New York Report #1 -- What is Photography?

The International Center of Photography in NYC has a show up now, through May 4th, 2014, entitled What is a Photograph?

The Center says that this show explores "the intense creative experimentation in photography that has occurred since the 1970s."

Photographers in this show "reinvented photography," according to the Center, because they engaged in "rigorous . . . aesthetically adventurous analysis, which probed photography itself—from the role of light, color, composition, to materiality and the subject."

The Center contrasts the work of these photographers to work produced by photographers influenced by "conceptual art."

"Conceptual art," say the folks at the Center, "introduced photography into contemporary art making, using the medium in ways that challenged it artistically, intellectually, and technically and broadened the notion of what a photograph could be in art."

In other words, conceptual photographers were interested in the relationship between photography and the categories of art, as traditionally construed, while the folks in this show are interested in exploring the nature of photography from within.

Ken Johnson, reviewing the show for the NY Times, is skeptical, calling the show "disappointing . . .  a strangely blinkered and backward-looking show," in which almost all the work exhibits a "navel-gazing narrowness" that has "more to do with photography’s past than with its possible future."

Philip Gefter, also writing for the NY Times, is more positive, finding the show a documentation of a moment when "contemporary photographers are doing something that is disorienting yet ultimately transformative."

Southern photographers are usually engaged in using photography to come to terms with the world around us, with all the resources that photography can provide. So subject matter and interpretation tend to be more central to the practice than metaphotographic issues.

But if you are interested in work that foregrounds questions about the nature of the medium, here are the folks in the ICP show:

Matthew Brandt, Marco Breuer, Liz Deschenes, Adam Fuss, Owen Kydd, Floris Neusüss, Marlo Pascual, Sigmar Polke, Eileen Quinlan (see image above), Jon Rafman, Gerhard Richter, Mariah Robertson, Alison Rossiter, Lucas Samaras, Travess Smalley, David Benjamin Sherry, Kate Steciw, Artie Vierkant, James Welling,  Christopher Williams, and Letha Wilson.

You can see some of the images from the show, here.

I do not think there is a Southern photographer in the bunch, but its always good to know what the rest of the world is doing.

S[x]SE for January 2014

The latest issue (Volume IX, Issue 1) of South by South East (S[x]SE) Photography Magazine is now out for winter 2014, and it has all the fine photography and engaging features we have come to expect from S[x]SE.

Editor Nancy McCrary has devoted this issue to portraiture and architectural photography, with featured portfolios by Jerry Siegel (see image above) and Nell Campbell (see image below).

 
Other portraitists in this issue include Rob Amberg, Chip Cooper, Lisa W. Flanary, Gabriela Iancu, Dan Routh, Scott Lowden, Vincent Lawson, Walter Beckham, Christian Harkness, Maude Schuyler Clay, Raymond Grubb, Parker Smith, and Lorrie Dallek.

Photographers showing architectural work also include Diana Bloomfield, Chip Cooper, Catherine Jarret, Don Norris, Marla Puziss, Robert A. Schaefer, Jr., Myrtie Cope, and Terri Garland.

In addition to all this fine photography there are book notices and reviews and other features we have come to expect, and value, from S[xS]E.

And you can have access to all this fine -- and award-winning -- work for a very reasonable fee, a very reasonable fee indeed.

To subscribe, to do the right thing, go here.

Don't put it off any longer. We Southern photographers need to support our basic institutions,

You know you should subscribe. You know it, you really do.

Southern Photography -- Even More News from January 2014.

Columbia, SC-based photographer Kathleen Robbins (see image above) is the subject of a couple of really nice profiles on the website of the University of South Carolina, where Robbins teaches photography and Southern Studies. 

There's one here, and another here. 

Asheville, NC-based photographer Sebastian Collett (see image above) is a featured photographer in the January 2014 issue of fraction magazine, here, with work from his Vanishing Point portfolio. 

Southern Master Photographer Emmet Gowin (see image above) is the subject of a new book from Aperture, titled, appropriately, Emmet Gowin. 

