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Let's do some good

2012-02-17T21:09:00.000-08:00

For the month of March, I thought I'd do something special (my Birthday's in march after all) I shot this image for the United Way of Chicago a few years back but pulled it out with this thought, for March I'll donate %10 of the money from my gigs to the United Way. So hire me lots and we'll do some good!

Totally Cool Gig

2012-01-03T10:30:00.000-08:00

I had a chance recently to do a really fantastic gig with the fine folks at Glantz design. We drove down to LeClaire Iowa and spent the day in an amazing factory, filled with really big machines billowing heat and flames, the open oven in the photo series above is pumping out at about 1300 degrees. It was a photo dream come true, I wish I could go back again and again to spend lots of time documenting the work going on in this place. The company makes castings and also pours parts out of aluminum for engines and such.

PDN POSTCARD

2011-12-06T07:48:00.001-08:00

Checkout this fantastic Postcard PDN photoserve did using one of my images. Fame and fortune must be at hand.

Some great portraits for Fireman's fund Insurance.

2011-11-17T07:25:00.001-08:00

Like most corporate portraits, I only had few minutes to spend with my subject, but he was lots of fun and willing to stand outside without a jacket on a chilly day in Chicago. Pretty simple set up two lights for the inside stuff and one light outside.

Great little portrait gig

2011-09-24T18:18:00.000-07:00

I had a great time on Friday shooting some portraits for a favorite client of mine, here are a few of my favorites from the day.

amazing food photography feature

2011-09-14T11:44:00.000-07:00

I got to work with one of my favorite stylists recently to do this super amazing shoot for Style unveiled. Hillary from Estera events put together some really amazing food and table design for this beautiful piece. Sure I'm not usually a food shooter but this was a lot of fun, maybe I need to look into this food shooting more, you sure get to better than you do taking portraits. see the rest here Wedding vendors involved include: Photography: Doug McGoldrick Photography Venue: Wheeler Mansion Event Concept and Design: Estera Events Styling and Design for the Breakfast Table: Sugar Chic Designs Linen: Private Label Linens Place Settings : Les Tableaux Plated Food: Entertaining Company

Help raise money for the Garfield Park Conservatory

2011-08-03T19:57:00.000-07:00

Garfield Park is one of my favorite places on the entire planet. I've taken my kids there countless times, and I have gone by myself many times to escape the world for a bit and recoup, particularly in the winter it is an amazing wonderland of warmth and humidity during a dry cold Chicago winter. As many of you may know Garfield park's amazing conservatory was severally hail damaged this summer. The estimated clean up costs are around the two million dollar mark and the repair costs haven't begun to be calculated yet. What the park really needs is some angel to come to it's rescue with a monster donation, but until that happens I'll try to do something to help out. For several years I have been making photos in the conservatory, mainly in the now destroyed fern house, you can see the images HERE go into portfolio "Ferns and Grasses Mostly". For the rest of the year I'll take any price over $50 for one of the prints and donate all the money from the sale minus shipping and printing to the conservatory.

shoot me an email with the image you'd like to purchase. printed on 11x14 paper.

Great gig for Headstand Media

2011-07-20T20:57:00.000-07:00

I really enjoy these kinds of shoots, sort of corporate photo journalism. I get to spend the day wandering around a work space capturing the scene and meeting interesting people. This job was done for a stock trading firm, and was art directed by Matt Ritsman from Headstand Media

Some new dance photos

2011-07-06T20:44:00.000-07:00

So I've been shooting Jackie my dancer friend for a couple months now, I'm way behind on getting new pictures from the project up, but here are some new ones from last week.

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Some fresh faces

2011-06-27T21:06:00.000-07:00

I shot these kids over the weekend good fun.

fun day today

2011-06-22T20:49:00.000-07:00

I shot 20 portraits for DePaul's housing department here are my two favorites. I'm sure they won't use them in this style but I like it.

some fantastic blog love from http://neotericart.com/

2011-05-23T20:10:00.000-07:00

check out this great interview with me at http://neotericart.com/

Time Out Chicago

2011-05-05T20:42:00.000-07:00

Go out and pick up the new Time Out Chicago to see a really nice spread with one of my photos. One of my favorite things about this gig was that Editor NIcole Radja gave me the gig after seeing some of my personal work. You's be silly not to get this issue.

De Paul School of Music

2011-04-23T20:23:00.000-07:00

The de Paul school of music is one of my oldest and favorite clients. Here are some shots from a recent gig with them.

help Japan buy art. Wall Space gallery

2011-03-28T10:53:00.000-07:00

The wonderful folks at Wall Space gallery are doing something really great they are putting up work on there site some of by very well known photographers and auctioning it off to raise money to help Japan, as of March 28th they have raised more than $38,000 that's a lot of dough. One of my images just went live on the site so buy it or buy something else.

Recent gig for UIC

2011-03-18T19:04:00.000-07:00

I recently did a gig for University of Illinois at Chicago Center for Cardiovascular Research, phew that's a mouthful. They where up dating some photos for there site and also producing some new images to have to use later. It was quick day of shooting but we got some great images. You can see a bunch of images on there site but here are some of my favorites.

shooting an alderman

2011-03-05T13:10:00.000-08:00

One of the greatest things about my job is the people I meet. The other day I got to photograph Alderman Tim Cullerton for some reelection materials. So I had to ask him if if he was in anyway related to the street Cullerton? Well yes he is in fact that Cullerton relative was an alderman to back in the late 1800's, and it gets better, there has been a Culerton alderman in Chicago ever since, also one of his relatives was an early fire commissioner who had the department from horses to fire trucks, the first city to do it. There's been Cullerton's as county commissioners and all kinds of stuff in Chicago. This Cullerton worked for the city starting with the first Mayor Daley and retired from working for the city under the current mayor Daley. And now in his retirement he carries on the family tradition as an alderman in the 38th ward. He's in a run off in his first election go around so if you live in the 38th ward get and and vote for him april 5th. This guy is Chicago, and he's a super nice guy as well.

Some new dance photos

2011-01-03T20:24:00.000-08:00

a new dance project

2010-11-18T07:56:00.000-08:00

Recently I've started a great new project that kind of splinters off one of my past projects. For my past project, I photographed behind the scenes of various Chicago theaters and dance companies. However, for this variation I have decided to focus on one performer and follow her for a year or so. Every few weeks we'll meet up and I'll photograph whatever she happens to be doing on those days, which in her case will involve dancing (and lots and lots of it). Here are a few shots from our first few sessions with plenty more to come over the next year or so.

Nice Blog Love

2010-11-12T20:07:00.000-08:00

photographer WIllson Cummer has recently started a blog called new landscape photography and it seems to have really struck a cord with the photography community. Today he featured my on the blog which is pretty fun check it out.

new landscape photography

oh boy

2010-11-09T04:49:00.001-08:00

As soon as I have a second to breath I have a couple cool blogs ready to go but I'm swamped, with work.

as promised

2010-09-16T20:09:00.000-07:00

A new post, I'm bringing the blog back to Life, the only difference you'll notice is that while in the past the blog was pretty much 100% posts about other people, I'm making the blog more Doug centered now, hey it's my blog. You'll still be able to find cool new photographers doing great work here, but also you'll get to see what I'm up to. So to start it off here are a bunch of portraits I've shot in the last couple weeks some around Crete, Illinois and some around Columbus, Ohio. These pictures are being used by political campaigns for advertising. I'm pretty sure they'll be used with a much straighter post production, but I wanted to mess with them a bit.

this week

2010-09-13T14:02:00.000-07:00

ok ok I'm trying, I've been super busy working, and haven't had time to write. I think my first couple blogs will be some portraits I've shot recently. I'm really really hoping to get it up before or by sunday.

this blog is closed

2010-08-11T08:42:00.000-07:00

I've been doing this blog for several years now, I have a good number of followers, and kind of enjoy it. However; I'm putting it on hold for a while. It will come back hopefully soon, but I need to get some stuff together, it just isn't working out the way I had hoped it would.

it's been a good year to be my friend...

2010-07-01T21:04:00.000-07:00

I've had a number of good friends of mine publish books this year. I don't want to review them in detail because they are my friends so suffice to say that all these books totally rule and you should go out and get them today, right now before you even finish reading this post buy them.

First Alamo and Costello Published his second book. It's called The Globe and is a documentary book on a bar in Chicago where people watch British soccer matches. It is great buy it.

Second Priya Kambli Published her first book this year called Color Falls down, it's a wonderful book about moving to a new country and your relationship with your old country. It is greatbuy it.

Third Jennifer Greenburg published a book called rockabillies about the subculture of people who live the rockabilly lifestyle this book is crazy good, she's been working on this project for a long time and is finally getting the attention she deserves. It is great buy it.

Fourth Heather McClintock published her first book as well this year called The Innocent, Heather has been traveling to Northern Uganda for years and documenting the people there as they go through one of the worst imaginal wars, that gets almost no coverage in the US. This book is hard to look at without crying but after looking through it you'll want to do something to make a difference. I actually got to be the first person to buy a copy of this book, pretty cool eh. It is great buy it.

Fifth Rania Matar published a book called Ordinary lives, which documents the not so ordainary lives of people living in her native Lebenon. This book shows the people of Lebanon trying to live as normal as possible in a country that has faced the horrors of war to many times over to many years. It is great buy it. (actually a 2009 book but close enough)

As for my year, well let's just say I hope to forget about 2010 as soon as possible. but it was a great year to be a friend of doug.

Isa Leshko

2010-06-01T10:23:00.000-07:00

Isa Leshko's photo are interesting to me on a couple different levels, if they did just one of these things it would be ok, but when they do all of them together it really works. First I love they way they abstract the parks she is photographing, they could be any place, a country fair or disney there is no indication to place, or time they have a real timeless quality about them. The next thing they do really well is that inspite of the abstracted nature of the photos they still seem to capture the feel of being at a park the excitement of the rides and safe fear that they provide. She uses a Holga camera to make the images which ads a dream like romanticism to the images which I really love. It's easy to use the Holga as a crutch, much like photoshop actions, anything looks interesting through there lens, the tricky part is to make images which go beyond the fact that they are made with a Holga, just look through flickr and you can see lots of Holga photography that is crap, some people seem to think that just because it's done on a Holga it's cool. Fortunately Isa's images go way beyond the Holga thing they would be beautiful and thoughtful with no matter what camera she used to make them with. Personally I would take the part about the Holga off her site, it's not the camera it's the person behind it that matters, and Isa is a great person to have back there.

Web

The Keith Carter Problem

2010-05-17T21:22:00.000-07:00

I Love Keith Carters photos, I like the romantic, dreamy qualities, of his images and like Keith I have believe softness is just as good in photos as sharpness. His use of focus and tone sets as beautiful mood to the images. Here is my problem, when I was down at footfest in March I saw so many people doing Keith Carter, there was an open portfolio night and people where able to wander around and look at every bodies work, I must have seen a dozen Keith Carters, Strange thing is that they all seemed to be doing pretty well, lots of attention at there tables, lots exhibitions on there résumés. One day Keith happened to stop by fotofest, and being the nice guy that he is he did a number of impromptu reviews, including my work, which was pretty great, I wonder how it is for him to see so many people doing work that is so similar to him, on the one hand of course it’s a great compliment that people like what you do so much that they, emulate you on the other hand though, people at fotofest are in theory professional artists who should be making there own work, so in that sense it dilutes Keith Carters brand. I wonder what Keith Thinks of this.

Keith Carter

Susan Barnett

2010-05-01T19:41:00.000-07:00

Here's another fotofest find. Susan Barnett She has spends here days trolling the streets of NYC looking for interesting t-shirts to photograph. She's kind of OCD about the project but in a good way she told me she has thousands of these images. T-shirts are such a great way to capture contemporary society, since they are an article of clothing, which more than any other is worn to make a statement. Sure a button down white shirt and tie says I work in an office, but a guy wearing a t-shirt with a string of bullets across the back really tells you some thing about that character. It's also something that pretty much we all do, my dad might have a t-shirt on for a sail boat event or a cross country ski race, my students wear lots of band t-shirts trying to out obscure band each other. T-shirts are our most personal fashion statement. I get the feeling that in 50 years a project like this will be looked back on as a really unique time capsule of our time. Al though at fotofest she was showing the images one at a time, I really really love them as they are on her website in groups of four, the interaction between the messages on the T-shirts and the way people are standing is really fantastic. Susan's project will be published this year from this really wonderful new photo book, press called Silas Finch, they have only just published there first book and I got to see it when I was down at fotofest, and I can tell you as someone who has a pretty expansive collection of photo books, it was one of the most beautifully produced books I have ever seen, and as soon as a few checks come in for me I'm totally getting it. I can't wait to see what they do with Susan's work it should be amazing. Silas Finch maybe starting a very expensive habit for me.

