Photographic Typologies: Alan George

Alan George e-mailed me today with a link to his series Domesticated, a project which explores urban modifications to nature. In his statement, George asserts:

"With this series of images, I examine domesticated urban plants and people's attempts to control and manipulate them in sometimes trivial and inconsequential ways. My hope is that these at times humorous and tragic examples echo conditions within the larger context of the relationship between humanity and nature. I also hope that the viewer can identify with certain human or anthropomorphic characteristics of the subjects, perhaps feeling a bit saddened by their circumstances."

His series Wheeled Estate is also well worth checking out.











All photographs from the series Domesticated

All Images © Alan George

Flak Photo Promotion

In an effort to help us promote Issue 3 of The Exposure Project Book, Andy Adams over at Flak Photo has been kind enough to add a banner to the website that links directly ours. The book should be done shortly, at which point it will be available for purchase online. For more information on everyone included, click here.

Thanks for the support Andy!

Exposure Project Exhibition in Brooklyn

The Exposure Project will be hosting an exhibition at Tillie's of Brooklyn in Fort Greene. The show opens on Monday, August 18th and will be up until Saturday, September 20th. The line-up of exhibiting artists is as follows:

Ben Alper, Anastasia Cazabon, Lauren Edwards, Kate Emerson, Adam Marcinek, Fran Osborn-Blaschke, Justin James Reed , Eric Watts.

We will be having an opening reception from 7-9 pm on Monday the 18th. For anyone who will be in the New York area during this time, we would love to see you there. Additionally, we will be selling a limited number of copies of Issue 3 of The Exposure Project Book, which will also be available for purchase online.

The Exposure Project
Tillie's of Brooklyn
248 DeKalb Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11205

August 18- September 20
Opening Reception: Monday, August 18 from 7-9 pm

We hope to see you there!

Maximilian Haidacher's Kieswerke

I was pleasantly surprised to find an e-mail from Maximilian Haidacher in my inbox the other day. His series Kieswerke examines, with some degree of formality, the contemporary industrial landscape. Haidacher's have a wonderfully soft color palette which gives them the appearance of being older than they are.

I would also recommend checking out his series Hôtels des Alpes. You can see more of Haidacher's work here.









All photographs from the series Kieswerke

All Images © Maximilian Haidacher

Alexander Diaz's Still Lifes From My Mother's House

I received an e-mail from Alexander Diaz the other day with a link to his website. His project Still Lifes From My Mother's House examines the eccentric collection of objects that dominate his mother's life, and artist's past. In his statement for the work, Diaz asserts:

"For me, these still lifes are layered in meaning and history and go beyond mere decorations. Her arrangements, like any successful fabricated still life throughout art history, are thought provoking and cleverly juxtaposed. These still lifes are not only informative of an individual, they are also testaments of a culture that is based on consumption."









All photographs from the series Still Lifes From My Mother's House

All Images © Alexander Diaz

An Image A Week: Brian Ulrich

Brian Ulrich's exhaustive examination of American consumer culture, Copia, is simultaneously one of the most illuminating and off-putting projects that's been produced in quite a while. The overt commentary on the post-911 American condition and our gratuitous need to consume goods is powerfully and subtly delivered in Ulrich's images. Despite the pointedness of the content, the images in Copia retain an open-ended, neutral quality, leaving the photographs open to interpretation. The extent to which America has fallen into the void of consumerism is staggeringly evident in Ulrich's photographs of seemingly endless big box retail warehouses (Granger, IN 2003) and in the vacant stares of mall pedestrians (New York, NY 2004). The blind faith in consumerism to heal the wounds of a troubled economy has subsequently given rise to extreme patriotism. Ultimately, Copia does offer a solution to this dilemma; and how could it. Ulrich has simply distilled the psyche of contemporary American culture with a critical, discerning eye. The images gain their power from asking questions, not answering them.

Black River Falls, WI 2006

Image © Brian Ulrich

Georg Parthen's Landschaften

Georg Parthen's ongoing project Landschaften is yet another photographic attempt to create fantastical, digitally composited landscapes. Similar to photographers like Scott McFarland and Beate Gütschow, Parthen assembles what he calls "implausible landscapes" that appear wholly real. Parthen's apparent interest in the questioning photographic truth and authenticity comes at a time when digital media has nearly saturated visual culture. To distinguish whether a photograph is grounded in actuality or not seems somewhat arbitrary. The fact that digital-compositing has reached the level of sophistication it has, entirely changes the nature of what we can constitute as photographic reality. Ultimately, what we have assumed as reality in the past has been supplanted by fantasy at the hand of technology.










From Top To Bottom:

Dorf

Galerie

Kuppeln

Plateau

All Images © Georg Parthen

New Website

It's with great pleasure that I announce the unveiling of the new Exposure Project website. It now possesses a current and updated archive of images from all the wonderful people that we've collaborated with over the years, as well as all of the photographers that are included in the third issue of the Exposure Project Book, slated for release at the end of August. The book will be available in both softcover and hardcover editions. We also have plans to release a limited edition run of Issue 3 which will be available for sale through the new website.

