An Image A Week: Grant Ernhart

I came across the work of Grant Ernhart today (via Conscientious) and quite enjoyed his series' Alone at Sea & I Trust You'll Take Care. His photographs often explore the anomalous beauty found in the landscape, which initially made me think of the work of Ian Baguskas. Ernhart's attention to the idiosyncratic relationships between the built and natural world are shown as simultaneously harmonious and discordant. There is a nice duality in his work, not to mention in Ernhart's life. He used to be a biathlete (the combined skill of cross-country skiing and rifle shooting) before laying down his rifle for a camera.

Silverstein Photography Annual

Another great exhibition in New York of emerging photographers is the Silverstein Photography Annual which will be on view until October 13th at the Silverstein Gallery (535 W 24 St). This inaugural year of the show features ten curators who have each chosen an artist.
The curators are:
Philip Brookman, Corcoran Gallery
Joshua Chuang, Yale University Art Gallery
Julian Cox, High Museum of Art
Jeffrey Hoone, Light Work
Lisa Hostetler, Milwaukee Art Museum
Carol McCusker, Museum of Photographic Arts
Miriam Romais, En Foco
Britt Salvesen, Center for Creative Photography
Rod Slemmons, Museum of Contemporary Photography
Anne Tucker, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The artists chosen are:
Noelle Tan
Phillip Pisciotta
Barret Oliver
Zoë Sheehan Saldaña
Sonja Thomsen
Lisa Robinson
Lola Flash
Michael Lundgren
Curtis Mann
Will Michels

Bruce Silverstein summarizes the ideas and context behind this exhibition: “We are constantly seeking ways to enhance our representation of photography, offering a greater perspective on the past, present and future of the medium. SPA gives us this opportunity - to continue to embrace new and important ideas, to reach out to the art community around the world, and to welcome those who deserve to be seen and heard but who might not have had the chance. We are grateful to be in a position to make such a commitment.”

I found most of the work in the show to be intriguing, but I kept coming back to three artists; Michael Lundgren, Noelle Tan, and Lisa Robinson.

Michael Lundgren's desert landscapes truly captivated my imagination. His photographs, taken during a seven year residency in New Mexico take a new look at the desert landscape with the use of the traditional black and white process. He uses extremely long exposures to give the viewer a unique experience of time within the spaces he photographs. There are prints which seem to be abstracts at first with almost completely black or white surfaces; the viewer is forced to adjust to their eyes to the print to make out the details of the image. These subtle details kept me coming back and wanting to look again at his prints.


Interestingly enough, Noelle Tan's images draw a comparison to Michael Lundgren's in her use of the black and white medium in its most extreme tonalities to represent landscapes. Her work is generally all black with spots of white or vice versa. This use of abstraction brings an interesting quality to her landscapes. The viewer is able to break the prints up into geometrical forms, but a sense of reality within the photographs is lost. Curator Philip Brookman put it best when he said, "These images veer back and forth between abstraction and representation. They do not sit for long in one world or the other. The figures that populate her sparse topographic environments are sometimes indistinguishable from other inert forms: trees, roads, power poles. There are no details in her art, just sweeping generalizations in rich tones of crushing black and white."


Lisa Robinson explores the transformation of landscape through weather patterns in her series Snowbound. Growing up in the South, Robinson became fascinated with snowstorms and their effect on daily routines and regularities once she relocated to New York. She uses minimalist compositions and, a muted color pallet to paint the picture of the snowed in landscape. Curator Carol McCusker expressed her interest in the work, "What drew me to Robinson's photographs was my own experience of snowstorms, which first and foremost, force stillness. Daily Routines are disrupted. Street and air traffic cease; a quiet descends. By erasing familiar streets, sidewalks, and gardens, snowstorms create a palimpsest for us to decipher from our living room windows. The skeletal trees, the absence of people, and winter's destructive potential make it a season emblematic of death. Walking in the winter landscape can evoke contradictory feelings of dread and comfort. The cold emptiness terrifies; its still beauty soothes."



Images from top to bottom:

Moon over River Valley and Lion's Kill by: Michael Lundgren

Untitled #11 and Drawing V by: Noelle Tan

Mirage and Invisible City by: Lisa Robinson

New Photography 2007 at MOMA

New Photography at The Museum of Modern Art is an annual exhibition for emerging or lesser known photographers making individual contributions to further the medium. The show has taken place since 1985, and holds an impressive alumni including Phillip Lorca Dicorcia, Thomas Roma, and Thomas Demand, among others. The curatorial duties of this exhibition shift from year to year. This year the show was curated by Eva Respini (Assistant Curator, Department of Photography), who I was lucky enough to meet with to look at the show.