Susan's site
Silas Finch

Priya Kambli

2010-04-18T20:36:00.000-07:00

Priya Kambli is another artist I met at fotofest this year. Her work is the American story, of a person who comes to the US from someplace and then feels torn between two places, physically as well as spiritually. Priya came to the US from India and currently lives in a small town in Missouri where she teaches. I really enjoy her work; she takes a universal American theme and really personalizes it by combining photos she has taken her in the US with family photos from India. The family photos are almost exclusively black and white and the photos from her new home are almost exclusively in color which ads a nice separation between the two and makes the images from India seem to be much older than the work from the US. I like the sense of time this ads to the work. The work is really beautifully crafted and the love the intersections of images. The format of the pieces is wonderful and is something I have played with a lot in my own work I love playing with images and combing parts. Interestingly though it was something I used to do more with my paintings and haven't done as much with my photography. This is really wonderful work, she has a book out that you should go buy right now, and it was published through the 2008 Photo Lucida book award. So those of you who enter will be getting one in the mail some day.

her site
her book

celine wu

2010-03-27T18:44:00.000-07:00

Here's another of my Fotofest finds. Celine Wu is based out of Tokyo who's work I enjoy on so many levels. First there is the complete simplicity of the subject shadows, so wonderfully simple. So many artist photographers in particular have all these grand ideas about what to photograph exotic places constructed realities complicated digital manipulations. Not Celine black and white photos of shadows so beautiful so simple gotta love it. So yep-great images but it's the presentation that I really love, she presents these photos in beautiful scrolls of rice paper. The rice paper scrolls add such a wonderful human element to the pieces, photos can be cold an in human these works breath with life.

Link

Davina Feinberg

2010-03-18T11:38:00.000-07:00

I'm back from Fotofest where I met tons of great people, and now have lots of new photo friends and folks I can blog about. I'm going to start out with Davina Feinberg. Davina's images of babies are just to killer. For this project she has shot 9 different babies all of whom are 12 months old, blonds with blue eyes and all female. She then takes the photos into Photoshop and really beautifully manipulates them, so in the end they become these kind of ultra smooth doll like ideas of western perfection and beauty. The gestures of the subjects as she shoots them seem to go so far beyond there single year of life, these gestures combined with the manipulation create the look of small all knowing beings, each one has an amazing Buddha like calm. These are pretty special images that you need to consider.

http://davinafeinberg.com

Foto Fest

2010-03-09T21:00:00.000-08:00

I'm heading down to fotofest in Houston this week, if you are going to be around look for me. I'll also be looking for cool work to feature on the Blog.

Alejandro Chaskielberg

2010-02-18T10:21:00.000-08:00

When I was looking through Alejandro Chaskielberg's website site I noticed quite a change taking place his earliest work on the site is from 2001 and is pretty straight documentary photography, but then around 2006 his borders portfolio is a pretty dramatic shift from that style, they are heavily lit photographs with a much more conceptual look about them. The most recent two portfolios take that even further, buy using long exposures and a 4x5 camera he is creating really breath taking images. He is using the 4x5 camera to all it's fun advantages with lots of swings and tilts to play with focus and space creating a surreal world of dreamy night time portraits. I also just love the use of color in these images it seems very much part of his dream like creations, and adds a wonderful touch. Go check out his site for much more wonderful work.

Alejandro Chaskielberg

Edward Linsmier

2010-02-03T10:49:00.000-08:00

Edward Linsmier is my first guest blogger, he is a photojournalist based out of southern florida. Edward has spent a lot of tim working and shooting in Haiti over the past several years and has a close relationship with the country and it's people. When the earth quake happened I knew he would go down so I contacted him about doing this for me. Here is a story from Edward as well as some heart stopping images.

We heard gunshots and knew we needed to be closer. We processed the
thought for a split second and we took off running with our fixer not
far behind. People ran past us as we came to an intersection in a
heavily destroyed downtown section of Port au Prince. There were
police and shop keepers with guns. People were yelling and some were
running with their arms in the air to show they weren't carrying
anything stolen. More shots rang out and we honed in on the location
they were coming from- not far up the block. Looters ran past us
carrying anything of value. Emboldened by the electricity of the
chaos, we advanced further and saw people laying on the ground with
police yelling and waving guns in the air and shouting commands. Our
fixer is translating the commands into English- "Lay on the ground,
you should be ashamed of yourselves. You! You! Get down here, lay on
the ground!" More shots rang out in the air and the Haitian Police
yelled at us to get back as soon as they saw us approaching. We
retreated several steps and waited behind a truck for several seconds
until the police were distracted. I saw another photographer up the
road and decided that we needed to make a move closer to him so we
could make some pictures. The police let us pass and we began
photographing the scene. Tensions cycled. The police let the people
up, then eventually left at which point the crowded street began to
produce people willing to loot again. Soon lines of people began
gathering goods seized from the bowels of the destroyed buildings. We
followed the line up onto a downed roof top that led to the exposed
insides of several shops filled with the scavenging and excited crowd.
We were making pictures. Some people briefly yelled at us not to take
their picture but hesitated to stay around long enough to enforce
their requests. More gunshots filled the air. We couldn't tell where
they were coming from but they seemed close. There was a commotion
from not far down the street. The fixer motioned for me to come
because the police had caught a man and had him down on the ground. I,
in turn, motioned for my friend and fellow photographer, Nathan Weber,
who was still on the slanting concrete rooftop to follow me to the
commotion down the road. I yelled his name and he looked at me with a
blank stare. Nathan is someone who is on point in a situation such as
this. He communicates quickly, clearly and with authority when needed.
He is no stranger to photographing in similar situations but something
of this magnitude was new to both of us. I knew he heard me and
figured he would be right behind me as I headed down to the commotion.
I began photographing a man on the ground and the fixer stood near us
and began translating what the police were saying into English, all
the while keeping a keen eye on our surroundings. Then someone ran
past our fixer and said something in Creole. Our fixer then yelled to
us that someone had been shot where we had just been. We ran maybe 50
yards back and climbed back up on the roof to see Nathan in almost the
exact same spot where I last saw him, except he was looking at a girl
who was lying face down on the slanting concrete roof. As best as I
can recall, Nathan spoke in short sentences, "I saw her fall. I
thought she tripped and knocked herself out. She's dead. Fuck. She got
shot. I was right here." The decision to continue making photographs
was instinctual. More photographers showed up and we were all making
pictures, composing the dead girl in the foreground as the looters
continued to walk past her, almost over her, carrying whatever they
could. Several men stopped to turn her over, seemingly to identify the
body. They gently took her arms and almost had to twist her just a
little to face her upward. They looked at her with little emotion and
left. She had been shot in the head. From what I could tell, the
bullet entered her cheek and exited from the back of her head. The
blood had been pooling in some picture frames she was carrying when
she fell. After the men moved her, the blood began to run down the
slanting concrete roof towards us. We all were still making pictures.
To anybody else, it must have looked sick, a crowd of photographers
vying for the best position to tell the story of the death of a girl.
Just about the time that I figured the pictures were over and we
should leave, a frantic man and several others emerged from the crowd.
It was the family of the girl. The father hoisted her onto his
shoulders and began the journey of bringing his daughter home. The
photographers followed. Ordinarily, this would be a scene that hardly
anyone could bare to photograph. They were experiencing probably some
of the most painful moments of their lives but they knew why we were
there. Not once did anyone give a mean look; not once did I hear
anyone question why all the photographers were following this family's
grief so intently and so closely. It was part of the story.

Jennifer Greenburg

2010-01-18T21:03:00.000-08:00

My good friend Jennifer Greenburg has an an exciting night coming up and if you are in Chicago you should par take in it. On Jan 26 at 6pm, the Museum of Contemporary Art will be hosting a book release party for her rockabilly book I've written about the project before, and I really love it I can't wait to see it in book for you should make a a date to be there if you can and to buy the book if you can't it's going to be a really fab book.

Cara Barer

2009-12-27T18:56:00.000-08:00

I first came across Cara Barer’s work in an announcement from the Susan Spiritus Gallery’s facebook page (go social networking go). Anyhow I love to see a simple happenstance idea taken to such a beautiful extreme. Story goes Cara noticed how cool a phonebook looked when the side of it got wet and the pages got all bendy and wrinkled so she decided to photograph it, this led to her getting other books wet and photographing them, as well as fold and bending pages in a more controlled way to get involved patterns. The pictures are fairly astounding to me so simple and elegant, no fancy tricks just really wonderful stuff Cara has a couple other really nice series of wok on her site as well so check them all out, a lot of her work is sculptural as well which isn’t really surprising when you look at these photographs which are constructed as nicely as they are photographed.

look here

Christa Bowden

2009-12-17T21:03:00.000-08:00

I know pretty much nothing about Christa Bowden. The only thing I do know is that I love these photos, these are really amazingly beautiful, in fact they are so good looking that I’m sure the “A”rt world will completely ignore them. I’m not sure exactly how she makes them, there are lots of ways it could be done these days and I really don’t think it matters but dang they look good. She has several series on her site but for me the Roots and Nests are the best, that being said they are all nice. I discovered her work when just kind of surfing around looking for some places to submit my work. I really hope she gets some great press from this series which I assume is just starting out since there are only a couple of them on the site. I want to know how much they are since I want one.

her site

Adelaide Rose

2009-12-09T20:53:00.000-08:00

I promised in my last post that after doing a couple posts in a row of people who area already well know I'd find someone who is less well know for this next entry. Well while checking out mark tuckers blog the other day I found these images and then he linked to the blog where he found the images, where there is a pretty good interview with this young lady. Adelaide is 13 years old and these pictures just seem so far beyond her years a real true vision. I remember a couple years ago people where all in ah of Joey L who at 18 had a pretty impressive portfolio as well, but his work while really great was just kind of copying current advertising and movie looks. The thing that most impresses me about Adelaide Rose is her vision is so mature this is a truly well thought out project, if one of my students at Columbia College turned this work in I would be impressed, but for it to come from a 13 year old wow. I also love that it's not super photoshoppy, if there is one thing that bothers me right now it's students coming in from high school with great looking work that is all photoshop, they can't expose a film camera to save there lives they just use this giant photoshop crutch. Adelaide Rose maybe using lots of photoshop in her images or they maybe pretty straight the important thing is it does scream either. This kid has a great start, it's interesting that in her interview she doesn't know if she'd be a photo major or not but wants to be a photographer and that's not a bad thing, I think a lot of artist get there degree but have no idea how to run a studio it's a job with taxes, contracts, promos and all that stuff, so Adelaide Rose minor in business and photography and get an art history degree, then go to grad school for photography, that MFA is a nice thing to have in your pocket, people take you more seriously and you can teach.

her site

Ed Kashi

2009-11-20T19:49:00.000-08:00

Dang three posts in a row on people who are already famous, I have to change it up for next time, maybe you my loyal fans could submit some stuff to me for review and I'll pick some for reviews. Anyway back to Ed, he is one of the best know photojournalist working today, he does both standard stills for print as well as some really amazing multi media work with media storm who are producing some of the best multi media work out there right now. Ed's latest endavor in the print world is book called three which I just can't get enough of. For the project he explored he archives and found three pictures for each spread which he matched up together to make some amazing triptychs. I love that these images where not originally shot to be used this way, but they work so brilliantly together, which I think says great things for Ed's consistency of vision. The pictures which given there documentary aproach have a strong narriative element to them already, become something more when matched up, in addition to telling there own individual stories they also tell stories to each other bouncing ideas back and forth. Ed Kashi is one of the most creative photographers working today who is willing to step outside photojournalisms hard and fast rules in his personal work and produce some beautiful and new things.

Website

Boogie !

2009-10-25T16:53:00.000-07:00

I was in NYC last week doing a bunch of meetings with magazine folks, two days 15 magazines, pretty tiring but great. I think the highlight of the two days though (besides hanging out with some super cool old friends) was when I was shooting some pick up basketball games I happened to stumble upon on a beautiful fall day. The coolest thing about that besides me getting some super cool tilt shift basketball shots, was that there were a couple other people shooting at the same time on guy I ended talking to a bit was Boogie. Boogie's first book came out in 2006 it's an in your face look at gangs in NYC pretty amazing stuff, his access and apparent complete lack of fear makes these shots really great documents of a insiders view of the gangs. He has gone on to publish several other books and shoot some pretty big ad campaigns. The thing I love about his ad work is that it still feels like his documentary work, often documentary shooters get pulled to shoot ad jobs and then they get so over produced by agency people that it ends looking like ad shots rather than documentary work. Boogie was shooting that day for a job, it was great to hang out with him for a couple hours and watch him work. His work is true documentary work in the tradition of Robert Frank and the greats, whom he walks with.

rodney smith?

