Mitch Epstein's American Power

I'm sure by now nearly everyone has seen selections from Mitch Epstein's ongoing project American Power. However, after seeing the Paul Shambroom lecture a few weeks back, whose photographic career has largely addressed American hegemony, I started reexamining Epstein's project. As Martha Schwendener states in a New York Times review of his exhibition at Sikkema Jenkins & Co.:

"What is interesting, beyond the haunting, complicated beauty and precision of these images, is Mr. Epstein's ability to merge what have long been considered opposing terms: photo-conceptualism and so-called documentary photography. He utilizes the supersize scale and saturated color of conceptualism, and his odd, implied narratives strongly recall the work of artists like Jeff Wall. Mr. Epstein's images also share with Mr. Wall's a look that is at once real and unreal -- or, as people who witness a catastrophe say, 'surreal'.

Yet Mr. Epstein functions like an old-school ''documentary style'' (to use Walker Evans's term) photographer, publishing his images in essay and book formats and heading out into the world to capture preexisting phenomena rather than creating (or recreating) them in his studio."











All photographs from the series American Power

All Images © Mitch Epstein

Jeff Otto O'Brien's Cache Creek

Jeff Otto O'Brien e-mailed me the other day to share his new project Cache Creek. This general statement of purpose from his website speaks with accuracy to the work from Cache Creek:

"My photography is an examination in process. I am interested in documenting the relationship between humans and the constructed environment, and the constructed moment that occurs within this interaction. In a sense, the Schrödinger's Cat of photography: the construction of the photograph and the mere act of taking the photograph dictate the event captured by the photographer. To photograph is to be seen."











All photographs from the series Cache Creek

All Images © Jeff Otto O'Brien

Sam Falls

I discovered Sam Falls' work via I Heart Photograph today. There is no written accompaniment to Falls' images on his website, a choice that ultimately serves the work in the end. Writing can be essential, it can also, however, overdetermine the meaning of the photographs. That being said, I did find an insightful interview that Johanna Reed conducted with Falls for her blog This Is That. The passage below is excerpted from their exchange. You can read the interview in its entirety here.

"TisT: You touch on an uneasiness in photography—the fact that it's so ubiquitous in advertising, in addition to having a kind of pomp surrounding it in the fine art gallery. You mention that you want to make "people feel at home with photography." It struck me that this kind of approach might never be applied to a medium such as painting or sculpture; I'm not entirely sure, but there might be something inherent in the medium itself (perhaps its relationship to "technology"?) that lends itself to this. Can you talk a bit more about how you see photography making people feel outcast, or even, as you say, "alienated from the present moment"?

SF: I think you're right in pointing to photography's technological element as playing a large role in its cold and impersonal relationship to the viewer—the classic pitfall of its mechanical reproduction. With painting and sculpture for instance, along with writing, their is an inherent acknowledgment of the time the author spent producing the final product, which therefore serves as a much more intimate medium of exchange between the viewer and the creator. Photography on the other hand only depicts the surface of time, namely the miniscule, cropped moment available only to the lens of the camera. The time the artist spent in the depicted space framing the scene, and later developing the film and printing, is both figuratively and literally washed away and lost in the final product. So the viewer really only has their own frame of reference relative to the image at hand, without any sign of the artist's emotion or interaction with the object—something readily apparent in painting and sculpture where texture and material manipulation reveal the artist's interaction over time. This is not always negative I think, because the viewer is left alone to their own interpretations, but I think art is really valuable when the viewer gets to know the artist and where they are coming from. This is where a photographer must relate their subjectivity to the viewer through content and composition. This is perhaps why I've really begun leaning toward photographing the people, places, and things that hold lasting personal value to me. I used to think this was something reserved for amateur photography and photo albums, but now perhaps it needs to be reinstated in a fine art context in today’s image-based world where meaningless images are omnipresent. I mean any advertisement created by a nameless photographer of a model casting a blank stare away from the camera just tells the viewer "I don't care," and I think just saying, "This is what I care about, and you have things you care about," is now a very interesting concept to me."











