Hey, Alage! Let’s all meet up in the Belem park again next week. I’ll bring pictures from the last week of last year (and we can make better ones this time). You’ll probably think they’re fine, but there was a horrible mistake in the making of the negatives, so… let’s do “take 2.” Check your e-mail for dates.
Update: the parcel arrived, after two months.
–Hendrik Willem Van Loon, 1938; by 2014, we arrive at this:
http://patch.com/illinois/palatine/golf-nation-palatine-closing-0#.VCQP00voa2w
“Time famine grasps us all.”
As a bonus, we learn of the term “to spatchcock” here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/dining/just-make-dinner-a-manifesto-for-home-cooking.html?hpw&rref=dining&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpHedThumbWell&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0
“If you are at all sensitive, which artists are supposed to be and usually are, it could make conditions psychologically impossible if you’re aware of people too much, so I just go about my business unless I find I really am hurting somebody. I am intruding mentally, but I know it’s not for a harmful purpose, and it doesn’t do anybody any harm. If I find myself opposed very strictly, I stop. There is no use getting into an argument about what you are doing. I walk away and think about something else and do something else.” -Walker Evans
Richard Cahan and Michael Williams assembled the new book Eye To Eye (they previously produced Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows) with photographs from the Jeffrey Goldstein Collection.
Perhaps you were there when Mr. Cahan spoke at BHS about the work of Richard Nickel a while back. He’s appearing tonight at Bookends and Beginnings, at the address of the old Bookman’s Alley, 1712 Sherman. Call before you go: 224.999.7722. There’s no better use of your time tonight.
“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”
…from Facebook (reproduced here by permission):
“an artist statement to me has become a symbol, of
– uniformity
– sillyness
– undereducated viewers (including those who ask for)
but it is only the “artist statement”, not what the artist wants to say about himself and his work. It’s just this term that leads everybody wrong and I DO NOT WANT to see any more statements that come by like manuals for IKEA furniture.”
Perhaps he is referring to these sorts of art school jargon:
http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2009/12/artists-statement-generator.html
http://10gallon.com/statement2000/
Here is Mr. Kellner’s own statement, addressing camera work in clear language.
“I want to break manifold ways of perception to my audience. My main interests have always been in finding strong visual languages that are powerful enough to tell us something about their subjects that more “realistic” images cannot do. Right from the beginning of my studies, my basic interest was in experimental and conceptual photography. I created different pinhole series, photogram work and printings in alternative techniques, such as cyanotype, saltpaper and others.
When Kodak Germany awarded me the Young Professionals Prize, I decided on a life in art and photography. In 1997, I finally started working on the contact sheet method to visually deconstruct architectural icons. My trademark style was born. Since then, I have been shooting prominent monuments all over the world. My images are asking to challenge usual perspectives – the buildings seem to be broken apart, dancing and remind us of the vulnerability of our values and creations.”
“The aperture of a camera forms a two-way portal through which both subject and viewer peer into another time. The subject, conscious of the permanence of the document, posts forward a memory. The viewer, aligning with the memory at some later date, works to preserve the sight from disintegration. Both are present at both moments; both experience the revelation of being adrift in time, sampling it laterally.
“The moment of recording and the moment of interpretation lose their basic distinction. Somewhere in time, observer and observed reverse roles. Conscious of being watched through the asynchronous screen, both modify their behaviors, presenting their best profiles: interpenetration of looker and participant, audience and authority, aesthetic escape and polemical display, welded together and mechanically propagated through time.
“To look at a thing is already to change it. Conversely, acting must begin with the most reverent looking. The sitter’s eyes look beyond the photographer’s shoulders, beyond the frame, and change, forever, any future looker who catches that gaze. The viewer, the new subject of that gaze, begins the long obligation of rewriting biography to conform to the inverted lens. Every jump cut or soft focus becomes a call to edit. Every cropping, pan, downstopping receives ratification, becomes one’s own.
“Consider a print of you and a lover standing by the side of a house. You can shrink or enlarge it to any size. You can print it on matte, glossy, or color stock. You can mask the negative, tint it, print it up as Christmas cards. You can crop it and edit out your mate or yourself as appropriate. Finally, you can take a twelve-dollar camera and repeat the scene with a new lover, as many time as it takes to get it right.”
-Richard Powers, “Three Farmers On Their Way To A Dance,” 1985
…but I know a few people who should be aware that this garment exists and is available, somewhere.
“124 degrees of awesome.”
http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/polaroid-cube-camera/
“Say hello to more adventures.”
Creative Camerawork 