End of Summer Book Giveaway!

Hey Everyone,

As summer tragically draws to a close, we here at The Exposure Project have decided to host an "End of Summer" book giveaway. We will be giving away a complimentary copy of Issue 4 of The Exposure Project Book to one lucky photography-loving person.


"Ginger Shore, Causeway Inn, Tampa, Florida. 1977"
© Stephen Shore

Here's how it works. To be considered, we are asking that people submit one characteristically, summer-inspired image. This image can consist of whatever the artist deems most emblematic about the season. It can be an image that you've already made, or one that you create specifically for this challenge. It can be of any size, format and process, so long as it is photographically based.

Naturally, we will be accepting entries until the last day of Summer - September 21st. After reviewing the submissions we will select our favorite summer-tinged photograph and announce a winner. The chosen image will be posted on the blog along with a corresponding interview with the photographer.

Submissions should include the image, artist's name and website URL (if available). Send entries to: ben@theexposureproject.com

Good luck and have fun!

David La Spina's Neighborhood Goes There

David La Spina's most recent project Neighborhood Goes There explores the triviality, insipidness and understated theatricality of our mythologized suburban culture. Though different in certain fundamental ways, I see the images from Neighborhood Goes There as scrutinizing similar territory as Paul Graham's expansive project A Shimmer of Possibility.

I would also recommend taking a look at La Spina's series' We Have Only Just Begun, Architectural Renderings and History of a Village: Mamaroneck.


From "Neighborhood Goes There"
© David La Spina


From "Neighborhood Goes There"
© David La Spina


From "Neighborhood Goes There"
© David La Spina


From "Neighborhood Goes There"
© David La Spina


From "Neighborhood Goes There"
© David La Spina

Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective

I had the pleasure of visiting Mass MOCA yesterday and seeing the expansive Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective. The exhibition is comprised of over 100 wall drawings, which span the length of LeWitt's illustrious career from the late 60's through the time of his death in 2007. There are even a couple of newer works that had never seen the light of day before their creation and installation at this retrospective - Wall Drawing 1260 (posted below) is just one example.

A Wall Drawing Retrospective brings to life the breadth and scope of LeWitt's endeavors in Conceptualism and Minimalism. These works, installed on three floors that coincide with the early, mid and late periods of LeWitt's career, offer illuminating insights into the progression and expansion of a vision largely rooted in geometrical and architectural exploration. To reduce LeWitt's work to an exercise in formalism, however, is insufficient. When viewed in person, his wall drawings activate what I can only explain as an intense sublimity. The daunting scale of some of the drawings alone is often enough to induce strong feelings of awe. However, it is the manner in which all of the elements in LeWitt's work intersect that produces the greatest rewards. The repetition of form, line, texture and color, not to mention the intensity of many of the hues, unite to create an experience that is fiercely and actively perceptual. There were many times when my eyes played optical tricks on me. I found that LeWitt's wall drawings were the most affecting when you allowed them to envelop you, when your vision was permeated by nothing other than his creations.

Perhaps most importantly though, A Wall Drawing Retrospective highlights LeWitt's emphasis on the concept of a work over its execution. After all, it is for this very reason that we can go to Mass MOCA and see this amazing show. His diagrammatic instructions detailing the conceptual parameters for each piece have survived, thereby enabling his wall drawings to live on uniquely in his absence.

Also, for all of you busy folks who can't make it out to Western Massachusetts any time soon, do not fear because Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective will be on view for the next 25 years.


