maditi photography

i've said it before: i'm picky about polaroids. for me, a polaroid's charm lies in its physical nature; a polaroid is inherently an object meant to be held, a thing, forgiven its technical flaws and enjoyed mainly for its immediacy. viewing a polaroid online, be it on flickr, or myspace, or wherever, automatically takes it out of context. many scan the polaroid in its entirety, including the borders and minimally adjust the color to recreate the experience, but still once the polaroid loses its physicality the flaws in the image become increasingly evident.

yet, there are always exceptions. like maditi photography. i think one of the reasons i like maditi's polaroids is because of her consistent control of the image itself. she uses the polaroid to reveal unexpected everyday objects, through a controlled color palette and an understanding of the polaroid's limitations.

but most interesting to me is how she rechristens the polaroid as another kind of object that has a similar position of reverence and nostalgia in our society, the postcard, an object that can be handled, mailed, or even framed.


finally, i'm not the hugest fan of her black and white images, but she has a great eye for color, not only in her polaroids, but also in her medium format images, like the one below. you can view more of them on her website in the portfolio section. she also has a blog. and an etsy shop.


via poppy

yawnshire

pocketcharmz

saturday is my friday

i'm creating a technorati profile. that's what happens when i'm bored on a saturday and no one else is posting to their blogs.

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laurie roberts/ revisted

a young woman came into my work today and told me that one of our artists, stuart rome, used to be her teacher. and since stuart happened to be my teacher, we got to talking. only to discover that she is the laurie roberts i posted about in december. such a small world.

she graduated from drexel just before i started so our paths never crossed in the halls nor did we ever bump heads in the darkroom, but it was exciting to put a face to her photographs anyway. the image below was hanging on the wall by the cage the entire time i was at school, which basically makes laurie a kind of legend in my mind.

kirin & co

i found myself at kirin notebook this evening, which led me to her shop, kirin & co, where i spotted this print, 'crafttree,' for $35.

the applicant

when lt. saw my post on the photobooth book a few weeks ago, she suggested i look at the applicant by jesse reklaw. the book hilariously pairs the pictures submitted by phd applicants with snippets from the recommendations that accompanied their applications. as one back cover review explains, "the combination of the photograph and the often-ruthless summations by their former professors and employers makes you want to simultaneously laugh at and pity them" - sean stewart, the new pages.

i think it's only $4, if that's any more incentive to check it out.

tuffig/ 2

does anyone know who i'm talking about?

a few years ago alissa and i saw a photographer in a magazine at school who composed these really narrative shadow puppet scenes using only a few props. we found her again recently but neither of us can find the e-mail exchange that has her name and link in it. ironically neither of us really liked her work when we saw it the second time around, but the fact that i can't remember her name is really irritating me now. the images look similar to the shadow puppets i posted about yesterday, but they tell more of a story. this is really obscure so i don't actually expect anything to come of this plea, but i'm pretty sure she has gallery representation so i feel like someone might know who she is.

tuffig/ 1

shadow puppetry

i know this image isn't exactly high photography, but i thought it to be rather charming and it reminded me of abelardo morell's childhood series, if only in a really superficial way. for $10, you can get a 5" x 5" print from tiinateaspoon's etsy shop.

they also remind me of this woman photographer i looked at for a project i was working on two or three years ago. she takes shadow silhouette pictures but i can't remember her name for the life of me (alissa, i know you know who i'm talking about!).

cool/hunt

tina sent me a link to the site thecoolhunter.net maybe because i posted about coolhunting? i don't know. i don't even know who tina is, but i thought i'd pass it along anyway.

suzannasugar/ 3

doron gild

i read an article in philadelphia city paper on red heart the ticker and when i subesquently looked them up on the interweb, i found some really great photography by doron gild inspired, i can only assume, by gregory crewdson.