We are incredibly excited about this release, which contains photographs by Ben Alper, Anastasia Cazabon, Lauren Edwards, Kate Emerson, Adam Marcinek, Fran Osborn-Blaschke, Justin James Reed & Eric Watts. In addition, Jörg Colberg has written us a wonderfully insightful forward which will preface the photographs.

The book will be available for purchase online in a couple of weeks through the Blurb website. Check back with the blog or the website for further details regarding the book release and exhibition.

Seesaw Summer

The Summer issue of Seesaw Magazine is now up and there is (as usual) some really terrific photography included. Issue #10 compiles work from Andrew Burton , Rian Dundon , Liam Eyers , Betsie Genou , Paul Kusserow , Laura Pannack , Katrina Tang & Iveta Vaivode . You will also find a set of found photographs of a tahitian dancer and an interview with Ryan McGinley .

Seesaw Magazine (the creation of Aaron Schuman) has been cultivated into one of the more interesting online photography zines, always supplying interesting, international work from range of photographers working across the medium. For anyone who hasn't seen the new issue, or for that matter the older ones, you should do so post-haste.

Below you'll find an image from each project included in issue # 10. Enjoy!

















From Top To Bottom:

Iveta Vaivode, Image from the series Terminus Riga

Rian Dundon, Changsha, China 2006

Betsie Genou, Image from the series Les Moguichets

Liam Eyers, Image from the series Little Chef

Andrew Burton, Image from the series Nothing That Happens After We Are Twelve Matters Very Much

Katrina Tang, Image from the series Country Schools

Paul Kusserow, Image from the series Brother/Sister

Laura Pannack, Image from the series The Untitled

All Images © The Artists

Barrett Emke

I received an e-mail today from Barrett Emke with a link to his newly designed website. Emke was a recent participant in the Tim Barber-curated Various Photographs exhibition at the NY Photo Festival. The majority of his work possesses the loose, snapshot-like feel that has grown increasingly popular in recent years. Despite the fact that I have not entirely embraced this stylistic movement, I do enjoy a few of Emke's images from New York.









All Images © Barrett Emke

An Image A Week: Ben Huff

Ben Huff recently posted some new work on his blog from his series The Last Road North. If anyone is familiar with his blog, you'll know that Huff has consistently shared wonderful work from his travels in Alaska. It is quite refreshing to see imagery from a part of the world that hasn't been over-photographed to the point of total saturation. The inundation of "American" photographs throughout photographic history has, to some degree, neglected imagery of Alaska in this tradition.

Huff's portraits of the people he meets on the road are both modest and respectful. I particularly love the image above. For as simple and unassuming a photograph as it is, there is a quiet dignity in the man's expression and posture. He seems to trust Huff, and ultimately a photographer couldn't ask for more than this.

You can see more portraits from The Last Road North here.

Jeremy

Image © Ben Huff

Robert Heinecken's TV Newswomen

I discovered the work of Robert Heinecken in the book Special Collections: The Photographic Order From Pop To Now, a wonderful monograph of Postmodern photography from the 70's and 80's. A few years before Heinecken's death in 2006, Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times wrote:

"He sometimes described himself as a para-photographer, because his work stood 'beside' or 'beyond' traditional ideas associated with photography. Essentially, the artist decided that in the wake of the media explosion that had come to characterize contemporary life, enough photographs already existed. Rather than make more, he would manipulate existing ones. His art became an attempt to clarify, reveal and sometimes confound the subliminal social, political and artistic codes they contain. Heinecken was among the first to consider himself an artist who used photographs, not a photographer who made them. Today that approach is common. But in the late 1960s, when Heinecken published an influential portfolio of 25 prints titled 'Are You Rea,' the radical nature of the experiment was largely unprecedented."



TV Newswomen, 1986

Image © Robert Heinecken

Fran Osborn-Blaschke's Curve Of The Earth

In anticipation of the third issue of The Exposure Project Book, slated for release in late August, I am going to be posting some work that will be included in the publication. Fran Osborn-Blaschke is a Boston-based photographer whose project Curve Of The Earth takes a rather scientific approach to landscape photography. As the artist states:

"Think of how cities and countries appear on a schoolroom globe. To make these, the camera points directly East for sunrises, directly West for sunsets and is tilted to accurately represent how the horizon is inclined at its latitude. By making photographs of the same location at different times of the year it is possible to capture the movement of the Sun as it slides North and South along the horizon."









From Top To Bottom:

Sunset from Grand Hotel, February 24, 2003
Brugge, Belgium
51° 12' 27.75" N lat./ 03° 13' 14.00" E lon.

Sunset, Boston from Deer Island, B.H.I., June 21, Summer Solstice, 2006
Boston, Massachusetts
42° 21' 17.52" N lat./ 70° 58' 06.67" W lon.

Sunrise, Dorchester Bay from Columbia Point, December 21, Winter Solstice, 2005
Dorchester, Massachusetts
42° 18' 49.93" N lat./ 71° 01' 58.52" W lon.

