puzzling

sometimes i imagine that photographs are puzzles: the whole is greater than it's parts. each photograph is an accumulation of innumerable elements arranged in a rectangular frame. the act of photographing is in turn an attempt to piece together these disparate elements to achieve a whole.

for several years the puzzles i tried to solve in my photos were not compositional ones. the fun for me was in gesture and light and often focus. recently formality has really grabbed me in my picture making. now i find myself shooting 2 1/4 at f-22. my eyes are still adjusting to the unforgiving sharpness.

i guess all art is really about this kind of problem solving: take a given set of limitations, play within those confines until you create something that resolves said problems in a successful way. the obvious snag is that the definition of success is rather ambiguous.

my personal definition: magical

i say magical, because even though art can be the process of fitting puzzle pieces together, the great whole is nothing short of miraculous. it makes you tingle. forget to breath.

elkie.

hello hand/ 3

hello hand/ 2

vaniljus

i found some new photos on the flickr page of gastav gustafsson.

hello hand/ 1

marlon kowalski/ 4

marlon kowalski/ 3

marlon kowalski/ 2

marlon kowalski/ 1

adrienne b/ 5

if only i could

i wish i felt compelled to make pictures in color. or to take pictures of my friends out partying and then the still lives of our breakfast the next morning. pictures of landscapes with lots of lens flare and some lovely girl or handsome boy. i wish i could take pretty pictures instead of creepy pictures. only i can't. i can only make the pictures that are in my brain and heart and hope that they are enough.

adrienne b/ 4

adrienne b/ 3

full half empty

photo by el dude

um. yeah. i just thought this was funny...

adrienne b/ 2

adrienne b/ 1

walker evans and the picture postcard

walker evans and the picture postcard
february 3, 2009 – may 25, 2009
metropolitan museum of art
the howard gilman gallery

1/ i had no idea that walker evans had collected so many postcards over the course of his life.

2/ it was really satisfying and wonderful to see the visual connections between his photos and the postcards

february: shadow chamber by roger ballen

my feburary amazon order has just been placed. i bought roger ballen's shadow chamber.

reasonings:

1/ the images are so eerily disturbing. yet beautiful. almost a perfect blend of ralph eugene meatyard and joel peter witkin.

2/ the imagery sort of relates to the body of work i am currently producing.

3/ this book has been on my wish list for well over a year.

flickr is killing me

i'm getting so sick of looking through flickr. everything is the same. my eyes are bored.

national gallery of art

i went to d.c. last weekend to see a friend. on the way back to her apartment, while we were discussing what to do with our weekend, i spotted a banner advertising an exhibition of "the americans". it was quickly settled that we would go. luckily enough there was another photo exhibit being shown there as well entitled "oceans, rivers and skies," so it was a two for one.


1/ "looking in: robert frank's the americans"

the show was pretty good but i didn't really learn anything i didn't already know. although there were a few copies of publications i hadn't ever seen before.

2/ "oceans, rivers, and skies: ansel adams, robert adams, and alfred steiglitz"

ok this show was curated very strangely. i honestly don't even know what to say about it. there were images from steiglitz's equivalence series and then some images of both ansel and robert adams' seascapes. i just didn't really get it. i mean don't get me wrong, i understood it, i just didn't get it.