this photobooth book, by babbette hines, came out a few years ago when i still worked at the penn bookstore on 36th and walnut. i never got around to buying one (when i could have gotten it with a discount), but it's still under $20 and i haven't purchased my annual trove of photography books yet. i usually splurge around christmas time (so i'm kind of way past "annual"), but i haven't decided on my list yet. maybe it'll make the cut this year.
i'm in total photo-geek love with francesca tallone's series, giving up the ghost. it's like francesca woodman (odd that they have the same first name) only in color! or meatyard in color. with a diana camera! but even more interestingly, i love the dialogue with the film stills of cindy sherman because of the way tallone puts the viewer in the position of a voyeur and the disturbing positions/situations she places the ghost. but also this idea of "documenting" ghosts has a long history in the medium of photography and it's interesting to see this idea come together with such a contemporary way of looking at the ghost as a subject.
via lena corwin to whom i am forever indebted for her love of photography.
i'm fussing around with the layout and header design. please bear with me until i come up with something a little more permanent (suggestions and feedback are strongly encouraged). meanwhile, i'm finding all this change highly disconcerting.
post script/
also, i'm trying to figure out how to change the labels (above the lists on the right, 'about me,' etc.) to images of my own design, anyone know how? i've seen other blogs that have done this (like this one), but i can't seem to find instructions anywhere.
lt. sent me a link to the website of two guys, joel beaman and david miller, who turned their van into a pinhole camera. they describe their project: "these places line roads and highways, and to really see them we must slow down and spend a little bit of time there. our roads are full of trucks, each one full of products to feed our need to consume. these trucks are the blood cells moving through the arteries, keeping us consumers alive. we are immersed into the blood stream and limited to the views from the edges of the road. the process of taking pictures with the pinholevan puts us in the truck on that highway. however, instead of delivering a load of lumber or steel pipe, our payload is the silver traces of these places."
i think this idea of drastically slowing down the picture making process (their exposures are around 160 minutes in broad daylight), references some of the earliest experiences of photography. this dialogue with the history of photography and the history of photographers documenting their environment gives the black and white images a timeless quality that is disrupted only by the contrast of a modern car or sign. the color images are less successful for me because they immediately date the pictures, robbing the viewer of the chance to enjoy the mystery.
hey, hot shot! announced the winners for their winter 2007 contest. i was really excited to see that colin blakely's beautiful series, somewhere in middle america, was amoung the winners mostly because i had personally resisted entering their contest due to a lack of any inspiring black and white imagery being accepted (and i really mean any). i'm still not convinced that my work fits into their aethetic, but i might reconsider applying now that i see that black and white work isn't out of the question, especially if they like imagery that takes it's inspiration from gowin and meatyard.
i know i probably shouldn't be promoting other wedding photographers as they are sort of alissa and my competition, but i think these images are both awesome and hilarious. i found them on ben robert's flickr page under the pseudonym bennybedlam. he also has a website, but you won't find any wedding photographs there, just great documentary images. he's also one of the winners of the hey, hot shot! winter 2007 contest.
lt. and i had a very productive day dreaming session the other day about the possibility of starting our own design studio with our friend mike (who unfortunately couldn't make the meeting). i'm not exactly a graphic designer, and they're not exactly photographers, but we think we could make something work. all three of us have wild creative ideas that need an outlet of some sort and maybe more importantly, we would like the proceeds of these ventures to sustain our desired lifestyles. who knows where this dream will eventually take us, but we had fun imagining it anyway.
this idea of channeling all of our creative forces behind one name, got me thinking about the way kate spade's studio, the projects of which are highlighted on the site behind the curtain, acts as a conduit for all of her and her team's creative ideas. their array of imaginative projects, ranging from publishing books to producing films and curating art exhibits, are funded by the kate spade bag and fashion line (if i have my way, this is exactly where my dreams will take me).
on a similarly inspiring note, abby clawson low is the senior art director at kate spade. you can read a brief interview with abby over at hoping for happy accidents (my favorite snippet of that article: "wishing for...boyfriends for my sisters").