This year's exhibition includes the work of Berni Searle, Tanyth Berkeley and Scott McFarland. With these three photographers, Respini has highlighted with great depth the diversity in content and approach being explored in contemporary photography.

Berni Searle (born in South Africa in 1964), has been widely exhibited in her native country, but has had little to no exposure in the United States. She received her MFA from Capetown in 1995. Exhibited in the show are two recent projects, including Approach from 2006, and works from About to Forget from 2005.



Searle works in a very personal manner, but her photographs have universal appeal. Approach, for example, is a seven paneled self portrait of Searle walking over mounds of grape skins. The photograph depicts a contemplative, inward journey while referencing larger political overtones. The grape skins, her bare feet, and stained dress all allude to the wine making process and the political framework that surrounds it. Searle portrays herself, alludes to the political climate of her country, and appeals to the broader human experience in just this one piece.

Tanyth Berkely (American, b. 1969) works in and around New York. She received her MFA from Columbia in 2004, and is represented by the Bellwether Gallery. Eva has watched Tanyth's work steadily pick up momentum over the past few years. There are two series of Berkely's works represented in the show, Orchidaceae from 2004, and a newer series from 2006-07.



Berkely's newer works were the most interesting to me. They are all life sized standing portraits of people in their homes. The subjects are people Berkely has met and developed close relationships with through the intimate process of photographing them. Many of her subjects are originally strangers she meets in public. She builds a strong rapport with her subjects through her collaborative process of portraiture. The size and scale of these images give them a palpable confrontational feeling. They feel odd; lifelike from far away, and slightly smaller than life-like up close. This feeling of confrontation is heightened by the idiosyncratic appeal of her subjects. Her subjects include performers, transsexuals, albinos, as well as her muse, a young Vasser student named Ariel she met on the train. These people are true individuals in the same way that Arbus's subjects were individuals. Confronted with near life sized portraits of this non-traditional beauty, the viewer feels uncomfortable, yet intrigued to explore the images further. In Berkely's psychological portraits, the viewer can see an intense dialogue with painting with acute attention paid to color, light, and tone; which is further enhanced by the matte surface of the prints.

Scott McFarland (Canadian, b. 1975) works in and around Vancouver. He received his BFA from The University of British Columbia in 1997 and is represented by Monte Clark Galery and Regen Projects. McFarland shoots large format film, drum scans it and creates digital composite images of multiple (sometimes hundreds) of negatives.

Using this composite process, McFarland photographs artificial landscapes man-made to look naturalistic. He uses multiple exposures of the same place to convey a passing of time. In Orchard View With the Effects of Seasons (Variation #1) 2003-06 plants and tress are seen blooming and fading in the large scale (roughly 3"x8") panoramic of a park. With this scale, the viewer can look into the exquisite details of the print.



The digital composite process mirrors the places photographed by McFarland. Both are naturalistic, yet artificially created realities. His process is also an analysis on the nature of photographs. Photographs have always represented distilled moments in time, but what is a photograph made up of hundreds of unique, but related moments? The representation of time now folds into many specific instances marking the passage of time almost cinematically.

New Photography 2007 will be on view through January 1, 2008 at The Museum of Modern Art

Images From Top to Bottom:

Berni Searle, Approach

Tanyth Berkely, Ariel

Scott McFarland, Orchard View With the Effects of Seasons (Variation #1) 2003-06

All Images © The Artists

Digital Encounters & the 'Loss of the Real'

I recently read an essay by Michelle Henning entitled Digital Encounters: Mythical Pasts & Electronic Presence. The essay addresses the introduction and usage of digital technology to contemporary society, consequently raising many questions about how we interact with 'new technology'. She frames the tenets of her essay in relation to the ideas and philosophies of the famed Marxist social/literary critic Walter Benjamin. Henning speaks at length about Benjamin's discussion on the effects of mechanical reproduction and the ensuing byproducts of an increasingly mechanized world. Benjamin thought that technology, in and of itself, did not produce shifts in consciousness and perception; but rather these shifts occurred as a coping mechanism to the increasing intensity of everyday existence. He argued that as life becomes filled with routine (mandating the repetition of unimaginative labor) that people were no longer able to acquire knowledge through experience.