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the happy camper

i haven't been camping in a really long time, but i was a girl scout for over ten years and the camping was always my very favorite part. i keep trying to talk my mom and sisters and friends into going with me, but i can't find any takers (although zia did say she would take me next time she goes *fingers crossed*). it's possible that camping won't be nearly as fun as i remember, but based on the pictures i saw on kat heyes and tess carr's companion website to their book, the happy campers, i bet my memories of campground magic are just about dead on.

these pictures remind me of the lifestyle photography of thayer allyson gowdy, a young california photographer that pdn featured a few years back in an issue about the west coast.

e j winter/ 3

no bowie after all

david bowie is still interviewing the artists, just at some other time and place which won't include me. i'll have to add this to the week's mounting list of total let downs and disappointments. and by the way, this week was way worse than i imagined it would be. it totally ended in tears at a train station waiting for my mother, who loved me enough to drive through a really bad snow/hail storm to come pick me up. she's the best. i cried any way. actually "cried" is an understatement. i was bawling.

e j winter/ 2

holy crap!

david bowie, the david bowie, is coming to gallery 339 to interview the two artists we're showing tonight. it's kind of a long story, but the important thing here is that i'm going to meet david bowie in just under half an hour. i'm not even that big a david bowie fan, in fact it's safe to say i'm not a david bowie fan at all, but and yet i'm having a surprising amount of trouble containing my excitement. i might even put my makeup on a little early. i might.

maybe he'll even be here for our opening tonight (21st and pine, 6 -8 pm)...

e j winter/ 1

wkmpellucid/ 1

a quickie

jaime just sent me a link to an online photography magazine called file magazine. i haven't really had time to explore it but it looks really good. in a similar vein, i also came across cool hunting, but again i've only perused it briefly. let me know if you read anything good.

akwells/ 5

busy bird

ever notice how everything in life seems to converge on you at exactly the same time? let's take a look at my week:

1/ we have an opening at the photography gallery where i spend my days, gallery 339, this friday (of guariglia + chen whose work i definitely recommend even though i don't really have time to devote a post to them just now). this means long days and lots of physical labor.

2/i have family coming in from st. louis on wednesday (who i haven't seen in i can't actually remember how long).

3/ which happens to be the same day as a once a month ladies business meeting i attend and since i had to miss last month's because i was in new york, i really don't want to skip again (even though both my family and the meeting are really a non-issue since i'll probably have to stay at work until at least 9 hanging the show anyway).

4/ plus, lt. and i have planned a weekend of printmaking (dubbed printfest07, for which i haven't fully finished preparing my sketches or mylars) with a tentative starting date of saturday depending on my level of exhaustion and the amount of time i have spent with the fam.

oh, and did i mention i'm dog sitting this week?

needless to say, posting will be a little limited in the mean time. i'll try to keep up with "a flickr a day," but i'm not making any promises. i hope to resume in full next monday, and i wish everyone a nice week.

akwells/ 4

the bruise magazine

i'm working with a fantastic new online magazine called the bruise that i came in contact with through myspace. their current issue, "the warming landscape," looks at contemporary issues relating to landscape and environment.

i was particularly impressed with krista connerly's work which "looks at the idea of the 'black forest' and it's corresponding language of fairy tales. the stories that have grown out of this landscape seem to point to the calibration of internal to external. for instance, swallowing the heart of a bird creates a kind of physical alchemy during sleep that makes gold appear under your pillow. fairy tales are filled with transformations like these and these activities are born out of the place itself; the forest as a density of desires and fears." i like that her work transcends the cliche imagery customarily associated with fairy tales.

i'm currently working on curating an issue around the idea of family in photography. if you have work related to that theme, please drop me a line (bluebirdphotography@gmail.com).

akwells/ 3

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akwells/ 1

erin nelson

the website of the most recent "a flickr a day" installment was actually really fun. the artist, erin nelson, is a young photographer studying at cooper union. her website goes by ghost daugher.

not the fishes/ 3

not the fishes/ 2

lyell

i was browsing montmarte's blog today and found a link (i think via mav) to the fashion line lyell where i was greeted by some highly inspired fashion and some equally inspired fashion photography. the company clearly takes a lot of pride in their photographic imagery and i delighted in the result. they generously listed their photographers on their contact page (saving me the impossible task of tracking them down):

1/ richard kern
spring & summer 2007

explore his site at your own risk as his images are more than a little risque. his images for lyell on the other hand kind of remind me of loretta lux because of the way the model is made to look like a little girl.



2/ gareth mcconnell
fall 2006

to whom i'll try to devote a more comprehensive post to a little later.