2009-09-29T11:33:00.000-07:00

I know kind of out of character for me to be writing about him since I tend to focus mainly on lessor known shooters. But I was reading this interview of him the other day over on the Kodak pro website and he said a couple things that kind of connected with me. I've been a big fan of his work for years I think the first work I saw of his was the work he did for Marshal Fields, CA did a story on him and that work and I loved his philosophy of shooting no polaroids and the importance of locations etc... He was also nice enough to send a bunch of his promo pieces to me so that I could show to a class I teach at Columbia College Chicago, so he must be a nice guy to boot. Anyway thing I love about his work is the timeless element to it, the pictures are so perfectly passionately beautiful, and often with a dollop of humor to them. I have a general distain for fashion photography because it seems so often the take a beautiful model and put her in beautiful clothes and then take an ugly picture. rodney smith's work is often Fashion in nature but he is a throw back or maybe hopefully throw forward to a place where beautiful gets to be beautiful, and that I like. Kodak of course makes a big deal out the fact the he shoots film blah blah personally I could careless if he shoot film or digital it's the results that count. So why write about him now? Well two reasons first he has started blogging which is great you can really get an insight on to his brain as he talks about his work on his blog and secondly, he has a new book coming out, I have "the Hat book" which I love and a bunch of his samples, and paper company samples of his work the I look at quite often but this knew book looks really amazing first it's really big like 16x20 big so you'll really get to experience the prints as they should be seen and secondly as with "the Hat book" his designers (I believe probably Leslie Solomon?) have beautifully done the type for the book they have a really wonderful way of arranging letters on a page that enhances but doesn't over shadow the images. Unfortunately for me the book is going to be wicked out of my price range, but if it's in yours and you don't buy it you are not a smart person at all, it's going to be a classic.

web portfolio

Dylan Vitone

2009-09-20T11:20:00.000-07:00

Last week was the big opening night in Chicago all the galleries pulled out there stuff and had openings at the same time. For art lovers it's the best night of the year everyone is out looking around great people and art watching is every place you look. I saw lots of shows that night and I'm going to try and blog as many as I can while they are up. First off Dylan Vitone's show at David Weinberg in the River North. I have to admit I'm a sucker for panorama's I love the way you can really get lost in the field of view. Many of Dylan's works are full 360 degree pano's the really impressive thing about his work is that they are so full of life often when you see panoramic work it's pretty staged or devoid of people since the shots are fairly complicated to set up, but Dylans photos are so full of life and action you forget about the trick of the shot and just fall into the seen in front of you. It's classic street photography but wonderfully updated. Sure there are seems but they are to me no big deal, all though I would be interested to see what he would do with a camera like the round shot. Check out his web site you can click on the images to see details of the shot. That's always the rub for Panorama's it's hard to show them online or in magazines and get any kind of sense of the images. When the last time you saw a magazine feature a pano photographer? These images in person are pretty amazing to behold they are very large I'd say a good 6-8 feet long so they really do become your field of vision, wonderful.

My current dream camera obession is the panoramic back you can get for the red camera I think it's a 6x17 digital chip, Mmmm camera drool. Get out and take a look at this work.

where I have I been?

2009-08-31T20:50:00.001-07:00

I had this huge commercial gig that I have been doing prep work for the shooting and then doing post to here is a kind of long stop action video of the whole shoot.

big shoot from doug mcgoldrick on Vimeo.

Adam Magyar

2009-08-20T16:55:00.000-07:00

I don't want to begin to describe the process by which these camera are achieved, Adam Magyar has built his own digital camera called a slit camera the takes a very unusual picture, it only capertures things that are moving in the direction of the camera, so you get parades of people in a long line walking through a very surreal linear landscape. His website has some larger images on it that you can drag a curser over and see details of what is going on in the photos. I think more than any other person I have written about I would love to see these images in real life, they must be really amazing to behold. Make sure you click on these images to see them larger or better yet go to his site and see them with the detail viewer.

He also has another project called squares which is worth your viewing time as well.

look here

my commute

2009-07-27T16:10:00.001-07:00

commute from doug mcgoldrick on Vimeo.

Clayton Burkhart Orpheus Descending

2009-07-23T19:30:00.000-07:00

This is kind of an exciting post, since I had never heard of Clayton Burkhart before I saw his book recently and if it wasn't for the beautifully designed cover and spine I never would have picked it up, but I did, and I'm glad I did. After looking at the book I went home and googled him to find his a fashion photographer, but don't hold it against him this book is really great. The thing I love about it is it takes something which really hasn't changed since the americans came out and makes it change, that being of course street photography. We all know street photography black and white shots of uncomfortable looking people in the urban grit. Well not in Clayton's case. His book has a couple great things going for it that I love first all the images are shot in color, they are all shot on rainy nights late at night so the streets of NYC are a bit lonely and the colors on the streets from the reflected lights really sing. He's also not afraid of the blur, and I love the blur used correctly there is a line in a movie about Keith carter where he says the blur is as natural in photography as is sharpness, but training in photography makes people avoid the blur, I'm all with keith on this one, and so if Clayton many of the images go wonderfully toward abstraction using reflections in windows and movement in a very nice way. The pictures for the most part are pretty wicked noisy (or grainy for you purists) but I don't mind it at all it seems to go with the grit and lonely nature of the images. The noise and saturated colors make me think the images where shot with a point and shoot digicam rather than a SLR type, there also seems to be some on camera flash going on in the images, making so nice drag the shutter movement action. The images have an amazing cinematic feel to them they really feel like film stills, and not in the Cindy Sherman fake stills way but in a very authentic way there is some much of a story in everyone of the images these pictures really are worth a thousand words. People particularly people who come from the film days of photography always complain about the sterile perfection of the digital image, those people should take a look at this book it's so wonderful the images have plenty of soul to them. I only wish photoeye had some signed copies available, rather than the non signed version I picked up. If you can the first time you look through them book listen to Tom Wait on headphones at the same time it's perfect. Also on his site check out the great video piece that goes along with the book.

deedelete deedelete deedelete an update, I got a really nice email from Clayton last night, and the images are in fact shot on a beat up old Nikkormat so they are shot on film, oh well, they still rule.

web

David Bowman

2009-07-09T18:09:00.000-07:00

I first saw David Bowman's images a while back when he did a wonderful series of images of the Mall of America in Minneapolis. Then today I saw these images over on Flakphoto and it brought him back to my attention. I grew up in Minnesota but never went to the Minnesota state in spite of the fact that it is the second largest state fair, and everyone else seems to go, I guess even as a child the idea of hot, and crowded never really appealed to me. lots of people have shot state and county fairs in a pretty straight forward documentary style to great effect, but it's kind of been there done that territory not that there aren't great stories to tell there with images but it's hard to see it in a different light. David Bowman has seen the state fair in a different light and it's a wonderful light, by using a long exposure and shooting at twilight he is able to achieve both movement and stillness in images that both tell a story and create a mood. Visit his site to see lots of really wonderful stuff, maybe it's the Minnesotan in me but I really connect with so many of his images, in spite of the fact that I haven't lived in Minnesota full time since 1989. David Bowman is a great artist with a camera. Also make sure you read his blog there are some great stories about the State fair and other images.

visit

the fourth

2009-07-08T18:18:00.001-07:00

the 4th of July is pretty crazy around where I live here's a short video I made showing the fun.

neighborhood fireworks show from doug mcgoldrick on Vimeo.

Chris Mccaw

2009-06-22T07:20:00.000-07:00

I first saw these images at 2008 fotofest in Houston, I can't remember if he was there showing them or if Michael Mazzeo showed them to me, either way they made quite an impression. This work is just so wonderful it's hard to see online but on the real actual prints there is an amazing amount of subtle tone and detail in the dark images. And the burns, oh those burns when you see them online you don't get to see that the burns are actually burned through the paper there are holes in the paper, it is so cool it really sets you back when you see the prints. Because of this each print is unique there are no editions, which I as a recovering painter love. The process for making them is semi secret although explained sort of on his website, my favorite part is where he describes who cool it is to watch the smoke coming out of the camera. Lot's of times I like to write about people who I feel are kind of under exposed, and with gallery's in NYC,LA, and San Fran representing his work he's doing good but dang nabit I think he should be in the next Whitney biannual, or venice biennale although his work is probably to good looking to get in that show. Enjoy the images. Oh and someone please buy me one.

Matt Siber

2009-06-07T18:47:00.001-07:00

A couple things I like in photography are, people who use large format cameras, people who manipulate or construct or do something with the final image besides a straight print on the wall and obsessiveness. Matt Siber's work does all of this. The things which fit him the best though are obsessiveness and manipulations. In the "untitled" project Matt photographs typical urban and suburban views city streets etc. . . but then he goes in and very carefully removes all the text on the image and has a separate panel next to the image which has the text recreated exactly as it was in the original photograph. The text is recreated so exactly that he has been know to recreate fonts to make it match some crazy custom font on a product. One the the craziest of these images is one where he photographs a shelf in a drug store and then recreates all that text in it's minutia on the panel opposite. I still remember the first time I came across one of the images, I found a postcard sitting around the school we both teach at it was a photograph of a wall in Europe with a perfume ad in it that I remembered seeing when I was in France the summer before, I couldn't place my finger on what was wrong with the image right away since it was just the image panel on the postcard but when I figured it out it was quite a eureka moment, there aren't a lot of people work who I can say so clearly when I first came upon them, a few others would be Louis Gonzales Palma, Richard Avedon, the Starns, Lorna Simpson and Dawoud Bey. I also remember taking a class to see some of his work in a show and watching the students study the panels so carefully looking for mistakes it was great to see students really examining images so closely even if it was in hope of a gotcha moment, which the did find by the way there was a reflection of a sign on the surface of a car but it was pretty small. A lot of photography has always had its detractors with there anyone can take a picture comments, I don't think anyone will ever say that about one of matt Sibers works. I also really love the floating logo's series on his site as well.

Siber art

the "project"

2009-06-01T20:44:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's because I got my fotofest entry today or maybe it's something else but I've been thinking about the nature of the photo project lately. When I'm at fotofest talking to reviewers people will always ask how far along I think the project is, I always think it's such a strange question to ask, maybe it's because I have a painting background I'm not sure why but people don't really talk that way about paintings they might ask how developed the series is but not the project. I think it's it the legacy of documentary work or something, people even in the photo world still kind of expect a story with a start middle and end, personally I think that's a pretty confining box for art to be put into I mean can you imagine someone walking up to jasper johns at an opening and saying "so jasper how far a long is this target painting project?" it just wouldn't happen. I think it's not a bad thing in the documentary world at all, where you are trying to tell a story but I think a lot of photography doesn't fit into that box anymore, be it abstract work or something else the neat project doesn't work all the time. Who you are also effects the question as well I doubt people ask William Eggelston so still taking pictures of memphis eh? Hey Avedon stilling doing those black and white portraits on a white background? Heck Shelby Lee Adams has been shooting the same couple families in basically the town he grew up in for something like 30 years. How long have the Beckers been shooting those water towers? I guess I'm pretty much just griping but it feels good to get it out there anyway.

Lucia Ganieva

2009-05-19T20:49:00.000-07:00

These photos are so fantastic, they hit me on a lot of levels, first they are great portraits, and if you check out here site you'll see lots of other great portrait series as well. These are however more than portraits for the use of the triptych format brings in other elements to play, like the images of the fabric and the images of the factories, combining these elements brings the story of the images to life. When I first came across the images I was struck by the story, or maybe stories of the images first there is the look on the faces of the Women in the images hard, tired, proud then there is the fabric itself each pattern and color brings different things to life then finally the images of the factory interior it's self which in a lot of ways reflects the images of the women at the other end of the piece. I just love the way the patterns and colors of the fabrics play off the patterns and colors in the clothing the woman are wearing. The flat direct lighting highlights the colors and patterns in a lovely way and brings a hard edge documentary look to the images, kind of Martin Parr ish, in a weird way. I find it interesting as well that in all the photos I read them right to left which is just the opposite of how we read text, for me though I'm just drawn into the faces. The images are made at a textile factory in Russia which is in the process of fading into memory as factories shut down, it was once though the center of the Russian textile industry and called the city of brides since the population was almost all women. These dramatic images pay great homage to the work that is done there.

http://www.luciaganieva.com

Opening in Cleveland

2009-05-11T19:28:00.000-07:00

The show had it's first Showing last weekend in Cleveland MS, and it was a great kick off, the people of Cleveland where really excited and yes I'd say honored to have to the show starting it's whirl wind tour in there town. There was a great turn out from people from Delta State University, which is in town, as well as other local schools and local arty folks. Will Jacks was a great host and put on a great opening the show was written up well in the Cleveland Current paper and is probably going to get some more coverage as time goes on. The Gallery is connected to a place called the Warehouse which is a popular lunch dinner place in town, because of show turn out the got slammed really hard with dinner orders and where going a little crazy in the kitchen. This was a great start for the show and I hope it gets the ball rolling, for lots more shows to come. A lot of people asked why I choose that town to start the show in, well first off my buddy Will was the first to offer his space for the show, but there's more Cleveland is the heart of the Mississippi delta and the true birth place of the blues it's right off HWY 61 the blues high way and center piece in the great migration of African Americans from the Delta to Chicago a lot of Chicagoans can trace there roots to this area, we are two cities connected by many things, I thought it was a great idea to bring a show about the first African America presidents election to the deep south for even though his heritage is not from that reason in a sense it is sort of full circle. I just hope the next show doesn't involve 22 hours of driving in a weekend while coughing up a lung and having no voice. One last note if you ever go through Memphis and think wow the heartbreak hotel across from Graceland that has to be cool, it's not the place is a dump.