All Images © Sam Falls

Kudász Gábor Arion's Tourists In Environment

Hungarian photographer Kudász Gábor Arion's Tourists In Environment explores the intersection between leisure culture and crowd mentality. Somewhat inherent in photographs of large crowds is the alienation of the individual at the hand of a more complex social construct. In his statement, Arion asserts that:

"Man is a social animal, but a crowd is not company. Somewhere the group ends in which every participant has a perceptibly formative role, and another, larger-scale organization begins. Social loneliness is a common occurrence in a crowd, as is voluntary uniformity and frustration. On this scale, the personal interaction of members loses its natural quality, becomes noise that hinders homogeneity, an unwanted manifestation of poor organization. It is replaced by thinking along rallying cries that answer simplistic questions. The crowd sets an obstacle to dispassionate dialogue, which is why it is favoured by dictators and whoever likes to fish in troubled waters."







From Top To Bottom:

Beach, Csopak, 2007

Reichstag, Berlin, 2007

Tepid water, Csopak, 2007

Cavalry Days, Romania, 2007

Summit, Pietros, 2003

All Images © Kudász Gábor Arion

Noel Rodo-Vankeulen's Karst

Noel Rodo-Vankeulen e-mailed me yesterday to share his new book project Karst. In discussing the work, Noel explains:

"Karst, a geological term to describe how water erodes limestone, is both a metaphorical title and a stepping-off point for a meditation on wandering, dreaming, and memory. The process forms caves, sinkholes, underground rivers, and fissures in rock, mimicking not only concepts of the mind, but how collected experience is fragmented, twisted, and continually altered through time. The photographs in Karst are a conceptual prelude to a trilogy of work that investigates the presence of images. Taken in and around an area known as the Niagara Escarpment, a cliff capped plateau both familiar and alien that spans the heart of the Great Lakes, the images become a brief collective overlook of myth, legend, and experience - an intersection of society and nature commingling to form ideas of the present and past."

Noel plans to release Karst sometime this summer, so make sure to check in with We Can't Paint for further information.











All photographs from Karst

All Images© Noel Rodo-Vankeulen

Exposure Project Website Updated!

Hey Everyone,

I wanted to take a moment to let you all know that we just launched the updated Exposure Project website. The site now contains work from all the photographers who will appear in issue 4 of The Exposure Project Book.



Additionally, our talented friend Maura Murnane recently designed us a project logo. We have wanted a more defined design presence for some time now and honestly couldn't be happier with the results. Maura has a wonderful website, which is well worth exploring if you have spare moment.

So, visit the Artists page to check out the new work and let us know what you think!

Nymphoto Presents at Sasha Wolf Gallery: Call For Entries

Jane Tam e-mailed the other day asking me to spread the word about the most recent Nymphoto call for entries. They are selecting submitted work for an exhibition at the Sasha Wolf Gallery. So, if you meet the one submission requirement (being a woman) you should take advantage of this opportunity by sending them some work! You can find the guidelines below.

"Nymphoto is looking for the best in female contemporary and emerging photography. Work will be curated by the core members of the collective, in conjunction with highly respected curator and gallery owner, Sasha Wolf. Works selected will be included in "Nymphoto Presents at Sasha Wolf Gallery" and be on view from May 23 to June 6, 2009. Sasha Wolf Gallery is located in lower Manhattan, conveniently located and easily accessible from both Chelsea and Dumbo, two of New York's artistic centers."

Eligibility

Any woman working in photography.

Call For Entries Deadlines

Entrants may enter their image selections online via www.nymphoto.com anytime
between March 27 through midnight (EST) on April 3, 2009.

Submission Guidelines

Submissions are accepted via an online form on www.nymphoto.com. A submission fee of $19 for up to 2 images, and $26 for up to 5 images, must be paid through PayPal upon submission of your work. Accepted artists will be notified via email by April 8, 2009. There will be an additional hanging fee of $25 for accepted artists. Framed works, ready for hanging, must be shipped/delivered to the gallery by May 15, 2009. Details will be provided to participating artists upon acceptance.

You will need the following information available to complete your submission.

* Your contact information
* Link to your website, if available
* Brief bio & artist statement (optional)
* 2 - 5 images ready for upload - JPEG format, 700 pixels wide, 72 dpi, no more than 500 KB each
* Caption information for each image - title, dimensions, medium, year

If you have any problems with uploading your submission or other inquiries, please email questions to contact@nymphoto.com.