3/ noah sheldon
nyc spring 2006, paris 2005, & nyc 2004

i saw this website a few months ago and thought i would never be able to remember how i found it, only to come to it via an entirely different route; what a serendipitous coincidence.



if you're more interested in the fashion than the photography i suggest reading refinery29's page on lyell and their chat about nolita with the australian designer, emma fletcher.

not the fishes/ 1

jaime alvarez

lt. sent me a link to her friend jaime's site today that i thought i should pass along. his work is both really smart and really enjoyable, and i'm going to let him explain it:

"within a critical moment in some one's life, time is always described as irrelevant. sometimes people don't notice it pass, other times, it passes too quickly. this series of 12 photographs alludes to those certain moments when time deceives us. for 13 months my father was fighting a battle with cancer, and through that period of documentation, i chose to redisplay these moments as if time were passing by, but only the details remained behind."

i hope the next time i imply that i don't like highly conceptual photography someone calls me a liar to my face. see also: uta barth; read fascinating interview with her here.

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p0cket-paul/ 2

i need a large format camera!

i had the most irresistible urge to photograph today.

2 things stopped me:

1/ i work saturdays (a fact sad enough in and of itself, but made all the more sad because of said urge to be in the sunshine making pictures).

2/ i need a freakin' 4 x 5! i don't feel like shooting with my holga all that much right now. it may be the cold, it may be the fact that i can't shoot with it indoors due to its inability to deliver a halfway decent exposure without a crapload of light, but the more likely cause of my recent aversion is the over abundance of crappy toy camera pictures i keep seeing on flickr. they make my eyes spin enough to make me sick.

when i purchased my equipment this fall, i opted to buy a digital camera instead of a large format so that i could shoot weddings more easily. and while i can say that that was mostly a wise decision, i can't wait to get my hands on a large format camera. i want to use my light meter again! and film! and be able to scan negatives that have some real density instead of the frighteningly clear ones i sometimes get from my holga. i know that large format cameras are going the way of the dinosaur, but i want one anyway, in fact their impending scarcity only makes them more desirable to me.

i dream of the day when some bride says to alissa and me, "hey how about you try shooting our wedding portraits in large format, wouldn't that be beautiful?" because it would be damn it.

p0cket-paul/ 1

iru v/ 2

photobooth.net

while browsing around for information on the photobooth book i posted about a few short days ago, i came across the site, photobooth.net. and as i've been back there several times since, i thought i should pass it along. the site exists as a kind of grand tribute to anything and everything photobooth related, from books about photobooth images to art made with the photobooth to coordinating with rental companies to bring vintage photobooth machines to any event.

the ongoing moment

i had planned on working on a post when i got home from work last night, but around the time i left work i got slammed with the massive headache i had been trying to fight off all day. unfortunately, i couldn't even go straight home because i didn't have access to a car and had to take the train (nothing makes a headache better than an encounter with septa) and then wait at the borders in chestnut hill until someone could finally come pick me up at ten.

my bookstore excrusion was not altogether unproductive though. i stumbled upon a book i had heard about a while ago called the ongoing moment by geoff dyer. it's kind of a fun look at photography from someone who is not actually a photographer, and you don't really need to be well versed in the history of photography to enjoy it, yet it talks about photography intelligently enough for die hards like me to want to read it in one sitting. i was particularly amused by the passages that intimated about how big of a pervert alfred stieglitz was.

when i finally got home, i took some extra strength tylenol (and an aleve) and settled in to watch the black donnellys, bitter that it was on in place of my beloved er (which totally sucks this season) and was immediately sucked in. i can't help it; i love soap opera dramas. my favorite part of the show was when bobby donnelly, the main character who's currently enrolled in art school (and dating, wait for it, a photography student at somewhere really cliche, could a show get more awesomely bad than that? i doubt it), is sitting in a deli drawing a realistic portrait of his lifelong love, hoping she won't catch him. yeah, because that's the kind of art that's made in art school these days: sappy portraits of pretty girls. it required some serious suspension of disbelief on my part. i loved it anyway.

just so you know, you can catch the pilot on nbc's website, but watch at your own risk. this is highly addictive stuff.

iru v/ 1