Yes I know this is double posted on "the night hope won" but not everyone has time to read all my blogs.

vacation

2009-04-19T20:53:00.001-07:00

I made this cool vacation video check it out.

http://vimeo.com/4231105

Tadd Myers

2009-04-19T06:31:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the delay, I've been out of town a few weeks and if I can ever get Garageband started again I have a cool little thing I made that'll show what I've been up to. Anyway before I left town I put together a list of a couple people I want to write about when I got back and Tadd Myers wasn't one of them in fact until yesterday I had never heard of him. Yesterday I was doing a little internet catch up, looking at some of my favorite boards and blogs one of them called prophotoforums has a section where commercial photographers can share with each other their personal projects and that's where I found Tadd Myers's work. He has a project called the American Craftsman Project in which he has been documenting people in texas who are still doing things by hand, making boots, baseball gloves, wooden wheels, and others. In this age if "i" everything it's great to see this kind of handy work still around and I don't play baseball but come on how much do you want one of those gloves? These are beautiful heartfelt images that deserve attention, he worked with some great designers at Matchbox studios to really create a wonderful site to show case the work with beautiful text. His work on the project seems to have the same attention to detail as does the people he was photographing.

In a super cool feature you can download an eleven page copy of the project in PDF forum and make your own hand made book from it.

Alison Carey

2009-04-04T12:37:00.000-07:00

Alison Carey's photos are super wonderfully weird. She makes these incredibly elaborate and detail sculptures of prehistoric underwater environments, the animals featured although odd looking are very accurately portrayed. She then submerges the elements into large fish tanks and photographs them, creating a vintage ambrotype image. The resulting images created are a wonderful dream like view that looks so otherworldly that it's almost like looking through a window back into time. Because of the vintage camera techniques and the odd subject matter, when I first started looking at them it was hard to figure out if I was seeing something real that was photographed or something completely fake like a painting or computer rendering, I'm sure if I was able to see them in real life that wouldn't be an issue. Not that it's a probablem it's just kind of interesting, to create a photograph that is so other worldly that it almost reads as something else is really interesting. One thing that non photographers always gripe about is that anybody can take a picture so what makes that one special, it's just right place right time, and while sure there is some truth to that, nobody is ever going to say that to Alison Carey, she's constructing these sets from clay and lighting them to create a complete vision on a lost world. There's also something kind of futuristic about them environments I almost expect to see Buck Rogers fly through one. The subtle tones in the prints are really beautiful and establish a great mood for the images. She is represented by the Michael Mazzeo gallery in NYC Michael himself is quite a photographer and does wonderful wet plate images. So it makes sense to me that he would love these vintage images and so do I.

Special announcement

2009-04-03T13:40:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how many people click on the link to my site on the top of this page but if you haven't now is a good time to do it I just completely remade the site there are lots of new images and a couple new series that haven't been shown any place before. The new site is made in a way that it is very easy for me to update images so expect to see fairly regular updating of images.

Jason DeMarte

2009-03-28T20:31:00.000-07:00

Back in the 80's when I still lived in up in the Minnie Apple I used to have my parents take me to the Walker as often as possible, and truth be told although I've lived in chicago on and off since 1992 and non stop for the last 13 years I think the Walker is a much better museum than the MCA here in Chicago, better permanent collection, better shows, great sculpture park, better connection to the local art world. Anyway one of the many shows that I remember having a pretty major impact on my art thinking was a show in what was there small space on what was prior to the remodel the small top floor space, the room is generally reserved for local or at less well known artists. This show in particular hit me since the artist in question was doing these big pieces combing in a very neat way things that seemed to have no connection at all, the name is lost to my memory, but I'm sure some place in my collection of pretty much a postcard or some sort of info flyer from every show I've ever gone to it's there I can even picture seeing it recently in my parents basement. Anyway at that point I hadn't been exposed to many others doing that sort of work and it really opened my eyes to the possibilities of what could happen on a canvas, and looking at what I've done since then in my own work it's a constant thread. Jason DeMarte is about my age and probably was exposed to much of that same kind of work in the 80's and it seems to have influenced him as well. I love his juxtapositions of subjects. He is combining images he shoots at natural history museums and combing them with images that comment on consumerism and often the food chain. I love the vivid color and smart minimalist compositions to his work, I'm often accused of having to big of a heart for more dreamy romantic images, but truth be told I do love minimalism, and if I could own a few really expensive pieces one of them would for sure be an Ad Reinhardt black painting. Minimalism is super tricky to pull off well and these images do it well, it's kind of funny to talk about them as minimalist since to a pure practicer of minimalism they aren't at all but there is something about the spare precise compositions, super sharp focus and I know just the spirit of the images that really leads me in that direction. I remember an art history teacher of mine taking about early Rauschenburg works as being baptized with the paint of abstract expressionism Jason's work kind of has that feel it's like a dollop of David Salle mix in some Baldessari and blend it with minimalism and bam this really great stuff pops out. Plus how can you go wrong with someone who uses a twinkie in a piece.

Website

Cool Spanish kids

2009-03-22T12:58:00.000-07:00

So I usually write about "A"rt photographs, but I could not pass this up. This project was done by a high school class in Spain. They spent under $200 on the whole thing which is photographed pretty extensively on their flickr page. They built the whole thing pretty much from scratch. Send a little point and shoot camera almost to space and catching some amazing shots on the way up and down. this is just so cool. Amazingly I'm at a loss for words go to there flickr site and say hello.

blurbed

2009-03-18T21:21:00.000-07:00

For those who follow any of my other blogs or have been reading this one for a while I've done a post or two about this Obama book project I've been putting together. Well I have a couple shows lined up for the work, one in Mississippi and one in a Chicago burb. I really want to get this project out as a published "real" book; however until then I've made a blurb book for it. It's not perfect (it's blurb) but it's pretty nice you can see it here. I'm spending lots of my own money getting this project together so by a book and help a guy out. It should be highly collectable once the real book comes out. Any publishers who happen by the old blog you need to put out this book

Cole Thompson

2009-03-12T20:53:00.000-07:00

Some times an image can stop you in your tracks. That happened to me today, I got the new issue of lenswork in the mail and started flipping through the pages and came upon Cole Thompson's images from Auschwitz and Birkenau holy smokes are they amazing. I've been to Dachau and when I was there as an undergrad (a long time ago) I felt compelled to photograph but my photos didn't capture what I felt while I was there, I've seen photos by other people of the camps many of them nice but nothing really captured for me the feeling of those places. That is until I came across Cole Thompson's portfolio, by using very long exposures he captures the trails of tourist as they move through the space, because of the length of the exposures the figures become like ghosts in the space. He further excentuates this feeling with a pretty heavy handed printing technique leading to dark and contrasty prints. These photos really give me the creeps, litterally sending shivers up my spine. I love to see someone take images of a place we have all see photographed many times and make it there own. Better yet much of the money he is making from the sale of images is going to Holocaust awareness organizations.

More images

JR

2009-03-04T19:23:00.001-08:00

I found these photos via the Lens culture blog, and wow is all I can say. For one reason or another photography has been bothering me lately, both of my regular readers may have noticed some bitterness about contemporary photography, it's just so same same same. This week the College where I teach is hosting a well know photographer whos work looks so much like another well know photographer that I can't tell who did what. I think it's my painting background or a desire for a more visually interesting conceptual style of photography. After all you see a chair hanging on the wall next to text about chairs and a photo of that chair there's no question who did it, a series of creepy photos telling a story about an old woman dying again easy to say who did it. A picture of of a lonely hipster or poor white guy standing dead center in the middle of the a road shot with an 8x10 camera in color hmm maybe one of a dozen well know photographers. I was so pleasently surprised to see these images. It's taking photography some place new and making a point and actually helping people all at once, it gives me hope. The pictures are the faces of woman printed on a water proof material and printed large enough to actually cover the Roofs of the houses the woman live in. One of the goals was to make an art project large enough to be seen on google earth, mission accomplished. The photos also cover train lines and when going past a hill side the eyes line up with the faces. A little research into the artist show's he's been doing these sort of large scale instalations around the world covering things with his giant photos. I love this stuff I can't believe I haven't seen it before. Probably because in the states we only look at photos that hang on walls and cost to much money for most people to affoard. This is public art on the grandest scale, and it is art work worthy of lots of attention.

WEBSITE

Charlie Simokaitis

2009-02-18T12:16:00.000-08:00

Back as was just finishing up my time as a photo assistant, one of the last people I was working for was Charlie Simokaitis He was doing really fantastic, fun stuff and was then as now traveling all over the world. I never got to travel with him because I was teaching two or three days a week back then. Charlie's work a was pretty big influence on my commercial work, he was doing natural light reportage style work. Which is what I wanted to do as well. Anyway on to the serious bussiness at hand, I always love seeing the personal work of commercial photographers it's so pure often they don't really show it to anyone outside of friends, they aren't going after gallery shows or trying to publish books etc.... For a long time Charlie's personal work was mostly documentary travel shots which made sense since he traveled so much and what's a photographer supposed to do on a day off? well take pictures of course. Recently Charlie put together a site for project work, and I got to see a little more in depth into his work. The series "Fade to white" really knocked my socks off, I look at a lot of photography and can be pretty hard to please but this stuff is just amazing. Charlie's daughter was born with a condition where she has been slowly loosing her vision. Because of this he has been able to integrate himself into blind society and make portraits of people that are so much more honest and feeling than the kind of work you typically see of disabled people. These are some of the most strikingly honest portraits I've ever seen. The Images are all shot with a 4x5 camera and in many of the images he makes beautiful use of camera movements and even some vignetting all of this adds to a certain romanticism in the images, that I'm sure a certain section of art world hipsters will hate but call me old fashion I still love to look at beautiful pictures. There is so much bad tilt shift camera work going on right now, everyone wants to make everything look like little models it gets tiring, it is nice to see the movements of the view camera used in such a nice way. They are pretty personal for me as well since my wife is legally blind with out her glasses or as she describes it she has no point of focus with out them so seeing these portraits strikes home for me as well. I really hope he publishes this in some form even if it's just a blurb book I'd love to own it.

WEB

What's the deal with landscapes?

2009-02-14T12:02:00.000-08:00

So people who read this blog even occasionally know that I like photos that are a little more romantic in nature ie heavy darkroom or digital manipulation either is fine for me. I just have this feeling that the straight picture is just lacking a certain gravitates. Now don't get all crazy on me there are lots of great straight shooters most of my favorites are either portrait or documentary photos. The place it really drives me nuts is landscape the 5 photos I put up here are from 5 different photographers 2 are from big name art photographers, 1 is from a commercial photographers personal work, 1 is from flickr and one is from a well known photographer who worked for Ansel Adams has lots of books out but for one reason or another gets no respect. What's my point, well hopefully it'll be evident from the examples above but my point is the world of straight landscape photography is so stale, it's just over. When I look at the ones above a couple go for 10's of thousands or dollars and some go for nothing why? the name of the photographer and where it's hanging I guess. Particularly is the ex Adams employee he should be getting so much more attention from the art world but if you mentioned his name to most contemporary photographers they probably don't know who he is why? is it his adherence to black and white? or something else? I just can't figure out that indefinable something that separates the hip landscape photographer from the flickr photographer besides self promotion. I once asked a well photo historian this same question his response was about how he felt that some people just shoot a great image while others have a great project, and while I can see that with the flickr crowd I don't think it's always the best argument lots of people are producing great projects about the land and making great images, but to me they are all visually just rehashing the same thing. Certainly current trends are more minimalist in design of the photo space but that's just a tend. It's funny as I'm uploading these images and looking again the the image of the kind of obscured trees in a snow storm appeared in almost every portfolio I looked at.