anyone who has looked at my personal work knows that i have a weakness for clotheslines. so natuarally i fell hard for this screen printed linen tea towel designed by lilli harmann for thrid drawer down (i recommend visiting their website not only for their great products, but also for their enchanting website graphics). unfortunately, my tea towel (and it will be mine) is out of print until march 15, but come march 15...
liz they also have some great aprons, called, wait for it, artprons (adorable right?), that you should check out as inspiration for our upcoming project.
the arrival of anthropologie's catalog always sets my creative little heart a flutter. i swoon over their consisently great photography and styling. in this catalog i especially liked the frida kahlo inspired shots (top row) and i really want those white garden trainers only i can't justify spending $258 on shoes i'll probably muss up in a week, alas.
i found something very sweet about the product photography of alissia mt. please try to suppress your surprise at my brevity, but i just don't have anything more elaborate to say about them. only that i find them charming. yes, how very charming they look.
with her beautiful melancholy imagery, lit mainly with natural light, and comprised mainly of soft fields of color, karin bubas creates a very painterly set of images with her daytime work reminding me at times of vermeer and her exterior studies at night (example below) recalling the work of edward hopper.
the above images come from my personal favorite of her series', ivy house, in which she photographed a victorian era home in london. the pictures exalt the feminine details associated with that era like the floral wall paper and lace and also the many ornate details of the house that gave it character. her subject matter from series to series varies quite a bit, but all her work seems to revolve around the idea of lonliness and the relationship between individuals and their environment, whether those individuals appear in the photographs or not. she explains "pictures of one’s home and private life seem far removed from pictures of well-dressed women standing alone in picturesque landscapes. however both approaches play on photography’s ability to tell a story through a single image or series of images. the story is never completely clear but the pieces are presented for the viewer to fill in the gaps."
karin sites inlfunces like jeff wall and justine kurland but i also see eggelston in her images, but maybe that's because these images are such a nod to formal photography that they naturally enter into a dialogue with the great color photographers. i can see any lover of the medium finding something they like in her images.
you can find a brief interview with karin at poppy talk and i highly reccommend reading the bio on her site.
as per request by jinius and after closely inspecting the shoe boxes in the below image, i have been able to jog my memory to report to you that the shoes samantha pleet uses come from a dance company called capezio. if you live in new york and feel like shopping in person, you can pick up a pair on 51st and broadway, although there isn't a store front as the salesfloor is on the second floor and you have to walk past a security desk to get to the elevator which feels a little like you're doing something you shouldn't be. i hope that was satisfactory (and i hope samantha doesn't mind me sharing that information).
a few weeks ago bloesem posted about MeS Textiles, a netherlandish company that sells products for the home ranging from patchwork quilt blankets and pillows to tables and beanbags. their stuff is definitely super cool, but let's talk photography: so good. awesome flash fill that flattens the space. awesome warm color palette that feels simultaneously vintage and modern. awesome. they successfully make use of the snapshot aesthetic while creating expertly composed images, unlike the photo campaign by american apparel that somehow misses the mark for me, and makes me want to gag due its overtly suxual nature (sorry). i really love when companies are more concerned with making interesting photography that stands on its own, than with simply lighting a product to perfection and MeS Textiles satisfies my liking.
i wanted to remind people about 3191 because i think there is something so pleasant about being greeted daily with images of someone else's morning. here is what i wrote about it in the beinning of the year:
friends stephanie, of little birds, and mav, of port2port, have created a visual blog entitled: "3191, a year of mornings" in which every day for a year they will each document their mornings independently of eachother (they live 3191 miles apart) and post the resulting photos on the blog effectively creating a unique diptych every morning. i can't help but recognize a touch of melencholy in the project; i keep turning 'mornings' into its homonym, 'mournings', in my head.