Sunset with Seal Rocks, March 9, 2001
San Francisco, California
37° 46' 30.46" N lat./ 122° 30' 46.48" W lon.

All Images © Fran Osborn-Blaschke

Joe Johnson's Mega Churches

Joe Johnson's series Mega Churches investigates the architectural ornateness of the contemporary, American place of worship. As the title clarifies, however, the churches captured by Johnson are more specifically the extravagant, stadium-sized Megachurches that have quickly sprung up all over the country. According to statistics, there are over 1,300 such churches in the United States, each with a congregation of 2,000 or more. Some megachurches possess congregations that soar as high as 45,000.

What is interesting about Johnson's Mega Churches project is that he has omitted showing us any people whatsoever. Instead, what he gives us are small architectural details and images that capture these places in a state of limbo, or preparation. In essence, what they show is the conscious orchestration and gaudy presentation of a structure that throughout history has been modest in nature. Churches, until relatively recently, never looked like venues that you could imagine seeing a large-scale rock concert in. The immodesty of megachurches has become increasingly apparent, however, Joe Johnson has captured this superfluousness in quite the opposite way--with quiet, contemplative and thought-provoking photographs.











From Top To Bottom:

Stage For Childrens Ministry, Loveland, CO 2007

Amp Cover, Wilson, NC 2006

Bolt, Fort Wayne, IN 2007

Desk, Fort Wayne, IN 2007

Lighting, Raleigh, NC 2007

All Images © Joe Johnson

A Conversation With Larry Sultan

I was digging through the archives of Big, Red & Shiny this evening and was pleasantly surprised to find an interesting interview with Larry Sultan. I have posted an excerpt of it below, however, you can find the whole thing here.



BRS: There seems to be a model, in the art world and especially in academia, of relating photography in terms of language. Though photography can be a non-verbal experience to a certain degree, it seems that language is often imposed on top of it. Then I wonder about the tension between the analytical mind that can critically look at a photograph versus the creative mind that can produce it. Can a photo be made from a point of view of a deconstruction?

LS: You can, and some people have done beautifully at inventing a practice around deconstruction and analytical investigation. It's not really the way I work, but I think the question is a larger one, about how we teach photography and learn photography.

If you're a painting student, the instructor can come in and push your hand, say, "do this" or "try this kind of strategy". It's an immediate intervention. We usually don't go out and physically make pictures together, so we can only help the student once the picture is made through discussion, through language.

It doesn't have to be an analytic process. Literature especially has an interesting relationship photography--to observation, to description, to fiction: taking something that you see and elaborating, jamming, and I think, staging. That weird practice between staging and finding is very much like a Ray Carver (story). You think, "he's seen this," but he's taking that moment of observation and letting it go, giving it some wings, following it, rather than nailing it. You're riffing off of reality.

I've always wanted to be a writer. The text to The Valley and the text to Pictures From Home were really important. I've actually thought about stopping photographing for a while and just writing, maybe that would get closer to the bone.

Photograph from the series Pictures From Home

Image © Larry Sultan

Curtis Mann's Modifications

I saw Curtis Mann's series Modifications at the exhibition The Ubiquitous Image, Leslie Martin's curatorial effort at this year's New York Photo Festival. His "modified" photographs are found, or appropriated from friends, Flickr or Ebay, and then selectively painted with varnish and bleached to erase specific parts of the composition. In his statement for the work, Mann asserts:

"The photograph is physically and contextually altered to produce a reading that oscillates between image and object, photography and painting, real and imagined. This new interpretation attempts to disrupt how we normally perceive, understand and connect with the fragmented world in which these photographs attempt to represent."









All photographs from the series Modifications

All Images © Curtis Mann

J Bennett Fitts' Images From The Center Of The Contiguous United States

I discovered J Bennett Fitts' most recent project Images From The Center Of The Contiguous United States today. Consisting of four distinct sections, Interiors, Exteriors, Lawn Ornaments and Contextual Images, the photographs from this series investigate (what I imagine) is middle America. It is hard to say with any real confidence where Bennett Fitts took any of the images, and I'm guessing that is largely intentional. The places depicted lend no geographical cues to distinguish one landscape from another. Instead, they coalesce into a visual overview of modern day suburbanization.

Out of pure curiosity, I found out that the exact geographic center of the United States is in a park in Lebanon, Kansas. I'm guessing, however, that the title of this project is not to be taken too literally, and that the photographs can be seen as a microcosm of a much larger suburban culture. In keeping with the subject matter before his camera, Bennett Fitts titles and categorizes his images with the homogeneity that can similarly be found in the facades he photographs. He largely denies the viewer anything specific or contextual, so I'm guessing that the group of images entitled Contextual Images is intended to be received with a certain amount of irony.

In any event, J Bennett Fitts is an interesting photographer with an acute appreciation for the tradition of banality throughout photographic history. Ultimately, I think the reason his images are so successful is because he can take something that's been approached innumerable times and breath new life into it.











From Top To Bottom:

Untitled 2

Untitled 1

Exterior 4

Interior 3

Lawn Ornament 8

All Images © J Bennett Fitts