001+01:00

Colleen Mullins will be exhibiting her work from a project entitled Elysium, a collection of images documenting and describing the landscape of New Orleans that has been overlooked in the tragedy of Post-Katrina recovery. Her images not only evoke a sense of the event that forever altered the landscape, but also pose the questions of where priorities and responsibilities lay in the stewardship of a distinctly unique urban forest. She will be speaking about her project on February 29th at 6pm at the 9th Street Entry Gallery in St. Paul, with a reception to follow.

Through the Looking Glass

2008-01-23T16:48:00.001+01:00

Clean Slate

2008-01-22T14:56:00.001+01:00

Neruda

2008-01-21T00:40:00.000+01:00

My Aunt and Uncle just returned from Chile, where they visited Pablo Neruda's nautical themed home in Valparaiso. They said it was quite the experience, reflecting aspects of a ship in every room. My uncle told me that in fact Neruda was not a sailor, and was in fact deathly afraid of the water. I find this compelling based upon the imagery in so many of his poems is based on waves, water, and cyclical gravitation...oh the irony of fear and desire.

At any rate, a poem on a Sunday.

Love by Pablo Neruda

What's wrong with you, with us,
what's happening to us?
Ah our love is a harsh cord
that binds us wounding us
and if we want
to leave our wound,
to separate,
it makes a new knot for us and condemns us
to drain our blood and burn together.

What's wrong with you? I look at you
and I find nothing in you but two eyes
like all eyes, a mouth
lost among a thousand mouths that I have kissed, more beautiful,
a body just like those that have slipped
beneath my body without leaving any memory.

And how empty you went through the world
like a wheat-colored jar
without air, without sound, without substance!
I vainly sought in you
depth for my arms
that dig, without cease, beneath the earth:
beneath your skin, beneath your eyes,
nothing,
beneath your double breast scarcely
raised
a current of crystalline order
that does not know why it flows singing.
Why, why, why,
my love, why?

Tangled

2008-01-19T06:22:00.000+01:00

Portfolio Review at MCP

2008-01-19T00:03:00.000+01:00

Information on how to have me look at your work if you happen to be in the Twin Cities on Saturday February 23rd from 1:00-3:00pm at the Minnesota Center for Photography.

Upcoming Photo Shows-MPLS/Philly

2008-01-18T15:40:00.000+01:00

Ryan Widger is showing SOLO at the Kelly Webber Gallery in April...

check this promo video out for more information on Mr. Widger and his work.

http://dskessler.com/studioscopic/

James Henkel is exhibting at Gallery CO opening this weekend in Minneapolis...

http://www.galleryco.net/current/

Fuzzy Cage...

2008-01-17T16:33:00.001+01:00

Don't need a weatherman...

2008-01-16T23:42:00.001+01:00

Disabled Love

2008-01-16T21:08:00.000+01:00

Somedays you eat the bar, and others, well...

2008-01-15T02:14:00.000+01:00

To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another:
that is perhaps the most difficult of all out tasks, the ultimate, the last test and
proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. For this reason young
people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to
learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about
their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning
time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and
far into life, is solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves.

Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over and uniting with
another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished,
still subordinate?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become
world, to become world for himself for another's sake. It is a great exacting claim
upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things. Only in
this sense, as the task of working at themselves ("to hearken and to hammer day
and night"), might young people use the love that is given them. Merging and
surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must save and
gather for along, long time still), is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which
human lives as yet scarcely suffice.

Whoever looks seriously at it finds that neither for death, which is difficult,
nor for difficult love has any explanation, any solution, any hint of way yet
been discerned; and for these two problems that we carry wrapped up and
hand on without opening, it will not be possible to discover any general rule
resting in agreement. But in the same measure in which we begin as individuals
to put life to the test, we shall, being individuals, meet these great things at
closer range. The demands which the difficult work of love makes upon our
development are more than life-size, and as beginners we are not up to them.
But if we nevertheless hold out and take this love upon us as burden and
apprenticeship, instead of losing ourselves in all the light and frivolous play,
behind which people have hidden from the most earnest earnestness of their
existence - then a little progress and alleviation will perhaps be perceptible
to those who come long after us; that would be much.

Rainer Maria Rilke

from Letters to a Young Poet

Home Sweet Home

2008-01-15T02:07:00.001+01:00

Writings on a wall....

2008-01-12T20:29:00.000+01:00

...out of water (with some inside).

2008-01-09T11:17:00.001+01:00

From MNCP's Website: Steve Benson

2008-01-08T16:14:00.000+01:00

Steven Benson

Second Tuesday Lecture + Steven Benson:
The Cost of Power in China: The Three Gorges Dam and the Yangtze River Valley

January 8, 2008 - 7:00 PM

Photographer Steven Benson will discuss his much acclaimed photo essay documenting 400 miles of the Yangtze River valley before the reservoir behind the Three Gorges dam filled in 2003 flooding 13 cities, 140 towns, 1,352 villages and forcing two million people to leave their ancestral homes. He will address, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the construction of the world's largest dam and the effect it has had on the valley's people and their way of life. A book of this work was published in 2006 by Black Opal Press with essays by A.D. Coleman and Dai Qing and a limited number of copies will be available for signing.