i vaguely remember seeing julianna swaney's etsy shop, oh my cavalier, a little while ago but i couldn't remember where i found it so when i spotted her work on design sponge i was more than a little excited and i had to re-post (of course grace had in turn seen the prints on port2port which is where i might have seen them in the first place). julianna pulls from 19th century imagery to create a specific overall visual vocabulary: "i love birds, lace, anthropomorphism, natural history museums, old books and prints, anything victorian." i love all those things too.
jessica was telling me about a photo shoot she assisted on for a clothing company called forth & towne. she said she thought i would wear almost everything they shot. i think she's basically right, only there are not any stores near me for me to try everything on. with any luck they'll come to philly or king of prussia soon.
i finally have managed to get some images that alissa and i shot of samantha pleet's fashion show (the cause of my trek to the great city to the north and my subsequent break from this here blog) onto our flickr page. i hope you enjoy them. points to anyone who can identify which images are mine and which alissa's.
i haven't been very inspired by anything wedding related lately, but after spending quite a bit of time on lena corwin's blog today i came across this quote in a post about her wedding: "i'm still not sure how i went from being a total anti-bride (wanting to get married at city hall) to having a big weekend event-- worthy of martha stewart weddings magazine." as someone with similar leanings, and finding my curiosity piqued, i began to dig around for images of her wedding, which i promptly found on her flickr page.
let me just say that i was more than a little jealous to find that she threw the wedding of my dreams (that is, on the rare occasion that i let myself think utterly crazy thoughts about what my wedding would look like should i choose to have one): late summer, casual, outdoors, in the evening with no tent and lots of pretty lights. i don't want to give too much away, but i was particularly excited about the backdrops she used for the photography (which as a whole gets 5 stars from me; i'm guessing she asked friends to do it). it feels more than a little weird to me to be posting about the wedding of someone i don't know in real life, but i can't help myself. actually, i can imagine any one of my friends planning a wedding like this. on second thought i probably shouldn't be sharing this valuable information as i'll probably be the last of my crew to go...
i guess i'm still kind of on a summer kick and by that i mean i'm having vivid dreams of warmer climates, and in this current state of mind i want only to look at pictures of sunshine and grass. jenny elia pfeiffer takes the kind of lifestyle pictures that transport me to the climates of my dreams. which is exactly what i need right now. i found jenny over on lena corwin's blog.
*it definitely took me longer than expected to get back into the blogging groove, but now that i have, it appears i can't stop. so stay tuned.
maybe it's on account of the freezing cold weather. maybe it's the piles of frozen snow that i keep having to trudge through all over the city (it might help if philadelphia would plow a little better, but that's just my own small dream), but i seem to be rather preoccupied with warmth and any summery imagery i can find, like justin kimaball's. these iamges were clearly created by someone who has a great love and respect for the traditional american vacation.
i got home from new york very late monday night, but i haven't had any time to put a decent post together (even though i had an unexpected and delightful snow day yesterday during which i divided my time evenly between sleeping and photoshopping the fashion show images). in fact i'm still not really ready to post anything, but i wanted to let people know i didn't suffer some strange and unfortunate death. i've even been busy enough to avoid adding to the "a flickr a day" images, which don't actually take all that long to post so there should be no excuse. but i have in fact been busy and have needed time to recuperate from that whirlwind of a trip which was really quite fun, even though i feel like all i really did was eat. don't worry though, all of that gluttony wasn't for naught as i learned a fun new word:
comestible
pronunciation: \kə-ˈmes-tə-bəl\
1 function: adjective
etymology: medieval latin comestibilis, from latin comestus, past participle of comedere to eat, from com- + edere to eat — more at eat
Date: 15th century
: edible
2 function: noun
date: 1837
: food — usually used in plural
i hope to post something more substantial and hopefully photography related by the end of the day, but i'm not making any promises.
i'm going to new york today in anticipation of shooting the aforementioned fashion show. i don't think i'll be doing much posting over the next 5 or so days (this will actually be my first break from the "a flickr a day" series). what will you do with out me? well you might want to think about heading over to gallery 339 for a book signing of alone together by david graham, tomorrow (thursday, february 8th) from 6 - 8pm. it's just a thought.
