“untitled at the moment”

“A portrait photographer depends upon another person to complete his picture.  The subject imagined, which in a sense is me, must be discovered in someone else willing to take part in a fiction he cannot possibly know about.  My concerns are not his.  We have separate ambitions for the image.  His need to plead his case probably goes as deep as my need to plead mine, but the control is with me.”
-Richard Avedon 

(reproduced from the article, What’s in a Face?  Blankness and Significance in Contemporary Art Photography.   October Magazine, Fall 2007, No. 122. p. 71-90)

Something Wicked is moving in next door to my favorite Sushi restaurant in Boston very soon.  I am very excited!!!!

I was out having dinner with a friend of mine last week and he said, “Hey J, I saw your picture and quote in a magazine this week.“  This was news to me, because no one notified me that I was being published anywhere.

A few months back, one of my former MassArt professors said that PopPhoto College Edition was going to do a feature on the school and more specifically, the students who still use film.  He urged us to send the magazine some images and any thoughts we had on the medium.  I figured I’d at least get an e-mail saying that I would be published…but nothing.

Regardless, they used the image above, “Stained Glass Reflection, Venice Italy” as part of their story as well as a nice quote I gave them.  This was included in their April 2008 edition.

My good friend Jim Fitts over at the PRC took this picture of Tina Barney and I having a conversation about “The Gaze”, a paper and photo project I have been working on. Tina was kind enough to give me some advice as well as pointed out the various gazes found in the portraits in her book.

I spent yesterday in NYC with my mentor Thomas Roma. During our 3-hour meeting, we looked at my new work, talked about some photo books, and he suggested a few authors that I should look at over my next semester.

One exercise he wanted me to do is ask myself 3 important things when I make a photograph:
1.) Where am I? Does the photograph tell me something about the place? If this peeks my interest, ask the next question.
2.) Who’s there or Who’s in the photograph?
3.) What are they doing? What is the action/non action going on in the photograph? Is it interesting? Would I stand in line to go see it in a gallery/museum setting? Would I buy the print? Would I buy the book?

I find that I haven’t asked myself some of these questions when I make the photographs and when I think back at some of the images that I find interesting all of those questions are answered and I would want to see the final product just by the description alone.

He wanted me to also realize that: “You do not make work for yourself, You are not making work for your friends who are photographers, You make work for others to enjoy.”

also….”Your images should make your friends question what you are doing and your enemies worry.”

Back to the drawing board…

Larry Sultan’s interest lies in the culture surrounding Southern California.  Some the first projects he worked on were collaborations with fellow photographer Mike Mandel.  Their first collaboration, Evidence, were “found photographs created for one context which they then used to create a new context, essentially giving them a double life.”

He explained, “Many of the images had a shallow depth of field…just the facts - they exist as evidence.”  He also felt they had a “Duchampian feel” to them, like a readymade they took authorship for the images even though they did not take the actual image.  This was before the word ‘appropriation’ became synonymous for this action.

Sultan continued making work based on this hybrid between the found and the constructed with images on billboards, images of his family which were very person, and then on to the sets of porn movies.

Most recently, Sultan has crossed over to editorial work where he constructs scenes similar to his fine art work.  What baffled him is the fact that some museums want to collect this editorial work.  This recent shift has brought up a new conversation in photography.  What is the difference between Fine Art and Editorial / Commercial work?  My guess is that most people probably couldn’t tell, unless you told them.

It’s HOT outside!!!!!

That’s all.

The highlight of my week was going to the Addison Gallery of American Art with my wife to see Frank Gohlke’s exhibition  Accommodating Nature.  Frank looked nice in his dark pinstripe suit and gave a talk in each of the rooms that displayed various projects from his career. I recognized many of his former students who came to offer their support, which goes to show that his teachings did make a large impact on us.

Besides being my former professor as well as a person I worked for, I think of him as a poet, just as I do most people I know who are dedicated to making images of landscapes.  Each image is like a separate stanza, slowly letting us in to their stories, building suspense, creating relationships and educating the masses along the way.

I went to the PRC early on Thursday and had the opportunity to meet one on one with Ms. Barney before her lecture.  I talked to her about “the gaze”, a project I’m currently working on this semester as well as writing about.  She gave me a ton of suggestions and ideas to follow up on.  She said she began to understand it more after she had her portrait painted.  We flipped through her book, which she signed for me, and she pointed out various gazes and explained the relationship they had with her, whether the sitter was her brother, a friend or a stranger.  She even went on to discus it in her lecture.

One interesting quote she said was, “A person’s gaze is made up of everything they see from the time they are born up until now determines their gaze.  How their head sits on their neck, how the neck sits on their shoulders, and so on.”

Most of the lecture mirrored similar stories that I heard in her movie, Social Studies that recently was shown on The Sundance Channel.

I’ve been busy scanning, printing and writing a paper over the past week, which is why my blog has suffered.  I’ll be heading to the Tina Barney lecture tonight at the PRC and Sunday to the Frank Gohlke opening at the Addison Gallery of American Art.