A Photography Blog

Check out Foley Gallery’s The Summer Show Project. And be a star.

Buy photographer Tait Simpson‘s Canon EOS 1DS Mark II !

Interested in an MFA but can’t pursue one for any of a hundred rational reasons? Ride along with photographer and thoughtful fellow James Pomerantz as he completes his degree at SVA! James starts school today, and you can start with him, on his brand new blog, A Photo Student.

Here’s what it looks like:

I asked James just what he’s up to- read all about it!

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Hallo, JP! I hear you are going to do an MFA at SVA! Tell me how you came to this decision; what made you yearn again for the classroom, and what do you hope to gain from it?

Hey RH! You heard right. I’m going back to school. Rodney Dangerfield did it, so why can’t I?

My reasons for going back to school are pretty basic: I feel a bit like a child having difficulty expressing his thoughts. I have questions. I wasn’t fulfilled by what I was doing or what my photography was doing. I found it more enjoyable to work slowly with a large format camera and some Kodak film than I did to run around with a digital camera meeting daily deadlines. I found myself more interested in trying to document something personally interesting instead of considering what others might be interested in seeing.

I think going back to school is like going to see a marriage counselor or a therapist. I want to have clearer lines of communication between my brain and my photographs. Two years of school for an MFA isn’t for everyone. Many of the photographers I most admire don’t have MFAs and I wouldn’t presume to tell anybody else that they should do what I’m doing or that it’s the right thing to do.

I’m hoping that the answers to the questions I have will come through building upon different areas of my photography:

1. Strengthening my technical skills. I look at work by Barry Frydlender, Gregory Crewdson or Andreas Gefeller and I don’t have a clue how they do it. I’m pretty oblivious when it comes to lighting or post-processing.

2. Strengthening my understanding of contemporary photography and the theory behind it. One of the courses I’m taking:

Contemporary Criticism with Richard Leslie: This course is designed to examine both general and specific areas of critical discourse. The first project is to examine the distinctions between commonly used terms such as “history,” “analysis,” “theory,” “criticism” and “critical theory” in broad, but grounded, terms. The second project is to delineate the concepts of modernism and postmodernism by tracing the development of specific methodologies such as formalism, Marxism, semiotics, literary theory, structuralism and poststructuralism, deconstruction, feminism and psychoanalysis. This mix also provides location of emerging discourses in cultural studies, and issues of imaging and representation. Understanding the issues as an interrelated history of ideas will be emphasized.

That’s some heady stuff!

3. Strengthening my images and the ideas behind them through rigorous critiques with a group of equally curious peers and instructors including Penelope Umbrico, Collier Schorr, Shimon Attie and Liz Deschenes.

I think that being a part of community where the basic intent is to study “new theories, contexts and techniques of an evolving, creative medium” is pretty damn exciting.

It’s very kind of you to share this experience with others- what will the blog encompass? is it intended to bring folks with you on your scholarly journey, or to tell them about your own progress?

The blog will have a lot of my experiences at school. After a critique, I’ll likely post some of my images and what the feedback was. I’m hoping that some of my peers at SVA will be willing to share their experiences too. I’ll be reaching out to students I know at other programs. I’ll try and interview gallery owners, editors, professors and whoever else will give me the time of day. When I was looking at MFA programs, I was fortunate to be able to talk to people in the photo industry and art world who I’ve met over the past five years that I’ve been working as a photographer. I went and sat in a critique at Yale. I went up to Columbia and talked to Thomas Roma who runs the program there. I was still pretty confused! I’m hoping this blog can lessen some of the confusion for others interested in getting an MFA. For those who don’t want to get an MFA, maybe they’ll be interested in picking up one of the books we’re reading, or checking out some of the work we’re discussing. I guess I also want my blog to be a community where people can discuss “new theories, contexts and techniques of an evolving, creative medium.”

Do you hope to continue to make the same kind of work you have been making, or will we suddenly see you in a studio making beautifully lit and precise portraits (or something similarly different)…

I have no idea! I’ve been feeling very liberated lately. I really don’t know what the next two years will be like and I’m so comfortable in my ignorance. I’m excited to embrace whatever happens and I’m keeping a very open-mind about growth and change.

