Saturday, March 29, 2014

Carrie Mae Weems at the Guggenheim

Carrie Mae Weems, Josephine BakerLena Horne, and Katherine Dunham (from “Slow Fade to Black”), 2010–11. Inkjet prints, 49 1/4 x 37 inches (124.5 x 94 cm) each. Collection of the artist. Courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. © Carrie Mae Weems. (Image Sourced from:  E-flux Press Release)

Carrie Mae Weems LIVE: Past Tense/Future Perfect

Friday, April 25–Sunday, April 27, 2014
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
5th Ave at 89th St
New York City

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Photosynthesis - New Feature on Urbanautica's Photoschools

Just received a note from Steve Bisson today, announcing this new feature on Photoschools.  Seems like it could be pretty fun, as anyone can contribute. Here's how he describes it:

"Every 3 weeks we will add a new and different chapter. Each chapter is an open page [where the] contributions of our followers [will be archived]. Thanks to them in less than 24 hours we have created the Dogs page that will keep growing in the future.

This is project is meant to become a tool for students, photographers, educators, and fans of photography.  Proposals for starting new chapters are welcome as well!"

Click HERE to peruse the entire Photoschools site.

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Robert Heinecken @ MOMA

Robert Heinecken (American, 1931–2006). Are You Rea #1. 1964–68. Lithograph, 10 13/16 x 7 7/8" (27.4 x 20cm). Mr. and Mrs. Clark Winter Fund. © 2013 The Robert Heinecken Trust (Image Sourced from MoMA)
Opening today in New York, the press release for Robert Heinecken:  Object Matter describes it as "the first retrospective of the groundbreaking work of Robert Heinecken since his death in 2006. [Heinecken] came of age artistically in 1960s Los Angeles, where the burgeoning art scene and proximity to Hollywood provided fertile ground for experimentation. In this environment Heinecken—alongside peers making Pop art and Conceptual art—pushed the boundaries between mediums and between high and popular culture.  Drawing on the countless pictures in magazines, books, pornography, television, and even consumer items such as TV dinners, Heinecken used found images to explore the manufacture of daily life by mass media and the relationship between the original and the copy, both in art and in our culture at large. Thriving on contradictions, friction, and disparity, his examination of American attitudes toward gender, sex, and violence was often humorous and always provocative."

Click HERE to view additional images and read more about the exhibition.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Pantone Portraits

Image Credit:  Angelica Dass (Sourced from feature shoot)
I thought this work on feature shoot yesterday was pretty in keeping with our recent discussions around photography and the body.  It's definitely worth a look.  View more of the images and read about the photographs of Angelica Dass HERE.

Speaking about the work in the interview, Dass states, “If what I wanted was to destroy the concepts of colors associated with race, such as red, yellow, white and black, it would not be logical to use a color scale that works with percentages of these colors. That’s why I chose not to use CMYK or RGB. Pantone works on a neutral scale, where a color has no more importance than another. It’s a very identifiable scale for those in the world of design, but also easily understood by anyone. It provides a way to look objectively at the ‘human object.'"


Wednesday, March 5, 2014

2014 Whitney Biennial - First Reviews Are Coming In...

Nicely descriptive post on Hyperallergic today detailing curator Michelle Grabner's "floor" at the Whitney. Keep your eyes out for more reviews, as there will likely be a very mixed bag of responses. Click HERE to read the Hyperallergic review and click HERE to peruse the Whitney's website for the Biennial.

Detail of Dawoud Bey’s “Maxine Adams and Amelia Maxwell (from the Birmingham Project)” (2012), two pigmented inkjet prints mounted on Dibond, ed. no. 1/6 (Sourced from Hyperallergic)

Monday, March 3, 2014

Trevor Paglen in Response to, "Is Photography Over?"

It looks like Trevor Paglen is the guest blogger on Still Searching for the coming weeks.  He's provided an overview of his approach to tackling the question(s) posed a couple of years back during a symposium at SFMOMA.  I'm excited to hear what he has to say.  He's setting the conversation up pretty nicely.  In his closing he states that,

"Over the next few weeks, I want begin thinking about how to begin thinking through the 21st Century’s emerging photographic landscape, and the ways both photographic practices and photographs themselves are changing...

I’ll start by introducing the idea of photography as “seeing machines” and explore questions such as: How do we see the world with machines? What happens if we think about photography in terms of imaging systems instead of images?  How can we think about images made-by-machines-for-other-machines? What are the implications of a world in which photography is both ubiquitous and, curiously, largely invisible?"

I recommend reading the entire blog post HERE and following Still Searching so that you are alerted to follow-up posts.

Sunday, March 2, 2014

The Benefits of Work-in-Progress Feedback

In college studio art courses, students often struggle with longer term projects as the expectations and outcomes generally differ from standard assignments. Rather than working toward completing a particular task with clearly defined parameters, self-directed projects allow students to define their own content and determine their own goals, and offer time for the work to develop over the course of weeks, months or even years.  

In 2012, Tom Griggs of fototazo solicited artists and arts professionals to help his students with this process through a mentoring program that he began publishing semi-regularly on the blog.  I think students will find the feedback useful as they think about how their own work might be interpreted by those not immediately familiar with their practice and process.  

Click the link below to view a set of images by Colombian student photographer Natalia Lopera, along with her mentors responses:


© Natalia Lopera, untitled #8 (Image sourced from fototazo)



Saturday, March 1, 2014

Review of the ICP Show "What is a Photograph?" on Collector Daily

It seems most of the reviews I've come across of this exhibition are fairly critical of it as being a relatively simplistic overview rather than a challenging grouping of works.  All the same, most reviewers seem pleased with much of the work included, as does Loring Knoblauch in the review on Collector Daily, which you can read HERE.  This is a show worth thinking about, at the very least. I recommend visiting the ICP site and seeking out some of the other reviews, such as the one in The New York Times.

Installation View, What Is a Photograph? @ ICP (Image Sourced from Collector Daily)