This book is a major retrospective of Gowin's work over his 40-year career, and includes Gowin's reflections on his work from various stages in his career.  

You can get the flavor of this work from a feature story on Gowin, and this book, in the current (January 2014) issue of PDN, though not yet on their website. 

Let's close with a quote from Gowin, from a speech he gave in 2009:

"I need to say to you. There are things in your life that only you will see, stories that only you will hear. If you don't tell them or write them down, if you don't make the picture, these things will not be seen, these things will not be heard." 

That's good advice, inspirational wisdom, appropriate for the beginning of a new year. 

Polaroids at the Norton Museum of Art

Folks who live in Florida, or are headed that way to escape the current cold snap in the upper South, might want to drop into the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach.

The Norton is hosting a show of work entitled The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation, now up through March 23rd, 2014.

This show features works by over 40 photographers, including major photographers like Ansel Adams, Ellen Carey, Chuck Close, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Walker Evans, David Hockney, Andre Kertesz (see image above),  Robert Mapplethorpe, Joyce Neimanas, Andy Warhol, and William Wegman.

Also included are younger shooters like Anne Collier, Bryan Graf, Catherine Opie, Lisa Oppenheim, Dash Snow, Mungo Thomson, and Grant Worth.

This is a major show, originally put together by the folks at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, with support from the Andy Warhal Foundation.   You can buy the catalogue for the show here. 

I've always thought that there is a distinctive look to images shot on Polaroid film. The images made with the large format Polaroid cameras especially seem to combine a sense of immediacy and formality. Perhaps its the discipline of knowing that with this gear every time you push the button you have spent a considerable amount of money.

But smaller format Polaroids lend themselves to all kinds of fun and games -- blurring the colors, playing with the process and the materials -- so  even though there do not seem to be many Southerners represented among the shooters in this show, it looks like its worth checking out if you are in the area.

Southern Photography -- News from January 2014

 
The New Year brings news of openings, honors, opportunities, and recognitions. Here are a few items.

Nashville-based photographer Tammy Mercure had work selected for the ONWARD Compé for 2013 (see image above) and is now featured in an interview on the ONWARD blog, here.

Honorary Southern Photographer Jan Banning was featured in a story by Felicia Feaster in the November/December issue of photograph, see page 62, for his show Down and Out in the South, at the Hagedorn Foundation Gallery,  in Atlanta (see image above).

This show of Banning's work was reviewed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and ArtsATL.

Dallas-based photographer Brandon Thibodeaux (see image above) is featured in a podcast interview on The LPV Show, go here.

 

Editor Nancy McCrary has announced that South by Southeast (SxSE) has expanded its activities to include sponsorship of a series of photography workshops, with the first one coming up in March on Cumberland Island with Peter Essick and Sylvia Plachy.

For full details, go here.

On the silly side of the news, we note that in an effort to be provocative, two guys, Brian Formhals and Blake Andrews, who really ought to know better, have named Southern Master Photographer William Eggleston (see image above) as one of ten photographers "Aspiring Photographers Should Ignore."

Eggleston's companions on this hit list include, among others, Ansel Adams , Henri Cartier Bresson, Robert Frank, Stephen Shore, Nan Goldin, Garry Winogrand, and Diane Arbus.

Formhals' and Andrews' point seems to be that aspiring photographers tend to imitate strong models, hence strong models should be avoided because if one imitates strong models one's work will turn out to be derivative and imitative, rather than in one's own unique and original style.

But artists always learn to be artists through imitation, as a stepping stone to originality, so a better course might be to pick strong models and then wrestle with them until one's own style emerges. Or one learns to be original within the conventions of a specific style.

Either way, avoiding the masters means one learns by imitating second-rate shooters, not a wise path, in my view.



Finally, for now, the following photographers have appeared -- since we last checked -- in Jeff Rich's ongoing Eyes on the South series in The Oxford American.

Caitlin Peterson
Don Norris (see image above)

Michael Sherwin

With such a strong beginning, 2014 promises to be a full, and fulfilling, year for Southern Fine Art Photography. 

We will try to keep you informed about what's happening, so, as they say in another medium, stay tuned.