Henning goes on to talk about these issues of industrial development and technological innovation in the framework of modern society, and in specific respect to digital imaging. Where once a photograph's authenticity had previously been based in its physical interaction with the world, this interaction no longer proved true, or applicable. Henning writes, "digital technology presents the possibility of photographically 'real' images of people who had 'never existed'." The seamless shift from analog to digital photography contributes to what Henning coins as the 'loss of the real', a form of simulated reality experienced through manipulated or composited photographs. She makes the important distinction that 'new technology' is in essence not new, but rather an interpretation and extension of previous technologies. In regards to digital photography, this idea is central to understanding how digital imaging has affected cultural perception. It has not done so as a new and unique function, but rather as a reworking of history.



The persecution of digital imaging when blaming it for the 'loss of the real' is ultimately counterproductive. The technology has reached a point where discerning the difference between analog and digital representation is near impossible. I like to think about this technological evolution as a logical, and potentially eye-opening one. If you considered digital photography as a new means for understanding aspects of the world that were previously unavailable to us; then the 'loss of the real' is instead supplanted with the acquisition of a new reality. I have used the photographs of Beate Gutschow, Barry Frydlender and Matt Connors to help illustrate the seamless, digital representations that I speak of. These artists all examine aspects of culture, history, landscape and technology in similar ways as more "traditional" practitioners. However, they have done so with the aid of technology in an attempt to shed new light on the constantly shifting perception surrounding our complex world.

-Ben Alper

From Top to Bottom:

Beate Gutschow, UNTITLED (LS_10)

Matt Connors, Untitled

Barry Frydlender, Blessing

All Images © The Artists

Upcoming Photography Lectures in Boston

Mass Art has organized a stimulating and diverse program of visiting lecturers for the fall, including Dawoud Bey, Kelli Connell and the founder/director of The Center for Land Use Interpretation, Matthew Coolidge.

For anyone who doesn't know about CLUI, they are a research organization based in Culver City, California devoted to the exploration and understanding of contemporary land use issues. They focus mainly on the evaluation of mankind's interaction with, and subsequent perception of the earth's surface. For anyone who hasn't visited their website I implore you to do so. They have compiled an impressive Land Use Database, comprised extensively of photographs and maps of every state categorizing various methods of land use.

Anyways, on to the lectures!

Kelli Connell
Tuesday, October 30th
5:30 pm
@ Mass Art, Kennedy Building Room 406
621 Huntington Avenue, Boston



Dawoud Bey
Friday, November 2nd
3pm
@ Howard Yezerski Gallery
14 Newbury Street, Boston



Matthew Coolidge
Tuesday, November 6th
5:30 pm
@ Mass Art, Tower Building, 11th Floor
621 Huntington Avenue, Boston



For anyone in the Boston area who is interested in getting more information on these lectures, just follow this link.

From Top to Bottom:

Kelli Connell, Carnival

Dawoud Bey, A Boy In Front Of The Loews 125th Street Movie Theater, 1976/2005

Matthew Coolidge, Photograph from the CLUI Photography Archive

All Images © The Artists & the CLUI Photography Archive

Ed Panar's Johnstown

Ed Panar's project Johnstown presents an intimate portrait of an industrial, working-class Pennsylvania town. For anyone who grew up in the eastern part of the US, these images speak with universal clarity to the loneliness and often weathered aesthetic of the once thriving mill town. Having grown up in Massachusetts, I see the ghosts of cities like Worcester, Lowell and Pittfield in these images. On a side note, J & L Books has just published Panar's new monograph, Golden Palms, which I also highly recommend seeking.









Images From the Series Johnstown

All Images © Ed Panar

An Image A Week: Jason Fulford

The work of Jason Fulford on first inspection is deceptively simple. His witty observations of everyday minutia breath life and awe into the smallest wonders of our complex world. Maybe this is what I find so appealing about his work. He has simplified a visually chaotic world, rendering it with simplistic beauty. If any contemporary photographer's work puts a smile on my face, it would be the work of Jason Fulford. His photographs may be many things, but first and foremost, they are enchanting.

I recommend viewing Fulford's work in book form. His sequencing is always thought-provoking, often pairing images that speak to the disparate connection between objects, textures and environments. J&L Books (co-founded by Fulford and partner Leanne Shapton) have published 2 of his monographs, Sunbird & Crushed, while The Ice Plant published Raising Frogs For $$$ in 2006.

Image © Jason Fulford