Bio
Steven Benson received a Masters Degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He has received numerous fellowships and grants, including three Creative Artist Grants (Michigan Council for the Arts) and an NEA/ArtsMidwest Fellowship. Benson is in many private and public collections, including Museum of Fine Art (Houston), Detroit Institute of Arts, Bibliotheque Nationale (France), Centre Georges Pompidou, Museet for Fotokunst (Denmark). His recent exhibitions are FotoFest Biennial, Argentinean Biennial of Documentary Photography (2004), International Festival of Photography (Poland), Internationale Fototage Biennial (Germany, 2005), International Photography Gathering (Syria), Daegu Photo Biennale (South Korea), Lianzhou International Festival of Photography (China), Odense Foto Triennale (Denmark, 2006), retrospective FlatFile Galleries (Chicago, 2007), FotoFest 2008 Biennial. His book, The Cost of Power in China: The Three Gorges Dam and the Yangtze River Valley, with essays by A.D. Coleman and Dai Qing - interview by Jens Friis - was published by Black Opal Press in 2006.

web links:
www.stevenbenson.com

Moody

2008-01-07T22:58:00.000+01:00

Dumped...Sorry Mother, Left

2008-01-07T17:05:00.001+01:00

Silent Treatment

2008-01-07T06:18:00.001+01:00

Goodbye

2008-01-05T18:48:00.001+01:00

Fold

2008-01-03T02:20:00.001+01:00

Fan

2007-12-31T16:23:00.001+01:00

Shaking out the cobwebs...

2007-12-31T00:02:00.001+01:00

Grand Marais Lean...

2007-12-29T18:16:00.000+01:00

Merry Christmas...

2007-12-24T17:41:00.000+01:00

The Pole

...&more...

2007-12-22T20:58:00.001+01:00

...&more...

2007-12-22T08:14:00.001+01:00

...& More...

2007-12-21T19:22:00.001+01:00

& More...

2007-12-20T04:07:00.000+01:00

2007-12-18T19:33:00.001+01:00

New Edit

2007-12-18T04:43:00.000+01:00

Images from a year gone by.

in tre mese

2007-09-15T15:43:00.000+02:00

Keyword:Emotions

2007-09-15T08:55:00.000+02:00

Keyword:Pavlov

2007-09-14T02:29:00.001+02:00

Six Years Ago Today...My View.

2007-09-11T20:23:00.001+02:00

Keyword:Crock

2007-09-11T00:48:00.001+02:00

Keyword:Resemble

2007-09-09T17:02:00.001+02:00

Keyword:Opportunity

2007-09-08T18:38:00.001+02:00

Keyword:Gone

2007-09-08T10:14:00.001+02:00

Keyword:Releif

2007-09-07T19:43:00.001+02:00

Keyword:Bait

2007-09-07T15:13:00.001+02:00

Keyword:Crush

2007-09-06T01:28:00.000+02:00

Keyword:Ruthless

2007-09-04T12:54:00.001+02:00

Keyword:Desire

2007-09-04T01:04:00.000+02:00

Love This Photograph

2007-09-03T08:34:00.000+02:00

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....

2007-08-28T04:38:00.000+02:00

Muir Woods,Yoshi's, Stinson Beach

2007-08-22T04:23:00.001+02:00

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

2007-08-04T23:12:00.000+02:00

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

2007-08-04T00:49:00.001+02:00

First trickle of imagery from my trip to the Dells.

Yardbirds 1966 Blow Up

2007-08-01T02:46:00.001+02:00

Talk about status!

Michelangelo Antonioni

2007-08-01T02:21:00.000+02:00

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...

2007-07-21T15:41:00.000+02:00

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

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

Independence Day

2007-07-03T12:31:00.000+02:00

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

2007-07-01T18:29:00.000+02:00

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!

2007-06-27T16:50:00.000+02:00

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

2007-06-26T16:22:00.000+02:00

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

2007-06-19T17:15:00.000+02:00

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!

2007-06-19T07:24:00.000+02:00

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

2007-06-12T16:36:00.000+02:00

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.

2007-06-11T20:06:00.000+02:00

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.

2007-01-03T22:22:00.000+01:00

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

senza-titolo (untitled)

Viaggio Opening

Solo Exhibition

Happy New Year!!!

For the sake of a new year...

Happy Holidays!

Take a looksee...

Keeping with Halloween

Not as gruesome as you might think....

The Monster

Seven Years and a day ago...view from my apt. rooftop in Brooklyn

Google Search: Disingenuous

Recent, Upcoming and Current Events

More Cuts

Fontana at work

Lucio Fontana and Francis Bacon walk into Mussolini's Kitchen...

Upcoming Event

Through the Looking Glass

Clean Slate

Neruda

Tangled

Portfolio Review at MCP

Upcoming Photo Shows-MPLS/Philly

Fuzzy Cage...

Don't need a weatherman...

Disabled Love

Somedays you eat the bar, and others, well...

Home Sweet Home

Writings on a wall....

...out of water (with some inside).

From MNCP's Website: Steve Benson

Second Tuesday Lecture + Steven Benson:The Cost of Power in China: The Three Gorges Dam and the Yangtze River Valley

Moody

Dumped...Sorry Mother, Left

Silent Treatment

Goodbye

Fold

Fan

Shaking out the cobwebs...

Grand Marais Lean...

Merry Christmas...

...&more...

...&more...

...& More...

& More...

More

New Edit

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

This one has left a scar....

Muir Woods,Yoshi's, Stinson Beach

The Man Sitting in the Corridor

Flower Room

Yardbirds 1966 Blow Up

Michelangelo Antonioni

Shooting Ducks...

Independence Day

Event

Cold Feet

Loss

MCP/McKnight Fellowship Results!

bailliwik

Second Tuesday Lecture + Steven Benson:
The Cost of Power in China: The Three Gorges Dam and the Yangtze River Valley