Mihai Mangiulea

2009-01-30T21:07:00.000-08:00

In the video Documentary on Kieth Carter he talks about how he doesn't understand why so many people value sharpness in photographs and how a blur is just as natural to photography. When ever I see that video which I show to my students I think right on, although for photo 1 students at least I do want them to learn to make sharp pictures first. Anyway there's something in me that is very attracted to the blur done right, I think it's a reaction to so much of contemporary art photography which is so sharp and banal, take a fine art portrait that's hanging in a gallery printed 6 feet tall shrink down and put it a magazine would you think it's something special or would you say nice portrait and move on or maybe think nothing at all. I think in general magazine and commercial shooters blow the doors off fine art photographers sacrilege you say? well maybe but look at the great commercial photographers site look at there personal work, it is some times shockingly good. The current artless trend in art photography is really dumbing down art photography, art photography should be so much better than commercial photography and often it is. Mihai Mangiulea is a fine art photographer who is making really interesting work that goes against the current conventions in the fine art world her work is really beautiful to look at you could stare at the images for days getting lost in the colors and textures. I remember one time being told that the average person in a museum spends less than 5 seconds looking at each piece, not these they are so subtle they demand attention. These are so wonderfully far away from the current tend of boring looking hipster nerd standing in the middle of a boring room looking into the lens, evenly lit and sharp front to back that is a 5 second photo because you get it so fast, Mihai Mangiulea's shots take you some place else, some place beautiful that you want to stay.

Mihai Mangiulea

City of Darkness Kowloon walled city

2009-01-20T20:35:00.000-08:00

Way back in 1991 when I was a post bacc at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I stumbled upon this book and it blew my mind. Being a broke almost grad student I could not part with the money needed to get it but oh did I want it. Well for the past 18 or so years I could not get the images in that book out of my mind. Kowloon was part of Hong Kong and it was the most densely populated city ever, how dense ? well it was as many as 15 stories high 6.5 acres of solid building with 35,000 people. It was knocked down in 1992 and this book captures images of the city at it's most dense shortly before demolition. There really is know way to describe in words the density of the pictures of the city, it boggles the mind. I would love to be able to travel back in time to see it. The images are also so much of the future, the jumbles of wire, garbage, neon, and mazes of allies and people just seems straight from blade runner. I found this book again not to long ago and bought it, it could have been $1000 and I would have bought it that's how much it has haunted me, fortunately it was around $70 a lot for a soft cover book but so worth it. If you are into documentary photography, urbanism, futurism, or sociology you need to own this book. The images in the book are mainly shot by Greg Girard and Ian Lambot who spent 4 years exploring interviewing and photographing in the city. The city was not just homes but businesses, factories, and stores. One of my favorite sections is photos and interviews with a mail carrier in the city who may have been one of the only people who really knew how to get around the city.

http://www.greggirard.com/home.htm

Alamo and Costello

2009-01-07T20:57:00.000-08:00

I recently bought the new book buy Alamo and Costello, entitled "granpa Danny". It's Alamo and Costello's first book and it's a beauty. There have been several interesting projects I seen lately dealing with aging in photographic way my favorites have been Phillip Toledano's it's pretty amazing stuff also Kaylynn Deveney I love her book it's amazing and of course Larry Sultan's stuff. Alamo and Costello's project really stands apart from them because in the book he explores his subject with not only his photographs but also with many family photographs going back to the 1930's, so unlike most aging projects where you get a taste for the subject in question and have to imagine the person in there youth, in Alamo and Costello's work you really get a true life history of his subject, Danny. In fact I bet 3/4 of the book is made of historical photographs and the photos by Alamo and Costello don't come until the end of the book and they are a real treat when you get to them. It shows a great amount of restraint to let so much of the book play out before you get to the photographer in questions work and it really works for this project. Alamo and Costello is one of the smartest artists out there and this book is a great introduction to his work. It's a really fine book you need to go get there are only 1000 of them printed in the first edition and they are sure to go fast so go buy it.

Alamo and Costello

sit tight

2008-12-21T10:50:00.000-08:00

I'm going to be gone for two weeks and probably wont post while I'm gone, but check back soon.

Kesha Bruce

2008-12-09T11:50:00.000-08:00

Kesha Bruce is a good friend of mine who used to live on this side of the Atlantic but now makes her home in France which oddly enough (long story) is where I met her. She works in painting, photography and collage, but even though she runs a wide gamut in materials there is a very consistent theme and feel to all the work. here is a quote from her about a recent series of photographically based digitally created collages "The narratives in (Re)calling and (Re)telling are influenced by my grandfather’s tall tales, my great aunt’s superstitions, and personal experience. Images are combined to construct open narratives addressing aspects of African/American history and experience through memory and storytelling." This work really does it for me it combines so many elements into one strong whole, the narrative element is very strong in each of the works, they can stand alone as individual works but also work well as a group to form a larger narrative. I think there is a powerful argument for artists to live outside of there culture, and it's working for Kesha by not living in the US but making work which reflects back on the US she is able to get a clearer picture of where she is from and also is able to romanticize in some ways certain elements as well. Her work has a strong point of view which is only made stronger by her distance from the story. It's intelligent work that requires a long look not a passing glance.

Kesha Bruce

Syoin Kajii

2008-11-19T11:44:00.000-08:00

It's been hard trying to follow up the Obama Post, seems wrong to drop him down and eventually off the page. So I had to find someone who is both really good and interesting as well. Syoin Kajii is a photographer and Buddhist monk living in Japan, the waves are shot on Sado Island where he sits waits for the sun rise to light up the horizen and the waves. I really love this work, it combines some many things which interest me, water, landscape, multipule images, meditation and Buddhism. Syoin claims he trys to keep his religious life and his artistic life apart but when I look at these images even before I knew anything about him I saw them as peaceful places to rest the eyes and get lost. I love the pure abstract randomness of the waves they are so alive and expressive. These images are really worth taking the time to explore, I would love to see the prints, it's amazing to me how much it can change your view of the work, I think these would be wonderful fairly large so they really encompassed your field of vision like a color field painting.

http://kajii.icca.jp/

Obama in Grant park

2008-11-06T08:22:00.000-08:00

I was down in Grant park the other night to be part of history and it was an amazing experience one of the greatest nights of my life. To be part of a couple hundred thousand happy people was amazing. I couldn't not go without my camera so I shot a bunch and thought I'd put some of my favorites up to share. I started out the night at millers pub for the worlds best burger, and that was a blast too the tv's had the news on and when ever a state would go Obama the whole place would cheer, then around 9:30 Me and Jenn headed into the park to feel the love. The ride home on the L was like a Tokyo subway at rush hour pushing people into the cars, but it was worth it. The city handled the event beautifully lots of security but they let people have there fun with out getting to over bearing, I think it bodes well for the olympics coming out way, now if the Cubs could have pulled something together....

If anyone knows any one in these pictures email me and I'll send them a copy.

Kahn and Selesnick Eisbergfreistadt

2008-10-25T13:37:00.000-07:00

Sure I generally blog about more obscure artist than these, but I had a chance to see for the first time on a gallery wall this past friday there work in person. It's always quite a transition in seeing work which feel you are familiar with from books and online and then seeing it "live". There work is better sharper and even more interesting than I had even hoped. If I had 5k or so I would so be dropping it on one of these prints, maybe they would trade me I could give them a bunch of mine for one of theirs? I've been interested in there work for a couple years ever since I ran across an image from Scotlanfuturebog some place, it lead to buying the book (signed even) and then keeping up to date on there doings, and buying more books. Both of them where at the opening friday night and it was a real treat to be able to talk to them about the work and working methods in person. there work is as much a story telling as it is about images, each series is like an archeological discovery of images from some important but forgotten event in the past or future. I really like the idea of narrative photography taken to an extreme that there work embodies. The most recent series features photos from a 1923 indecent in which an Iceberg came a ground in the baltic port of lubeck and the founding of the"Eisbergfreistadt" Ice berg free State, a know failed off shore banking venture. I love the incredible detail involved in the creation of the stories, I'd love to see a long form novel of one there stories with there accompanying images. If you are any where near Chicago in the next month and don't go see this show you are dumb.

Kahn and Selesnick
carl Hammer Gallery

Derek Mohr

2008-10-21T19:57:00.000-07:00

I find so many interesting photographers through the photoeye site maybe it means I should break down and spend the money to get listed there. My latest find is Derek Mohr a self taught photographer based out of PA. His work really appeals to my eye, and in a way where if he had an MFA in photography he probably couldn't. I often tell my advanced students when they mess something up that there work is so wrong it's right. Derek's work is like that too, if he had an MFA in photography he's be taking straight color shots with lots of depth of field of some thing dull in the middle of a dull space. He doesn't have an MFA though so he takes Black and white photos where almost nothing is in focus and they are printed super dark and fairly contrasty. They are oh so rich though I just love to look at them, you can get lost looking for detail in those fuzzy darks. One of the hard things about teaching is that you know some people will just never get it and while they may become technically good there work will never sing this is something you can see pretty much right from the start (especially in there work ethic). Derek's work shows such a great sense of personal vision, you know he was good as soon as he picked up the camera. The only thing I would warn him about is to make sure he pushes himself and doesn't get comfortably and fall into a personal formula.

my opening

2008-10-10T20:14:00.001-07:00

I had an opening tonight at the Chicago School for Professional Psychology the show runs through early december so go check it out. I had a great turn out to the opening. Big thanks to Paul, Jeff, Robert, Wika, Linda, Chris, and Anne for making it to the show. I have some photos that I took but it'll take me a while to get them up. Wika on the other hand all ready has hers up on flickr so go here to check them out.

opening photos

James Nachwey

2008-10-06T20:42:00.000-07:00

James Nachtwey has been one of my photo heros for a long time. He recently won a 100,000 dollar ted grant to make a dream project, the results can been seen on the site he created for the project and also in the current issue of Time magazine with the soup line on the cover. Check it out it's important work the deserves as wide an audience as possible. I know it's hard to think of others right now with the scary news at home (at least your not in Iceland boy are they in trouble) but it's still important to remember the wider world.

Stan Shellabarger

2008-10-04T11:11:00.000-07:00

I’ve known Stan since my days as a grad student and he has consistently created some of the most interesting work out there. I’m always amazed by how many of the people I knew in grad school have disappeared from the art world after all that time where did they go? Stan has been going non-stop often doing work with his Partner Dutes Miller who full disclosure here is not only a great artist but also my daughter’s favorite baker. Stan's latest show at Western Exhibitions in Chicago Consistes of several endurance pieces called walking books. Stan has been doing endurance walking pieces for a long time on the solstices and one of my favorites was when he walked across a painted board revealing different colors as his shoes wore through the painted layers. The books are made by laying out paper and walking wearing shoes with graphite souls back and forth for several hours, there by drawing the texture below the paper. This could be the sidewalk, a floor, or a staircase. Scott Speh showed me the backs of the pieces which are nearly as interesting since the really pick up the textures of surface and in some case get stained with color from the surface one piece had an amazing grass stain on it. The show is only up for another week so get over and see it before it’s to late. If you do miss the show keep an eye on western exhibitions they show some of the most interesting cutting edge work in Chicago.

Western Exhibitions

Maria Martinez-Canas

2008-09-25T19:54:00.000-07:00

Recently I was down at the Schneider Gallery in Chicago to check the Thomas Kellner show which is very nice and my two year old really loved it, and seemed to get it right away. But I left the show thinking about someone else, in the back room of the gallery there are several pieces by Maria Martinez-Canas that really intrigued me, the photos are so subtle and quiet so the opposite of much of what is common in galleries, they force you to look and think about what you see. Parts of photos are obscured by tracing paper and the underlying photo is then traced on the paper it's such a simple device but so wonderful. There's just something special that happens with the mark of a hand on paper. I went to her web site and saw more of her work and I really enjoyed it, she switches things up all the time which is great, so many people can get caught in a rut of what ever brings initial attention to them and stick to what's safe rather than growing. Not that her work is scattered, there is a consistent feel to everything, but the look really evolves over time.

Schneider Gallery
Thomas Kellner
Maria Martinez-Canas

Shelby Lee Adams

2008-09-07T15:03:00.000-07:00

Holy color photography Batman Shelby Lee Adams is shooting in color! In the process of writing my last post where I talked about Shelby Lee Adams work a bit I tooled around the old internet to see if he has a web site (which he does) and saw his latest work which is in color, and man is it cool, you maybe able to sense my excitement through my ramblings here but make sure you check it out. I've always been a big fan of his images of East Tennessee and his video is always a class favorite with my students, in particular the part where I point out me yes me in the opening seen in Catherine Edelman's gallery. I was planning on a longer post about his work at some point but I just had to put up these images when I saw them. He's still doing Black and White images which have that timeless quality of much of the great documentary work being done in the past and talked about in the blog below but now with these color images he seems to have vaulted past the classics, these are really special images. In Particular Martha and Kizzie really touches me the relationship between each other and then between the viewer and them in the image is pretty incredible. I've always thought about the comparison between photojournalism and some of the modern documentary image makers who have a more contrived style ala Alec soth, it's and interesting balance between two places. Shelby Lee Adams color work seems to me to be in that area since his style is to light and pose people not just shoot from the hip like a classical PJ shooter would do, I'm not sure why but there is something special happening in these new color images that seems to ride an even finer line between the to styles, the color really puts the images in a place, the hot pink walls and the yellow light bulbs have such an impact. I wonder if that hot pink wall inspired the change?