"Wall Drawing 46"
© Sol LeWitt


"Wall Drawing 335"
© Sol LeWitt


"Wall Drawing 631"
© Sol LeWitt


"Wall Drawing 901"
© Sol LeWitt


"Wall Drawing 1037"
© Sol LeWitt


"Wall Drawing 1260"
© Sol LeWitt

Jon Feinstein's Pure Aesthetics & Small Signs

Jon Feinstein recently updated his website with a number of new projects. Among my favorites are Pure Aesthetics & Small Signs - two very different, but equally intriguing series'. In the statement for Pure Aesthetics, Feinstein asserts:


"Pure Aesthetics rejects the tendency to find meaning and substance from superficial visual experience. Building on Clement Greenberg's ideas about abstract expressionism and the need for a tactile and purely visual perception of artwork, the images have little concept beyond their physical properties. Shiny, colorful, ostensibly inviting materials are laid flat and rendered into abstract patterns that at times appear to descend back into space or contain some code of visual complexity. While the "critical" viewer may demand a layered concept, there is actually nothing to explore beyond the purely physical surface."


From "Pure Aesthetics"
© Jon Feinstein


From "Pure Aesthetics"
© Jon Feinstein


From "Pure Aesthetics"
© Jon Feinstein

In his statement for Small Signs, Feinstein explains:

"These photos attempt to offer a visual interpretation of the ominous intersections between man-made objects and our natural landscape. I am interested in the impact of the way we live now, in constant communion with our surroundings. Rather than staging elaborately crafted narratives, I hope to find these elements of science fiction in the everyday."


From "Small Signs"
© Jon Feinstein


From "Small Signs"
© Jon Feinstein


From "Small Signs"
© Jon Feinstein

Also make sure to check out From Russia With Love and The Serpent and the Rainbow.

Marie Menken's Go! Go! Go! (1962-64)

Sometime last year, I saw a collection of Marie Menken's experimental short films at the Harvard Film Archive in Cambridge. I had never seen any of her work before and was, on the whole, really impressed by her sensitivity to light and cinematography. Towards the end of the program, Go! Go! Go! screened and I was truly awed. This 12 minute silent film, comprised of single frame cinematography, presents urban life as a chaotic, fractured and largely hyper-sensory experience.

You can watch more of Menken's short films here.

"Go! Go! Go!"
(1962-64, 16mm, color, silent, 12 min.)
© Marie Menken

Issue 4 of The Exposure Project Book - Special Edition Images

Below are a few images of the components and packaging of the Special Edition of Issue 4 of The Exposure Project Book.




The Exposure Project Book - Issue 4 (Special Edition)
70 pages, Hardcover
Edition of 25
8 x 10 in.
2 Signed and Numbered Prints
$100 + S & H

Includes photographs by Chris Bentley, Rona Chang, Daniel Farnum, Elizabeth Fleming, Lee Gainer, Matthew Genitempo, Inka Lindergård & Niclas Holmström, Natascha Libbert, Bradley Peters, Carlo Van de Roer, Daniel Shea, Manuel Vazquez, Jens Windolf, Susan Worsham and Bahar Yurukoglu

Brian Ulrich's essay "Myths and Realities, Photography Moves Into the 21st Century"

Each Special Edition comes with your choice of two editioned prints, signed and numbered by the artists. It is also packaged in an archival portfolio case made from 100% post consumer recycled materials. You can view the available prints here.

If you purchase a Special Edition, please e-mail you print selections to:

ben@theexposureproject.com

Each edition is limited to 10 prints, so buy one now to ensure you receive the images of your choice!

Special Edition Prints: Chris Bentley

Today's image comes courtesy of Issue 4 photographer and Special Edition print offerer Chris Bentley. The image (posted below) is part of Bentley's series Desert States. In the statement for the work, he explains:

"This work from New Mexico is part of a larger project on the West—The Desert States. The Desert States project focuses on those states whose identity is significantly based on the presence of the desert: New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California.

The land—in its vastness and aridity—defines the entire area. This geography has determined how the area developed and the type of person that lives here.

Historically, these states were not well populated. The rangeland and farming were generally poor. Now, of course, they have significant population growth. And, this is where nuclear weapons development and testing began."


From "Desert States"
© Chris Bentley

For general information on both editions of the book click here. To view all the available print choices for the Special Edition click here.

