Saturday, January 31, 2009

Artists Working With Natural Elements - They're Everywhere!! Great Stuff from Seattle to Boston...

So here’s what happened – I had a classically tangential blogging experience today. I started to get ready to post a follow-up on Western Bridge (Seattle gallery I mentioned earlier this month showing the work of Anthony McCall) when I got swept away by trying to “quickly” research a few of the other artists in their current exhibition (which is wonderful and I’m going to mention in a moment). So of course I become entranced with the work of one particular artist (Tania Kitchell) and start finding all sorts of links to her work and then….I find this wonderful little interview with her on the Nymphoto Blog – here is the link: Nymphoto - A Conversation with Tania Kitchell

One of the images included at Western Bridge is shown below.

Tania Kitchell, Air (www.jamesharrisgallery.com)

Alas, this entry is a little convoluted, but I wanted to share all of this great stuff with you guys. So, what you’ll see below is a blurb about the current exhibition at Western Bridge as well as links to sites where you can find more information about the artists within.

Again, not all of the work is photographic or even necessarily lens based, but still very concerned with light, perception, etc. – as are WE!

Now, if only we could take a field trip to Seattle….

Untitled (A Brink of Infinity)
Roni Horn, Untitled (A Brink of Infinity), 1997
Photolithograph, 42 by 58 inches
Untitled (A Brink of Infinity)


Untitled (A Brink of Infinity)
At Western Bridge through May 9, 2009

Western Bridge announces the addition of new work to our ongoing,
continually rehung, periodically retitled exhibition Untitled (A Brink of
Infinity). Photographs by Olafur Eliasson, Roni Horn, Tania Kitchell, and
Sarah Lucas, and a book by Ed Ruscha, join the current exhibition,
featuring work by Tauba Auerbach, Dawn Clements, Claire Cowie,
Anthony McCall, and Mary Temple.

First titled Yes or No and/or Yes and No after a print by Auerbach, the
exhibition now takes its title from a newly installed Horn photolithograph.
Building from the work in our fall show Light, Seeking Light, in particular
Mary Temple's large painted light installation Raise, 2008, the winter
show develops and changes over the course of its run. Formal or
conceptual links between works are teased out through additions and
subtractions from the exhibition. In place of a single theme, a series of
associations build in various directions at once. Work seen in previous
exhibitions reappears in new contexts (such as Anthony McCall's video
installation Doubling Back, 2003, and Sarah Lucas's photograph
Summer, 1998), alongside new work entering the collection.

The photographs by Eliasson, Horn, Kitchell, and Lucas playfully address
the McCall installation, in which a beam of light projected through a haze-
filled gallery produces a continuously changing three-dimensional form. In
the photos, steam rises from the ground (Eliasson), mist crowns the roiling
ocean (Horn), wintry breaths float through snowflakes (Kitchell), and a
well-shaken can of beer erupts in the artist's face (Lucas). In each, a
photograph fixes a momentary form out of an almost immaterial substance.

Ed Ruscha's 1966 book Every Building on the Sunset Strip also makes a
permanent document of a moment withint a perpetual flux. Its subject is
the tatty length of LA's notorious Sunset Strip, the sides of which were
shot by the artist in a continual strip of photographs. Lined with buildings
in a variety of fashionable styles from mid-century modern to faux Tudor,
the Strip is a cacophonous mix of the newly constructed alongside (and
sometime identical to) the about to be knocked-down. The Strip exists in
a continuous tug-of-war between of-the-moment and out-of-date. Ruscha's
document shares with Dawn Clement's continuous drawing of an
apartment interior, Middlebury, a fixation on completeness that uses
rational means to make an irrational record.

Sarah Lucas ('Summer')
Iris print, 1998

25 in. x 21 5/8 in. (635 mm x 549 mm)


Above content from
Western Bridge

Links to several of the artists mentioned above are provided below:
http://www.anthonymccall.com/
http://www.artdvision.com/ (Solange Fabiao)
http://www.tanyabonakdargallery.com/artist.php?art_name=Susan%20Philipsz
Susan Philipsz)

http://www.marytemple.com/

One final bit for you all – after looking at the work of Mary Temple (great, great, great stuff – might in fact be useful for those of you in Color Digital who are working on your first assignment) I became aware of an upcoming exhibition at MASS MoCA in Boston that she will be a part of. I highly recommend having a look, the link is right here for you: Badlands – New Horizons in Landscape
May 24, 2008 - April 12, 2009
Building 4, First Floor
Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape

Anthony Goicolea, Tree Dwellers, 2004

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

More titles to request from Inter-Library Loan!!!

Dr. Libby just told me about the text below, I've already requested a copy myself but I'm certain there are others out there. Highly recommended.


After Photography.

By Fred Ritchin.
W W Norton & Company Inc, New York, 2008. 160 pp., 50 color illustrations., 6x8¼".