Shelby Lee Adams

Season opener!

2008-09-07T13:43:00.001-07:00

Well friday was the opening night of opening nights here in chicago so all the spaces had there big guns on display. really too much to talk about Joel peter witkin's more refined but also more political work at Edelman, Thomas Kellner's jumbled cityscapes at Schneider gallery, Alec Soth's
direct documentary work at Steven Daiter, Good buddy Ryan Zoghlin
is showing his not in my backyard images at flat file, and one of my favorite ex chicagoians Rashid Johnson has a very cool show up at Monique Meloche. Go look and buy some art, if you're going to buy look at Ryan's show in particular this guy for the last couple years has been showing constantly all over the country just not so much here in chicago expect his to start selling big time. You heard it here first.

So in the midst of all this what to write about? Well I decide to look at someone who Ryan Zoghlin actually told me about a couple years ago and now has suddenly exploded every where, and is currently on display at the Museum of Contemporary Photography. Dave Anderson's "Rough Beauty" The work is much more interesting in person than I expected it to be, I think printed small in books and magazines I kind viewed it too much in relationship to other well know black and white documentary work in particular to me his work was kind of a hybrid between Shelby Lee Adams people (except in Texas) and Keith Carters adherence to composition and spirit. But when seen in person there are some things about the prints that pull you in, it's not the same kind of otherness that I associate with Shelby Lee Adams work, I feel like I'm getting inside these peoples spaces in a way that I don't with Shelby Lee Adams. Adams work is more manipulated perfection in printing and composition while Dave Andersons work draws a little more free wheeling style in both printing and compositions that make it easier to get inside, the printing defects and looser unposed compositions make everything much more real. But Then thanks to the staff at the MCP it gets even more interesting for they have also hung at the same time as Rough Beauty the entire "On the Road" book and a video on the beat generation, Then upstairs is an amazing collection of WPA photos by Arthur Rothstein and Dorthea Lange this stuff is fantastic to see, everyone is familiar with there signature images (available for free download at printable size from the library of congress, I have a migrant mother and Charwoman on my wall) but to see so many great images by each really address the depths of there greatness in a way I've never really experienced, as with Dave Anderson to see the work in person is just a wholly different experience. One thing I couldn't really get my head around while looking at the shows was that the more things change the more they stay the same. What I mean by that is other than the quality of printing (sharpness and tones thanks to modern printing tech) and scale of images, Dave Anderson's images are 40 x 40 inches while the older work is 8x10, at the largest, the images don't look like they where taken in a time range of 1935 - 2006. Good or bad I'm not sure, yes there are some subtle differences from the passing of time but if you would have printed the more recent images smaller and shown them in the 1950's with Robert Frank's work they would not have seemed to terribly out of place, the three shows from three very different periods of time don't seem out of place with each other. Good, bad I'm not sure but it sure is interesting. It brings me back to Jazz or the blues, Wynton Marsalis may not sounds to different from Miles davis (ala 1950s) but he's still really good.

A good starting point for great free images from the government!
Dave Anderson
Shelby Lee Adams
MCP

Pentti Sammallahti

2008-08-28T20:00:00.000-07:00

When I was at fotofest Karen Glaser and I where walking around the preview for the auction and as we walked we saw mainly what we expected to see but toward the end we stopped and stared at a small, probably 6x12 or so, print from Pentti Sammallahti, we did know the name but we both decided it was the best print there (except or course karens). As we where walking out we ran into Chris Rauschenberg and we told him about the print and he told us about this crazy Finish photographer, basically it came down to he’s is some sort of semi reclusive genious who has received a 15 year long grant from the Finish government to work on his projects. His work doesn’t seem to be to well know in the US but it really should be it’s amazingly simple and delicate you get lost in the experience of viewing even the small print we saw. In Finland though he is seen as some what of a national treasure. Most of his images deal with people and animals and there relationships with the cold extreme climents of the northland he knows so well. Thes aren’t flashy images of people with frozen beards climbing mountains but still quiet images of the passage of time, So many people these days are making giant prints because it’s so easy. I remember when I was an undergrad a 16x20 print was really big now that’s where people make test prints. It’s a lot easier to wow someone with a big print that a small print, this little print blew me away and started me on a online quest to find the reclusive genious, there's nothing flashy about these pictures there just perfect.

google image search

photo eye page

Roark Johnson

2008-08-16T17:04:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of friends who I think should be famous artists. One of the reasons I started this blog was to give them a little well deserved press. When I first moved to Chicago in the mid 90’s I had just received my MFA in painting and was very interested in photography, I new a lot of b/w stuff but nothing about color or lighting. A friend of mine told me I could make money carrying gear around for photographers. So I made so photo postcards of my dog, hand wrote in ballpoint pen on each one “feed this dog hire this assistant” and waited. Son enough Roark Johnson called I told him I didn’t have a clue about lighting, but since we had both gone to UW-Madison he hired me anyway. Roark is the nicest guy in the world, one of the best photographers out there and someone who should be famous for sure. We also have all kinds of weird similarities, beyond the UW thing we married people from the same small town, we both have cabins in Wisc, had kids ten years apart, we are ten years apart, it goes on and on. Any way Roark is mainly a comI have a lot of friends who I think should be famous artists. One of the reasons I started this blog was to give them a little well deserved press. When I first moved to Chicago in the mid 90’s I had just received my MFA in painting and was very interested in photography, I new a lot of b/w stuff but nothing about color or lighting. A friend of mine told me I could make money carrying gear around for photographers. So I made so photo postcards of my dog, hand wrote in ballpoint pen on each one “feed this dog hire this assistant” and waited. Son enough Roark Johnson called I told him I didn’t have a clue about lighting, but since we had both gone to UW-Madison he hired me anyway. Roark is the nicest guy in the world, one of the best photographers out there and someone who should be famous for sure. We also have all kinds of weird similarities, beyond the UW thing we married people from the same small town, we both have cabins in Wisc, had kids ten years apart, we are ten years apart, it goes on and on. Any way Roark is mainly a commercial photographer but he always has some kind of personal project on the side that he is working on. Currently he is doing stark portraits of the town of Bensenville a town which is quickly dying as the city of Chicago buys it up to expand O’Hare airport, the images are very direct and poignant not really romanticizing what is there but showing a clear document, it’s a very powerful series that I think should be getting attention. A few years ago he did another project where everyday for a year he went out with his 8x10 deardorf and shot two sheets of film of a stranger, it’s a pretty amazing project in scale, and beauty. I often joke with Roark that if he would only shoot his 8x10 work in color he would be showing at the Whitney. I love the dedication to the project, it didn’t matter if he was on assignment in Ohio or vacation in Wisconsin or at home in Chicago he shot everyday. The portraits because of his travels show a great cross section of America. Now if I could only convince him to start getting his personal work out there. He’ll probably be one of those people where when he retires people will start doing books on him. I dare you to look at his stranger sites and not spend a couple hours going through the whole thing.

main site
strangers 2004 site
some newer strangers

Shimon and Lindeman

2008-08-07T17:47:00.000-07:00

I've been a fan of John and Julie since I was in grad school back in the early 90's and was able to meet them once or twice, back when they still had the neo post now gallery in there space in Manitowoc wisc. Their work revolves mainly around the people in there small town, shooting with very large format cameras 8x10 and 12x20's, they also excel at platinum, gum and other vintage techniques. I still remember the impact of seeing some very large prints from their series on the Manitowoc punks back in probably 1990 or so, this was way before I new anything about the direct portraits that would come from Alec Soth in sleeping by the Mississippi, their prints really shocked me in there directness, I've always wondered if Alec was exposed to these prints back then as well they seem like such an influence on him in so many ways. They have continued to make this work and have expanded the project as the kids grow up it's a seen you would no expect to find in small town wisconsin. Some of there more recent work is made using the giant 12x20 camera, they have been producing beautiful panoramic portraits. These images tend to be more romantic and narrative than there 8x10 work. I love the texture in particular of the gum prints, there is such a trend right now in advertising photography to in some way degrade the images and make it antique looking I admit to being guilty of it myself some times, it is particularly special then to see the printing techniques done so well in there original forms. One of the coolest things about them is they have several books out that you can get trough there site. One of which can be downloaded through Lulu.com for free and you print yourself, how cool is that it's a great book, I showed it to one of my view camera classes and they all loved it I think they where all going to go home and download there own copies. I think my students especially my advanced level students love to see any work that's not some straight forward color documentary work done large format it's like a whole world they don't know about. In a really strange 6 degrees way I shot a friend of there's wedding last year, they told them to call a friend of mine who is also a friend of there's who told them to call me small world eh? Go check out there stuff you'll dig it.

John and Julie

Street photography

2008-08-07T15:35:00.000-07:00

I enjoy street photography, I'm not the best because I don't have the stick a camera in a strangers face kind of attitude, but I do occasionally run around and do a little mostly on the "L" where it's loud and people can't hear the shutter, or on busy streets. I'm purely a shoot from the hip type street shooter I'm to chicken to bring the camera up in the face of strangers. this leads to lots of editing to get anything good but I have a good general Idea of what I'm aiming the camera at and thanks to the second shutter button on the bottom of my camera I'm very stealth. Anyway some times I nail it and mostly I don't if someone wants a huge editing project I'm sure there lots of good stuff buried in my harddrives. Anyway after shooting a commercial gig this morning I shot this one, I love it I think it just says so much about America. Later I'll be posting about someone else more important, I just felt like sharing. If you want to see what I've been working on lately check here.
this

Dawoud Bey

2008-07-27T12:12:00.000-07:00

Dawoud has been a long time art hero of mine since I discovered his work as an undergrad back 1990 or so. This morning I caught him being interviewed on WBEZ's arts program. Dawoud had as usual many insightful, thought provoking art world comments, he is one of the most engaging and intelligent people you'll ever meet. In the strange path of my life I have been for the last 6 or seven years teaching in the same photo program as Dawoud although I have to admit when ever I chance to run in him I still feel pretty star struck, seems odd to run into some one you wrote about as a grad student waiting in line for the copy machine. In Addition to making great photographs Dawoud is also a great writer and has begun blogging his thoughts, his blog has become in a very short time one of the must read art world blogs. One of my favorite parts of the WBEZ interview was when he was asked about the whole digital vs film thing and he basically answered nobody asks a painter what kind of brush the use it's the resulting image you get that matters not what kind of camera made, amen.

What's going on Dawouds Blog
Dawoud Bey web site
Radio show July 27th Hello Beautiful
Dawoud Bey's book

Christine Lebeck

2008-07-16T19:58:00.000-07:00

I was recently clicking around over on photoeye when I came across the work of Christine Lebeck, and really like the environment that these photos create. Each image is a photo of one night of sleep, something that with two little kids and two dogs I can barely remember but it does look nice. The pictures remind me of Hiroshi Sugimoto's theater pictures in a lot of ways but these are not so cold and conceptual as his, there is a warmth to them that is wonderful, I think it's the movements and dream like quality being created through the pinhole camera and how the to colors of light transmit onto the film. The use of light in these photos is very interesting, at first glance it's a dark room, but really it's not at all, by leaving a window shade not quite all the way closed or the use a light reflected in a mirror there is some really wonderful light happening in these shots. On her site she also has another series of works which are seascapes, I like them but I don't find them nearly as effective as the nocturnes photos, they just don't have the depth of visual interest and thought, I can't get as lost in them. The Seascapes are also to easy to compare to Sugimoto's seascape series which are one of my personal photo ephany series.