Florian Slotawa

Fellow Exposure Project member Eric Watts recently turned me on to the work of German artist Florian Slotawa, whose work is currently on view at P.S.1. His environmental sculptures of hotel rooms and domestic spaces recontextualize the objects that permeate everyday life. A parallel could (I suppose) be drawn between Slotawa's work and that of Alejandra Laviada. However, I see his work more as a contemporary extension of land artists like Robert Smithson, James Turrell and Richard Long whose images exist to validate their fleeting and ephemeral works. As John Chilver observes in an article he wrote entitled Contingency and the Paradox of Composition: Florian Slotawa:

"Here, the photograph is both an artwork and a document, that is, both a primary and a secondary work: it is both a framed, tonally nuanced picture and simultaneously a document, a piece of evidence that registers an absence, an event that has passed. The event's clandestine aspect heightens the resonance of the photographs' evidential nature. They don't just document a performative intervention, they register a very particular transgression. Imparting knowledge of the transgression makes the audience complicit, however reticently. What's more, the act's seeming ineffectuality too has an affective charge. For it seems to rhetoricize its own inconsequentiality: room furnishings are shifted around and then painstakingly put back where they belong—although, of course, the intervention questions where they in fact belong. So, then, has anything happened? Has nothing happened?

Slotawa, the hotel guest, accepts the furnishings and fittings as a kind of inventory, as a given limit, while refusing their configuration. This is a question of dwelling insofar as the remade rooms declare themselves as zones of subjective identification and occupation. They deny the impersonality that's assumed to be a condition of the hotel room's function as a hotel room."


"Hotel Città di Parenzo, Triest, Zimmer 307, Nacht zum 2. Januar 1999"
© Florian Slotawa


"Hotel Europoa, Prague, Room 402, Night of June 8,1998"
© Florian Slotawa


"Hotel Europoa, Prague, Room 402, Night of June 8,1998"
© Florian Slotawa


"Hotel Intercontinental, Leipzig, Zimmer 2116, nacht zum 12. Dezember 1999"
© Florian Slotawa

Gigi Gatewood

I recently discovered the work of Gigi Gatewood. Her series of still lives explore how objects exist as symbolic representations of nature and human behavior. In her statement she writes:

"How does each of us come to terms with the unknown? Using photography, I am building a series of still-lives that individually symbolize different belief systems or strategies of understanding the world. Collectively, they represent an exploration of the fundamentals of religion, science, and magic. I am interested in the distinction between what we know and what we believe. I am studying replicas of natural subjects, by which we understand and represent nature. These objects are romanticized translations of reality, infused with our understandings of the world around us and with our desire to gain control over it, thus creating a space that exists somewhere between reality and the imaginary."

Gatewood's work can be seen in the PRC's inaugural Juried Publication, which will be distributed in their fall issue of In The Loupe.


"Braille Book, 2008"
© Gigi Gatewood


"Planetarium, 2008"
© Gigi Gatewood


"Mare Basalt, 2009"
© Gigi Gatewood


"Crystal Ball, 2009"
© Gigi Gatewood


"Font, 2009"
© Gigi Gatewood

Too Much Chocolate + Kodak Film Grant

Jake Stangel (founder/editor of Too Much Chocolate) e-mailed me today in an effort to spread the word about an exciting new grant opportunity that he's collaborating on with the good people over at Kodak. The grant aims to nurture and realize prospective projects from talented emerging photographers by supplying them with support and, perhaps more excitingly, FILM!




Too much chocolate is excited to partner with Kodak in offering its first-ever film grant program, with submissions opening September 1st, 2009. The grant aims to recognize strong project ideas from talented and emerging photographers, and allow them to fully realize and create a body of work they might not have been able to entirely finance themselves. This grant will provide 10 non-represented photographers with the film they need to fully execute a new or ongoing personal project, to be completed throughout 2010. At the start of 2011, the recipients’ final projects will be brought together and exhibited through a variety of online, magazine, and gallery showcases.