Do you hope to parlay your Ms Fs and As into a teaching position some day? Because this blog sure would be a great start.

I think it would be great to teach. Some of my favorite photographers also hold teaching positions: Peter Bialobrzeski, Mark Power, Philip-Lorca diCorcia…and of course, everyone at SVA. The blog would be a great start. Some of the greatest lessons I’ve learned have been from fellow photographers I’ve met in the field. I remember sitting at a computer at a hotel in Haiti, wondering why my photos were taking so long to send. I had no clue about resizing an image or compressing a jpeg. Shaul Schwarz stopped me and showed me what to do. That was 5 years ago and he probably doesn’t remember it, but I do.

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Read A Photo Student! And read my interview with Mr. Pomerantz, a few weeks back.

This is your friendly neighborhood photographer, Dan Saelinger. Dan’s done a great job of carving a niche for himself in the industry with his still life and conceptual editorial work. He’s also a cheerleader for other photographers- he writes a super helpful blog, and teaches at SVA and Maine Photographic Workshops.

I first touched base with Dan over on Shoot! when he scored a PDN cover; check it out.

And this time, I got to go into his studio. I thought you might like to come with, so I brought my snappy cam. Voyeuristic fun, here we come!

Fun! And now for some Saelinger finished products.

I want to eat those popsicles!

Read my proper interview with Dan here.

Read Dan’s blog here, and see his work here.

If you want me to visit YOUR shooting space, drop me a line!

And have a lovely Friday!

Yes please, Kodak Film Grant!

Are you an assistant? Work with Pro-8? Win your own equipment.

It’s fun to spend time looking at work from other genres and countries, and I’ve been having a hoot lately exploring Australian photographers. I met a pair of collectors at The New York Photo Festival whose enthusiasm was infectious, and they recommend I check out the following folks:

Brook Andrew
Pat Brassington
Ann Noble
Patricia Piccinini
Destiny Deacon
Petrina Hicks
Rosemary Laing

Today let’s focus on Petrina Hicks. Her work is reminiscent of Loretta Lux‘s, though perhaps slightly more sinister. And there are animals. From Hicks’ bio:

“Hicks gently subverts the pervasive language of photography as it is used in advertising and publicity, creating edgy images that intrigue and disturb. While she primarily works with people, her works transcend the boundaries of portraiture as she finds beauty in perceived imperfections and renders idealized beauty strange.

Her images are mostly of adolescents and elegantly capture the ambiguities of youth. Whilst she uses digital interventions, they are almost imperceptible, creating instead a polished hyper-reality. These subtle contrasts within the image play with photography’s dual capacities as both a revealer of truths, and a perpetrator of lies. Hicks’ photography embraces the scope of what it means to be human.”

Take a look. And don’t miss the video links at the end. They are AMAZING.

“Following a 3 month residency in La Cité, Paris, Hicks exhibited her most recent body of work, The Descendants at Stills Gallery, 2008. Continuing with her large-scale photographic portraiture Hicks’ immaculate works probe those dualities that are at the heart of contemporary photography – traversing the fine lines between closeness and distance, between perfection and imperfection and between truth and falseness. Lambswool, for instance depicts a young blonde subject, almost impossibly neat, embracing a wolfhound, which gently chews on her arm. This image was Hicks’ winning entry of the ABN AMRO Emerging Artist Award 2008.”

“In an interesting departure, The Descendants includes a series of video portraits. Hicks further confounds the real and hyper-real by employing a visual convention used in computer 3D modelling, a 360 degree view of a static subject, slowly rotating before the camera/viewer – but in this case her subjects are real rather than computer generated.”

click here to see the video.

click here to see the video.

click here to see the video.

mmm camera cake.

The Kids are getting SO clever, have you noticed? The latest jaw-dropper is Nikki Graziano, who not only has a very cool website, also know how to do the maths (!) and the photographies, and ALSO sells work on Etsy. Here is the website splash:

Fun! And this awesome project, combining math and imagery– Found Functions. I love, love these. I want one for my wall.

Nikki makes some pretty special non-math images too…

Look, you can buy your own algorithm on Etsy. It’s a steal!

See more of Nikki on flickr. I like this one.

Do want: Gorilla Torch.