Hiroshi Sugimoto
photo eye
Christine Lebeck

Aaron Hobson

2008-07-06T18:27:00.000-07:00

A lot of people talk about certain images in cinematic looking, I always find that interesting, what is it about an image that makes it cinematic? the format? panoramic stuff tends to have the look. Lighting? dramatic lighting definately helps in getting work to feel cinematic. A strong narrative element? all of the above? probably so. It's also interesting that it's generally considered such a good thing, like finally a photo as good as a movie. I think it's our inate love of story telling in our guts we love to hear and tell stories from way back. Aaron Hobson is a contemporary master of the cinematic photographic image. His work is assemble from several images put together in the compture to create panoramic images, that combined with his very dramatic use of light and the way he composes people in the images really gives the images a strong quality of film stills. They are from movies that haven't been made but you want to see. I love he way you can get lost in the images thinking of your own story as you stare. I have a game I play when I'm walking around, when I see someone interesting I think of long involved stories that they are involved in little plays in my head, Aaron's images are like frame grabs from my own narratives. For a while on his site he was selling 8x10 prints of his work for super duper cheap prices that seems to begone now but I noticed he is selling some prints that are shall we say well traveled for $250 for a 40 inch print that is super cheap I may have to get one myself. I bought one of the tiny ones already. have a look at his site CLICK you can also buy his stuff on Photoeye I could just look at these forever. I hope Steven Awalt is still following this blog he'd love these.

Epson Exhibition Fiber Paper

2008-07-06T13:57:00.000-07:00

Those of you who don't know me personally probably guessed from the name of this blog that I'm kind of a tech geek. However I started out as a real old school large format type, I searched for years to replace Oriental papers when they stop importing into the US in the mid 90's I was super happy when they came back. That paper was very special great surface great tone and most importantly great prints. I love digital prints, I've seen quad tone black and white prints that blew my mind when I thought about making them in the darkroom. Papers though for digital printing had been lacking something though particularly in the black and White world feel. The old heavy fiber paper just felt great in your hands they felt real, and prints had a great look on them. Where traditional c-prints and all non matt digital prints had images which sit on top of the paper fiber prints even glossy ones sit in the paper right below the surface. The great of all papers to me is bergger silver supreme paper it's crazy good makes images look like platinum prints rather than silver. Epson's new Fiber Exhibition paper try's to solve this problem and for the most part they pretty successful. I recently received a sample pack of it from epson and have been playing with it the last couple days and I very impressed, it feels great when you hold it like a real print should, and the images do take on that right below the surface quality. I'm sure black and white purists will never admit that it's good, but as a reformed purist let me tell you this stuff is sweet. Photographers have never had so many great options for output, it used to be mat or glossy warm cool or neutral, now sky's the limit.

Duane Michals

2008-06-26T20:25:00.000-07:00

Sure to now I've been writing about mostly young up starts in the photo art world, people who maybe well known to some but not to the world at large. Well Duane Michals is pretty huge, any art student who's had a modern art history class should be pretty well versed, so it's not like he needs my attention to help his work move forward in the world or anything. Well the other day I was perusing one of my favorite photo talk blogs where I came across this great post aphotoeditor which lead me to this great site pixchannel it's run by a photographer named randi lynn beach who's work is pretty great as well. Well she has video taped interviews with some pretty heavy duty art world folks one of whom is Duane Michals. It's a really fantastic interview, he has such a sharp wit and in my mind such a great view on the contemporary art world and it's just plane sillyness in it's desire to be taken as seriously as nuclear dissarmerment talks. Duane Michals has a fairly recent book out call "foto follies how photography lost its virginity on the way to the bank" It is such a wonderful piece you should all buy it. Where in he points his sharp wit and eye at many of the establishment of the current art photo world and show just how redundant they and there work are. It's the kind of thing that needs to be said and he's the perfect person to say it. Duane Michals has always been one of my big time art heros, unlike many who seem to make some great work and then fade he just keeps getting better.

Duane Michals

Elaine Duigenan

2008-06-21T08:52:00.000-07:00

I was so happy to open my email today, because of some great art spam. One of my favorite people I met at Foto fest was Elaine Duigenan but of course I lost her info some where along the way. To describe her work it sounds so uninteresting but when you get to actually see it, it is so tactile and beautiful that you can't really describe it. Often when people ask me what I photograph I say out of focus pictures of empty rooms or light reflections and I get a blank stare, I'm sure Elaine gets a similar reaction when telling people what she photographs the objects are, hair nets and nylons. Because they are both delicate and transparent the light has an amazing way to wrap around the objects, it really looks as though you could pick them up off the paper. Since the things she is photographing don't have an internal structure they fall flat on the scanner and really become abstractions of themselves. I would be interested to know how much manipulation is done to the objects once placed on the scanner or they more or less free form and left as is. These are really amazing photos , you can see them starting July 9th if you are going to be or are in NYC at klompching . When I was at the galleries web site I decided to make them a stop next time I'm in NYC they have a really impressive roster of photographers showing.

klompching

Elaine Duigenan

Natasha Kaser

2008-06-10T20:12:00.000-07:00

Like I'm sure many of you do one of my first things I do when I get to opportunity to sit a a computer for a while is check out Mr. Colberg's Conscientious blog . Although he enjoys a slightly different aesthetic than I do, I'm more dreamy he's more literal, he posts so much stuff that I'm always finding a gem in the mix, it's required daily reading in the art photo world. recently he posted a link to Natasha Kaser's site like many of the people he posts about I had not heard of her before but I really liked what I saw. Interestingly he really liked a series called "Antiques" which personally I found to dry and forcefully arty, He said he was on the edge about a series called "Customs of the Country" which I was quite taken by. At first glance the are fairly straight documentary work, of country life. But and not to sound to photo teacher here but the use of depth of field and blur really take the images some where else and some place more unique. They add a romantic dream like quality which I really love. I love the emotional things that a blur can add to an image. It's what separates here images from so much of the hard edge realism that is so in vogue right now. This is probably just the quality Mr. Colberg is on the fence about and if I was giving advice to Natasha kaser I'd say go with Mr Colberg says not what I say. but hey this is the blog world so there's my two cents. It's funny I was thinking back on a conversation I recently had with CHristopher Rauschenberg about blurry photography, he was against it and felt that it was like the photographer didn't trust the viewer to look at the right part of the image, while I think blur in photography is more a kin to painting where the photographer is as interested in mood and atmosphere as they are in straight image making. Heck with digital camera my 5 year can take a perfect sharp picture but it takes a little more finese to make a perfect blurry image.

Conscientious
Natasha Kaser

KIpling Swehla and Juliette Herwitt

2008-05-31T08:10:00.000-07:00

I went to a great open last night. It was a two-person show of Kipling Swehla and Juliette Herwitt. Kipling’s work is photographic and Juliette is a painter, they really reflect wonderfully on each other though. Kipling does photos of contrails often at extreme close ups and shooting through things, they often become wonderfully textured abstract images. Juliette does small paintings of Chicago night scenes, they aren’t photographic in detail but there is something very photographic about the impression you get at first glance, in fact looking around the room it can be a little confusing which are paintings and which are photos which is a fun and cool effect. The Paintings have a wonderful Noir mood of rainy chicago nights and are way to cheap go buy a couple. Both artists are selling Blurb books of there work at the show as well, I think every artist should be doing this these days it’s so easy and seems like a natural, it’s like having a fancy printed catalog at your small show. The print quality of the books is very impressive. Kipling has been shooting the contrail series for a number of years and it’s been interesting to watch it change, and get more abstract in nature, some of the early examples are fairly literal with build and trees and very sharp clear lines, while the newer ones seem to be going more abstract and textural.

Kipling Swehla
Juliette Herwitt

Jennifer Greenburg

2008-05-29T20:09:00.000-07:00

Like most people I have a soft spot for the obsessive artist. People who get so involved with a project or work that it frames there life as well as there art. Jennifer Greenburg is one of those artists. She began several years ago to photograph people who lived as if it was 1950 , they dress, and live the style, duck bill hair cuts, mid century modern furniture and all. The photos which are mainly shot with a 4x5 camera are incredibly rich with color, detail, and stories. I’d love to sit down with all these people and see what makes them tick. The formality of the 4x5 and the 1950’s seem to go hand in hand, the images never look overly stiff just thoughtful. The 1950’s are an interesting period to focus on for these subjects it seems to be that last decade of the old America and the first of the new, it’s like the country is a tween and is on the crux of teenage rebellion, this lends a certain anxiety to the fifties which even though these subjects are not actually experiencing it still seems a presence.

Jennifer Greenburg

report from the mini apple

2008-05-23T20:33:00.000-07:00

I had a great time in my old stomping grounds. I also got out to see some great and nostalgic art. First day I was up there I hit the new walker art center addition. I have mixed feelings about the space it looks super cool, but when your inside it just seems to fall short of being an effective space, it's really hard to get a sense of where you are going and where you've been, and for as large as it seems from the outside it doesn't seem to add all that much exhibition space on the inside, also if you come in from the old side which seems more natural since it's close to the city and sculpture gardens you walk into a small and pretty empty dead space, I'm sure there is another more dramatic entrance but I never found it and not for a lack of trying. There is however some great art up there, I'm convincved that the walker does a better job of curating and has a better permanent collection than the MCA here in Chicago. I saw two really wonderful shows first was the suburbia show. One of the strangest things about that show was walking around seeing several Chicagraphers on the walls, that was fun but also a little disturbing. A coupe Chicagraphers I remember seeing up there where Greg Stimac who had some lawn mowing shots up they are super fun, and also Brian Ulrich who had some of the retail images up. To me they really some up the suburban disconect with out evening showing the suburban home. I was really excited to see the Crewdson photo they had in the ads for the show, it was very nice but about 1/4 the size I was hoping for, oh well. Next I wound my way over to the Walkers other big show right now Richard Prince, I've always had kind of mixed feelings about his work on the one hand there are his photos of photos ads with logos taken out to make western images etc... to me there is really nothing even remotely interesting about these besides the fact theat he seems to be able to sell them for so much. Then there are his paintings of Jokes with the clear stencled letters. These are one liners in to many ways and I find them pretty dull as well. They also had some more recent stuff up that really blew my socks off, some where images of pulpy book covers done at huge scale with lots of beautiful paint, and another recent series of jokes and paintings taken from magazine images where also really amazing I never knew he was such a good painter, I've really been itching to paint again and these paintings really start pushing me to the canvas incredible stuff. There is also a series that feeds off of Dekooning's woman series that are really amazing. The show took me from a person with a mild interest in Princes work to a person who now really loves what he's doing. It had an interesting combination of early hand painted pop type stuff ala Johns, Rivers, Dine and Rauschenberg which I've always thought was the high point for American painting, but with a nice contemporary sensibility about it.

Day two I headed out to the Minneapolis Institute of Art which is free you can just walk right in how cool is that. I didn't really see anything that knocked my socks off but growing up I would go there a lot with my family so it just kind of feels good to be in there. The MIA also has a big new addition which is well integrated into the old museum, although the entrance area really felt like some sort of suburban office complex. The MIA has a nice strong collection of work and the new space lets them pull lots more of it out. It's kind of interesting that a museum in this day and age would do such a conservative looking addition given the current trend to crazy looking museums.

I also stopped in the new Guthrie theater building, Wow is it ever super cool, and the let you wonder around the place to see it which is very cool of them.

me me me

2008-05-19T21:06:00.000-07:00

I had a show opening up in Minneapolis over last weekend. I love getting up to the minni apple, it's one of my favorite cities, it's small but it has a super strong art community with lots of alternative spaces and some great museums. My show is up at Augsburg college until July 11th if you pass through put a comment in my book and I'll feel special. Sometime this week I'm going to put a review up of all the other great shows I saw when I was up there but right now I'm a little swamped. Leave town for a coupe days and it's hard to get out from under.

The report from Chelsea

2008-05-07T21:05:00.000-07:00

So how’s a guy like me to follow-up on Art Chicago? Well I went to Chelsea of course to check out the gallery seen first hand. I was actually in NYC to shoot something but hey as long as I’m there might as well see some art right. I hadn’t been out to do a big NYC gallery thing in a while so it was pretty great just to get out there and do it. It’s crazy how much great art you can see in about 8 blocks on a Saturday just in Chelsea it’s a lot like going through art Chicago yet I feel like I just scratched the surface. Here are some of my personal high lights.

James Lahey at J Cacciola galleryThis is a painting show that when you look at it you see why you stopped painting this guy is crazy good. Large paintings of skulls over black backgrounds, with stenciled text over the skulls (I ‘m a sucker for text in art). The stuff over the black is great but they’re where a couple with more of a background where I thought the images looked pasted together.

Warhol and Basquiat at Van De Weghe Fine Artgotta love dead guy art that still looks fresh today. Really really big paintings that pack a wall-up, good luck getting one of these into you 800 square foot apartment. This might have been my favorite show of the day.

Koichiro Kurita at Fotosphere Gallery. These are grids of contact printed landscapes that are platinum prints on rice paper; oh man do you want to touch them they look so jewel like. The 8x10 neg as a contract print is like crack for photographers you can get lost in all that detail and tone, I left this show wanting to toss my Digital camera in the garbage and just shoot 8x10, hhmm if only I had a trust fund. On a negative note there was a chair sitting in the corner of this space that had some really fantastic light on it from a window and the owner of the gallery wouldn’t let me take a picture what stinker, maybe if he knew who I was.