In the spirit of assistance and approachability, and to guarantee that no photographer is priced out of applying for this film grant, the submission fee is $10. However, the judging panel for the film grant will consist of

- Marcel Saba, Director of Redux Pictures
- Clinton Cargill, Associate Picture Editor of the New York Times Magazine
- Conor Risch, Features Editor of PDN
- Andy Adams, Editor / Publisher of Flak Photo
- Alison Morley, Chair of ICP’s Documentary Photography and Photojournalism Program
- Audrey Jonckeer, Director of Worldwide Pro Photographer Relations at Kodak
- Jake Stangel, Founder / Editor of too much chocolate.

Kodak thrives on supporting as well as promoting talented photographers, and looks forward to developing meaningful and sustainable relationships with the recipients of the too much chocolate + Kodak film grant. Kodak pledges to keep in touch with all 10 grant recipients, and will work to promote the photographers’ work on websites, blogs as well as by photography trades. Additionally, a selection of each grant recipient’s work will be exhibited on Kodak’s LCD billboard in Times Square.

In return for providing film, Kodak asks grant recipients to mention Kodak for contributing the film in any media interviews, blogs, gallery shows, books and on their websites with a Kodak logo and a link to Kodak.com. In addition, Kodak will have the option to use 2-3 project images at no cost for a 2-year period for display at trade shows and maybe on the Kodak.com website.

Film grant timeline:
- Sept. 1st - Nov. 1st, 2009: Submission process
- Jan. 1st, 2010: Ten grant recipients announced
- Jan - Dec. 2010: Recipients have one year to shoot and culminate projects
- Early 2011: Completion and showcase of projects

Additional details:
- The photographers can choose the Kodak film and format they would like to receive, pending availability.
- Grant recipients must to use the film exclusively for the project described, and provide 3 progress updates throughout 2010.
- Photographers may live anywhere in the world, but cannot have gallery or agency representation.
- The entire submission process will be done online, and will open Sept. 1st, 2009.
- Only digital submissions will be allowed, and images will be viewed by judges on screen only. No prints may be mailed.

Special Edition Prints: Susan Worsham

Today's image comes courtesy of Issue 4 photographer and Special Edition print offerer Susan Worsham. The image (posted below) is part of Worsham's ongoing series Some Fox Trails In Virginia. In the statement for the work, she explains:

"This series of photographs is taken in and around Virginia, the place in which I grew up. The title comes from a book written by my father's ancestor, to show the lineage of the Fox family in Virginia. For my own purpose, it acts as a metaphorical map, of the rediscovered paths of my childhood home.

At the age of 34, I came back to Virginia to care for my mother, who died shortly after my return. As the last of my family passed, I turned my lens to old friends, and their new families. I photographed the house in which I grew up. The man that lives there now houses snakes in my father's old office, and rests them in my old bedroom, while he changes their cages. My mother always promised that there were no snakes in my room, and now that she is gone, there are. A hearse sits in my childhood driveway, representing the passing of my father, and suicide of my brother.

These photographs are not meant to be purely autobiographical, but rather representations of how I view things, based on my own experiences, and those of the people that I have met along the way. My boyfriend Michael, stands on the street I grew up on, bridging the gap between past and present. Lynn, the first stranger that ever sat for me, continues to pose for me, along with her son Max. I have been photographing her for sixteen years now."


"The Beekeeper's Other Daughter" (From Some Fox Trails In Virginia)
© Susan Worsham

For general information on both editions of the book click here. To view all the available print choices for the Special Edition click here.

Ye Rin Mok's Ichikawadaimon

"Ichikawadaimon"
© Ye Rin Mok

I received a copy of Ye Rin Mok's small, but endearing book Ichikawadaimon in the mail the other day. The book is comprised of quiet and thoughtful images taken while in traveling through a rural Japanese town (of the same name) last September.

I highly recommend picking up your own copy! You can do so here.