Publisher's Description

After Photography examines the myriad ways in which the digital revolution has fundamentally altered the way we receive visual information, from photos of news events taken by ordinary people on cell phones to the widespread use of image surveillance. In a world beset by critical problems and ambiguous boundaries, Fred Ritchin argues that it is time to begin energetically exploring the possibilities created by digital innovations and to use them to better understand our rapidly changing world.

Ritchin—one of our most influential commentators on photography—investigates the future of visual media as the digital revolution transforms images into a hypertextual medium, fundamentally changing the way we conceptualize the world. Simultaneously, the increased manipulation of photographs makes photography suspect as reliable documentation, raising questions about its role in recounting personal and public histories. In the tradition of John Berger and Susan Sontag, Ritchin analyzes photography's failings and reveals untapped potentials for the medium.



The text below could be useful for students (or other interested parties) in The Photograph as Language course. I'm going to try to find a copy and check it out - could be a nice companion to The Nature of Photographs and The Photographer's Eye.



How to Read a Photograph.
Lessons from Master Photographers.

By Ian Jeffrey.
Harry N Abrams-penguin/ Putnam, New York, 2008. 400 pp., 350 duotone and 50 color illustrations., 6¾x9½".

Publisher's Description

Ian Jeffrey is a superb guide in this profusely illustrated introduction to the appreciation of photography as an art form. Novices and experts alike will gain a deeper understanding of great photographers and their work, as Jeffrey decodes key images and provides essential biographical and historical background. Profiles of more than 100 major photographers, including Alfred Stieglitz, Bill Brandt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Paul Strand, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, highlight particular examples of styles and movements throughout the history of the medium. Each entry includes a concise biography along with an illuminating discussion of key works and nuggets of contextual information.


All content from Photo-Eye Newsletter

Friday, January 23, 2009

Two More Great Finds Today - Thomas Roma and Alec Soth

Another awesome find of the day - potentially GREAT new(ish) book. And by the way powerHouse books (this book's publisher) is incredible, be sure to go hang out there anytime you find yourselves in Brooklyn (powerHouse).

Robert Coles & Thomas Roma: House Calls with William Carlos Williams, MD
from Mark Hillringhouse

In House Calls with William Carlos Williams, MD, Robert Coles writes: "Dr. Williams would look at buildings, doors, windows, long and hard before he actually entered a place to meet people." When you open the pages of this book, you encounter those same buildings, doors, windows and people in the more than sixty duotone photographs from Thomas Roma accompanying Coles's text...

read the whole review
above content from photo-eye newsletter

AND, a great lil' book put together by Alec Soth - cheap too - only around 17 bucks from littlebrownmushroom.com

Info and an image below:
The Last Days of W - Alec Soth. 2008.

48 page, self-published artist book printed on newsprint.

"During these last days of the administration, what is the point of protest, satire or any other sort of rabble-rousing? In assembling this collection of pictures I’ve made over the last eight years, I’m not really trying to accomplish much at all. But as President Bush once said, 'One of the great things about books is, sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.'" - Alec Soth


More information can be found on the website of Alec Soth
above image from alecsoth.com, text from littlebrownmushroom.com

Darren Ell - Between States

Just came across some pretty interesting work that has been shown in the past at Dazibao in Montreal and is currently a traveling exhibition. Wonderful contemporary investigation of portraiture and documentary style.

From the Dazibao website:
Darren Ell is a photographer and activist. His involvement, informed by close collaboration with social justice organizations such as Solidarity across Borders, Justice for Mohamed Harkat and Homes not Bombs, goes well beyond a mere connection to a subject. His close familiarity with his subjects, moreover, is surely at the root of the incredible power of his work. In these large-format portraits—it’s as if he were revealing, larger than life, the hidden face of a society which believes itself to be inclusive, fair and tolerant—there are no victims or heroes. Rather, Ell’s images place us face to face with ourselves. They question our own value system and perhaps our too-passive resistance. Accompanied by a sound track in which the individuals photographed describe their situation, Darren Ell’s work brings the documentary genre up to date.

Mahmoud Jaballah
Metro West Detention Centre, Toronto

Mahmoud was arrested, tortured and released without charge seven times in Egypt’s repression of devout Muslims. His wife’s torture led to a miscarriage. They claimed refugee status in Canada in 1996. A father of six, Mahmoud became the principal of an Islamic school in Scarborough. Relying on information from the Egyptian authorities, Canadian Security and Intelligence Services (CSIS) arrested him on a security certificate in 1999 for alleged involvement in a terrorist organization. The case was quashed, the secret evidence deemed not credible. Mahmoud was re-arrested in August 2001. No new evidence was cited. Mahmoud denied all allegations but has been held without charge or access to evidence since. He has developed chronic back pain, respiratory problems, chest pains, fainting spells and diminished concentration while in detention. The Government of Canada admits that he would face torture or death if deported. In December 2006, he went on a hunger strike to protest his conditions.