Eric Zener at Gallery Henoch, this guy is making some big bank at this show, my trusty assistant and buddy was adding up the sales here and came out to several 100k Jeepers that’s cool. These where very large very detailed paintings of swimmer nice stuff. My favorites here where some multi layered prints with gold leaf backing, that had a very nice other worldly effect. After I left the space and thought about the money I then thought about how long it takes to paint such large and detailed paintings and then take out the galleries cut and when you consider the several years it probably took to produce this show and the several more years it’ll take to produce the next on he’s probably under paid.

Aziz + Cucher at clamp art I felt pretty cool walking in here since I was able to pal around with Brian Clamp a bit at foto fest, so I was actually able to say hello to a cool gallery owner and he actually knew how I was I think Dan was quite impressed. The Aziz + Cucher photos that where up where very crazy, at first glance simple landscapes but when looked at again all the negative space between say leaves is filled with crazy squiggly lines kind of like photoshop paths very interesting work.

Finally

SZE Tsung Leong at Yossi Milo I kind of had an epiphany at this show very similar to when I first saw Hiroshi Sugimoto’s seascapes all together at the MCA in Chicago. Although I love these image on there own seeing them all hung together was kind of an other worldly experience. Images which may have been taken 1000’s of miles apart lead so perfectly into each other and not just in a horizontal line kind of way but a hill or line in one image would lead into a hill or color in the next really wow stuff. So wow in fact that I pulled out the old credit card and bought something, non not a series of prints that line up to hang on my walls, and no not a single really super cool image, but an exhibition catalog, hey you have to start some where right? I can’t wait to see Yossi Milo on my credit card statement, maybe he’ll sell my name to some high faluten art mailing list and I’ll start getting invited to lots of cool art event for serious collectors.

Art Chicago Part III the big dogs

2008-05-01T20:21:00.000-07:00

It's so hard to describe the world that is Art Chicago, you get to walk around these amazing galleries selling art that is often stuff you see in art history books or contemporary monographs. It's a surreal world that doesn't so much care about you unless you have really nice shoes on. It's also hard to see all the "art heros" of the world the people we are supposed to all look up to and hope to be one day totally commodified. On the other hand it's like the best galleries in NYC, London, tokyo, etc... all open up shop for a weekend in Chicago and it's an opportunity to see great art on an immense scale. It's super hard to pick out what to select here since I really didn't see much bad work work somethings may not have interested me to much but there wasn't anything that did not have some redeeming quality. I've also been wondering if I should call out galleries like I did with the Next review or Artists like I did with the Artist Project, my conundrum there is many artist where showing in multiple galleries. So I decided to do a combination and select a few galleries and what or who ever caught my eye there in.

Yossi Milo As a fine art photog I'm supposed to worship the hallowed ground of this gallery and what he shows, and for the most part he does show some of the most interesting photography out there although sometimes I can find the particular look of his artist a little lacking in passion. My favorite things on display in there space where the really amazing minimal landscape image by Sze Tsung Leong this work is up at the NYC space right now as well I'm going to be there this weekend so I'll give these a well deserved second look, and I'll also pick up the exhibit catalog too. The images are mainly captured with an 8x10 camera and the quality of the prints is really exceptional. I tend to fall on the digital side of the digital vs film debate but in my heart I would shoot everything 8x10 now all I need is for some distant relative I've never heard of to die and leave me a bundle of money so I can so that.

Gabriel Rolt I've been reading a lot about the work of Desiree Dolron and I've see reproductions of the work online and in print, so when I saw these down the hall I was pretty excited to see the work in person, and I hate to say it but I was kind of disappointed in the prints in person. The work is super heavily manipulated in post so I expected the prints to be something else the smooth painterly quality I see in print and online wasn't carried through on these they where kind of grainy looking and the blacks didn't seem dense enough. Maybe they printed them extra big to try to dazzle and they fell apart a little bit

Laurence Miller Sometimes a great B/W print is just what you need, no need for fancy dancy digital or giant color c-prints, sometimes you just need a B/W fiber print done just right. The best example of this that I saw where by Toskio Shibata pictures mainly of industrial forms in nature dams and such, amazing prints that show you don't need to be big to dazzle. I also liked shots by Stephan Couturier time lapsed image of industrial robots working in auto plants pretty spectacular.

Sikkema Jenkins and Co The two best photos I saw all day where here the first which was the most impressive piece I saw all day was a giant piece by Vik Muniz it was a map of the world made of discarded computer parts it's hard to describe just how cool it was if you go to Vik's site and look at the Junk series yo can see some other examples from the series and also short videos showing the assembly of the work. The other was a portrait by Valerie Belin It was pretty amazing very intense a bit commercial but so perfectly done that it really stopped me in my tracks. What can I say I'm a lighting junky and this was some great lighting.

Weinstein Gallery I've never really been able to figure out this gallery. I grew-up in Minneapolis so I'm pretty familiar with the art seen up there and one thing I know is that people with money in the mini apple generally go to the big apple to buy art gallery crawls up there tend to be a wash with hipsters with no money, yet there this gallery sits with one of the best assembled collections of contemporary photographers I think anyone could put together any place. The had some great stuff on the walls of the space from Alec Soth to some mighty nice Starns prints, this place is hard to beat any where.

I could go on and on with great stuff I saw up stairs at Art Chicago but I must sleep sometime.

Art Chicago Part II

2008-05-01T19:33:00.000-07:00

This section is about my experiences at the artist project. The artist project is a show for artists without gallery representation. I was in the show last year but I didn't apply this year for a lot of reasons which I don't need to get into here. Anyway last year it had around 100 artists and about 25 of them should have been there the rest where not so fab. This year they expanded the number they took to around 300 artist but it seemed again only about 25, many of them the same people returning should have actually been displaying there work at art chicago. I find it really disappointing on a couple levels first I wouldn't think it would be that hard to find 300 great unrepresented artist to show, and also it is sad to see the kind of work many people are making thinking it's "A"rt when it is more crafty neighborhood art fair stuff, they are really fooling themselves. The presentation of the show was also pretty bad, there where so many people in these tiny little spaces that it felt kind of like walking through a moroccan bad art bizarre more than going to see art work there might have been a lot of good stuff there but walking through the tight little halls sure made it hard to see. I read over on art letter that the show is not coming back again next year, not a big loss art wise but a big loss of what could have been if run better a really great show and oppertunity to show the work of lesser known artists. Here is my list of some stuff that I did see that I thought was good enough to be in a better show.

Rui Pimenta is a Toronto based artist who made abstract pieces where there where stained formed on several levels of plexi which where all sandwiched together creating a 3-d spatial effect which is very nice. The forms are like amebas and it kind gives the impression of looking through a microscope.

Bill Guy Inspite of the fact that we both teach at Columbia College Chicago I had never heard of him nor seen his work, I guess I was missing out he had a wonderful series of images called Finding Walden which where fairly straight forward but beautifully done documentary/landscape images of the Chicago park system. In many cases the images are extra nice when the people in the images are trying to but can't quite interact with the parks. I will be exploring his work more.

Pamela Johnson was showing large 4x6 foot or so paintings of food mostly things that stack. The paintings are really beautifully done (I have an MFA in painting slinging inspite of my current photobased work) They stop just short of being photorealistic and make you very hungry. Another thing I like about them is they stop short of something which seemed to be wrecking much of the painting in the artist projects which is photoshop filters. I saw many many people who had nice looking work but it looked like they just to a photo ran a filter over the image and painted the result I worry that photoshop is wrecking lots of good work.

Lee henderson was showing photos that mainly revolved around Buddhist imagery the images had an look that reflected the meditative quality of the photos, they where pictures that made you want to stop and look and absorb something. One particular series involved Bees and was pretty incredible. These where the best photos I saw in the artist project.

There was other stuff there that was nice but the show was just so crowed it's hard to say what it was, when looking through the list of names later I saw several people I know and who's work I like but in spite of going up and down every row I never saw there work. I hope art letter is wrong and the show does get another chance because it could be a great thing it just needs to be done differently, there was a lot of crap-o-la.

Art Chicago

2008-04-30T20:17:00.001-07:00

Ugh I've been thinking about this blog for a while, then I went to Art Chicago and left so visually overwhelmed by the whole thing that I was more confused about what to say after I left than I was before I saw anything. I walked around the show notebook in hand and camera around the neck looking very reporter like, people even asked if i was one to which I replied not really or sort of, I eventually figured out a great story for the question but then people stopped asking probably because I was then up on the 12th floor with the big guns and if they don't know you they could careless about you, 4k worth of camera hanging around your neck or not, my cool story which I never used was that I was an art scout working for a wealthy but anon collector. Any who about the art as you've gathered already I'm sure I don't know where to start, "Next" art over all was as would be expected the most interesting art on display I'm just going to list some of what I thought where highlights of the Next show.

western exhibitions My good buddy Scott Speh is really make a name for himself as a gallerist and curator I don't always love what he shows but it's always interesting. Stan and Dutes where doing live performance art all weekend at his space they always do very cool stuff.

Mummery + Schnelle I liked the paintings they had up by Philip Akkerman They really reminded me of Ivan Albirghts stuff not as good as Albright but interesting nun the less.

mixed greens Great name for a gallery. Kim Hart had a installation which had sculptures of dogs on a hunt running into a paint backdrop of a forrest very cool took up the whole space probably the best thing I saw at Next.

new zones They where showing some of the best photos at Next I really liked Dianne Bos's pinhole photos, and they had some nice drawings that reminded me of Kolwitz (german expressionist) I think they'd be a good fit for me.

claire Oliver They had theses giant I'm talking 20 foot long photo's on display by AES+F , that I was really torn about yes they got my attention (they are huge) yes I looked at them for quite a long time (the are huge) and yes technically they are impressive (they are huge) but all in all they left me lacking, they just seemed to slick and commercial to perfect a little to much of everything. Watch the video by Black Estate on the website it is super cool.

Camara Oscura Very digitally manipulated work seems to be of there liking they showed several artists in there space and I liked them all a lot check out there website it's a fantastic collection of 21st century photography.

All Rise This is a local gallery that I could walk to that I've never head of, I guess I need to get out more. They had these photo's up by Sebastien Lapointe that I just ate up the where so cool the images where of the sides of record sleeves and they where fairly large around 4 feet high but skinny like maybe half a dozen records in each photos. The photos where mounted on boards covered in what looked like bar top varnish and then leaning on the wall super de duper cool Best photos at the Next Fair.

Coming Next The Artist Project >>>>>

Ben Gest (not Guest)

2008-04-28T20:07:00.001-07:00

At first glance Ben's work looks like it could come out of the staged snap shot tradition, which personally although I like it more than the snap shot esthetic I don't like it very much. However upon second glance you start to see very odd things happening in the work, and once you reach the third glance you can really get sucked into the work. Ben creates the images by combing several images together to make an almost seamless whole. When you start looking at the work you won't see strange photoshop jaggies or telltale breaks in between images what you see are odd unexplainable shifts in perspective and depth of field which can be easily missed but once you find them the create an almost puzzle like quality to the works that force you to really look into them, and any work that gets you to look at it for more than a couple seconds is impressive esp for me since I tend to zoom through shows and museums pretty quick unless something catches my eye. I can however spend a long time staring at these just beyond normally perceptible images and that is a good place to be. Ben's work is currently on display at the Steven Daiter gallery in Chicago, if you are in Chicago and don't go see it you're dumb, Ben creates a wonderful world where everything is just a bit off. Ben also has his first monograph coming out soon in connection with his show at the renaissance society last year. He also has the honor of being the first person mentioned twice on the old blog.

ben gest site
stephen daiter gallery

Erica Dufour

2008-04-19T15:52:00.000-07:00

Back when I was assisting one of my favorite people to assist with was Erika Dufour We assisted some big time ad shooters together and always had loads of fun. She was also one of a very few number of assistants who where interested in the world beyond commercial photography and into the art side of the fence. Since then Erika has gone on to become a big time ad shooter herself, with a rep and portfolio of amazing images. Fortunately she has also kept up with perusing her art photography as well, which can become very hard to do when you’re a busy commercial shooter. Erika creates wonderfully minimal abstract photos and her mastery of lighting really helps create a beautiful look in the work, as does her interest in color. My favorite pieces she has been showing are her spheres “series one”, which are large prints of intensely colored spheres. I love the intense colors and the surreal scale which the bring to the photos, it’s hard to say if she’s shooting tiny things and making them big or just shooting big things. Her work really echo’s some of the best color field paintings and has a great polish to it that some people just don’t have the energy to achieve in there own work. Really great stuff worth checking out, her art is shown at Caro D'offay gallery in wicker park keep watching for a show.

Erika Dufour
Caro D'offay