Ichikawadaimon
32 pages
8.5 x 5.5 in, full color laser
Includes one small c-print made by the artist in the darkroom
Numbered and signed
Edition of 100



"Ichikawadaimon"
© Ye Rin Mok


"Ichikawadaimon"
© Ye Rin Mok


"Ichikawadaimon"
© Ye Rin Mok


"Ichikawadaimon"
© Ye Rin Mok

Manuel Vazquez's Playtime

Manuel Vazquez e-mailed me recently with some images from his new series Playtime. In the statement for it, he writes:

"The intention of this project is to spot urban sculptures that transport us to imaginary scenarios where the deepness of the black is the boundary of our imagination. Isolated objects that escape our vision during the day when viewed at night and are de-contextualized generate a different experience in the spectator.

The title “Playtime” ironically refers to the time when the pictures are taken and invites the spectator to let their imagination wander around the world of these playgrounds. The idea is to juxtapose these places and objects of innocence, with an unsettling dark mood. They are familiar yet strange, uncanny.

This project is being undertaken walking the streets of London at night. My intention is to recreate a child’s gaze, placing the camera at a child’s height so the scale and perspective are perceived differently. Each title is the GPS coordinates where it was spotted, a flight log in this deep black space of our imagination."

Work from Manuel's project Traces is included in Issue 4 of The Exposure Project Book. For more information click here.


From "Playtime"
© Manuel Vazquez


From "Playtime"
© Manuel Vazquez


From "Playtime"
© Manuel Vazquez


From "Playtime"
© Manuel Vazquez


From "Playtime"
© Manuel Vazquez

Special Edition Prints: Daniel Shea

Today's image comes courtesy of Issue 4 photographer and Special Edition print offerer Daniel Shea. The image (posted below) is part of Shea's ongoing series Untitled (Baltimore). In the statement for the work, he explains:

"Demystifying a place is easier than implied. Despite what one might have heard, Baltimore is like many other places.

I left Baltimore recently. As my time shortened, I felt a decisive urge to make new images of my home. I decided to default in my photographic process. That is, walk around, interact, and make pictures."


"Shot, 2008"
© Daniel Shea

For general information on both editions of the book click here. To view all the available print choices for the Special Edition click here.

Darin Mickey's Strange Fruit

Sorry for the lack of posting on this blog of late. August is off to a busy start! Anyways, while browsing the used photography books at Spoonbill & Sugartown today I happened upon Darin Mickey's wonderful J&L monograph Stuff I Gotta Remember Not To Forget. Subsequently, I spent some time on Mickey's website and rediscovered his series Strange Fruit - a series which, much like Mickey's other projects, finds traces of beauty and strangeness in contemporary suburban America.


From "Strange Fruit"
© Darin Mickey


From "Strange Fruit"
© Darin Mickey


From "Strange Fruit"
© Darin Mickey



From "Strange Fruit"
© Darin Mickey



From "Strange Fruit"
© Darin Mickey

Special Edition Prints: Bahar Yurukoglu

Today's image comes courtesy of Issue 4 photographer and Special Edition print offerer Bahar Yurukoglu. The image (posted below) is part of Yurukoglu's series Museification. In the statement for the work, she explains:

"These images focus on the intimate narrative that unfolds in the preserved house museums of historical and cultural icons. I am interested in the transformation of the ordinary object, like a bar of soap or a pillow, to a priceless museum piece and the heavy history it is meant to symbolize. The preservation of a private residence into a public museum creates a space unlike any other, a space that can only exist at that moment in those four walls. By using documents, fragile memories, and a contemporary perspective historians and curators reimagine and memorilize a person and their private space. The personal relics and collected memorabilia anthropomorphize to create a haunting, transcendent and beautiful portrait. By photographing these houses I am exploring a temporal space between past and present, fiction and reality. My photographs look at the role of myth, absence, nostalgia, and memory as it relates to the retelling of history and the human experience."


"Martin Van Buren Had Red Hair"
© Bahar Yurukoglu

For general information on both editions of the book click here. To view all the available print choices for the Special Edition click here.