California Gallery Show
January 31st, 2008
I’m included in a gallery show that opens this weekend at the Hobart Galleries in Ferndale, California. The invitational show is called “Out of the Box” and features seven photographers from around the world. It runs concurrently with “Small Works in a Small Town,” Hobart Galleries first open call show since the death of its founder, local celebrity and founder of the Kinetic Sculpture Race, Hobart Brown.
Here’s the news release for the show: http://hobartgalleries.com/HG-press/index.html
All the art work in both these shows is displayed in a small size…no larger than a 5×7 inch frame.
The gallery is located at 393 Main Street – Ferndale, CA 95536 – 707-786-9259 http://hobartgalleries.com
The show will run through March 20.
I hope some of you who are out on the left coast and not too far from Ferndale will be able to attend.
…Dwells Inside
January 30th, 2008
Another dance from the Ohio University Senior Concert in November. This piece was choreographed by Senior Dance Major Amanda Kurtz. Music by John Cage and C.R. Herschfeld. The dancers are Tiffany Alastanos, Jesse Keller, Sierra Woods and Julie Van Zant. 
Just some thoughts
January 25th, 2008
“Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.”
–Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Good advice. I don’t know about the sensible words…that’s not so easy…but I try to do this whenever possible. My easy way is to read Garrison Keillor’s “The Writer’s Almanac” every morning. This morning I found some things there that I think apply to photography and that may be worth sharing. You’ll have to decide if I’m right or not.
It’s the birthday of William Somerset Maugham. He wrote, “Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.”
I try to capture something of that “smell” in my photographs.
And, it’s the birthday of the novelist and essayist Virginia Woolf. In her long essay about women and literature, “A Room of One’s Own” (1929), she wrote: “So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity, which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.”
She was, of course, talking about writing. But I think what she said applies equally to any artist in any medium. Even photography.
Plagiarism
January 24th, 2008
I stole this from BT’s blog: http://btcharles.blogspot.com/ …or did he steal it from me? Actually, I added a comma and an apostrophe and changed an adverb to an adjective, so it’s mine now…
Any coincidental appearance of above photographs to any previously photographed or future photographed works is just that, coincidental. The management assumes no responsibility for the accidental recreating of any photographs of anyone or anything living, dead or that may be born in the future. Any accidental mind reading of others’ future ideas is purely coincidental. We have consulted with Uri Geller beforehand to help predict any accidental plagiarism, and we have his thumbs up. Just to be sure, we also brought out the Ouija Board…and played Bloody Mary in front of the mirror to be absolutely sure. If anyone else has taken these extreme measures as well to ensure originality, we apologize for our accidental rip off of your methods of paranormal investigation of any future works that may be thought of years down the road by any photographer living or dead.
What’s Left Behind
January 20th, 2008
Another dance from the Ohio University Senior Concert in November. This one was choreographed and danced by Senior dance major Angela Nicole Patmon.
It was a very dramatic dance which offered many excellent photo opportunities. Very visual and very much amenable to capturing dramatic slices of the movement.
Concert photos
January 17th, 2008
Why Dance?
January 13th, 2008
One more from the Lois Greenfield workshop. These dancers are, top to bottom, Dario Vaccaro, Miguel Quinones and Colleen T. Sullivan. I really can’t say enough good about these wonderful talented dancers who worked so hard to make these photos at Lois’ workshop in New York. These are the best dancers in the world and it really shows.
But why dance? What is it that has drawn me back to photographing dance after so many years away?
Well, in one sense it is sort of a first love. I was only 17 and just beginning to experience the world of art and culture when I first encountered modern dance and fell instantly in love with it. I’m not embarrassed to confess that beautiful women in tights had some impact on that 17-year-old, but it was true love, not just lust, that was going on. That love has remained through all these years. I only stopped doing dance photography because the other demands of my life just didn’t allow me enough time to do it properly. I now have that time again.
Dance photography takes a lot of time for me because I insist on being familiar with each dance before I pick up the camera. Many photographers approach dance in the same way they approach basketball. The technical challenges are similar, so that’s not surprising. But in dance pretty much the same things happen at the same time and in the same place every time. There’s no reason not to plan. Also, dance means something. There’s more to it than just capturing a peak action moment. So I like, if possible, to talk with the choreographer to get some idea of the thoughts behind the movement and become familiar with the dance in rehearsal before I shoot photos at a dress rehearsal. All that takes time, but for me it is time well spent.
There are some other things that never would have occurred to that 17-year-old photographer…but after 40 years they are things I think about now. I do think that 17-year-old was responding to these things in an instinctive way, though he could not have begun to articulate the ideas.
Photography and Dance are just about as opposite as two art media can be. Dance may be the oldest, at least is one of the very oldest, forms of artistic expression. We’ll never know if our ancestors started beating on a hollow log to accompany their dancing or began dancing to the beat of the hollow log. But we can be certain that dance was there in the most primitive of societies. Photography, on the other hand, is a product of the industrial age, made possible by scientific experimentation. Digital photography has moved the medium into the information age, separating it from its physical and chemical roots.
Dance is performance. The instrument is the human body moving through space and time. Photography is a very different kind of performance with the result showing up later, completely separated from the photographer. It is still and two-dimensional.
And, most importantly, I think, dance is movement in space and time…it happens and it is gone. Photography is still…its speciality is freezing movement, capturing an instant, and saving it for the future…the exact opposite of the ephemeral dance.
The tension between those opposite tendencies and characteristics of the two media create a tremendous attraction for me. It is impossible to photograph dance. Dance must be experienced. But it is a wonderful challenge to try to capture something of a dance that helps save that instantly vanishing moment of artistic expression for the future. I love trying to do that. It seems I have been able at times to achieve a modest level of success, and it’s always nice to do something that you can do well.
So, that’s why I’m photographing dance now. I don’t consider my dance photographs to be art. They are, rather, an attempt to capture the art work of others, choreographers and dancers who bring tremendous skill and talent to their performances. I only seek to make some photographs that show that skill and talent and art.
Back to Dance
January 8th, 2008
French PHOTO
January 6th, 2008
Here’s the photo that French PHOTO chose to publish in their Jan-Feb issue. That’s Theda in “a pile of histamines,” as she stated when she posted this shot on Model Mayhem. Theda tells me that being in French PHOTO has been one of her goals for her modeling career, so I’m very pleased to have helped her achieve that goal.
French PHOTO is known to crop photos to fit their layout, so I don’t know just what this photo looks like in the magazine yet. Usually they print 8-10 photos per page in this contest issue, so it may be cropped to fit and run at a fairly small size. However, I was pleased last year when they chose to run my photo as a half page and uncropped. I guess I’ll have to wait until the magazines finally start showing up here in the US next month to find out what it looks like in the magazine. Unless some of my friends from Europe who read this can let me know in advance.
Thanks Theda…I guess the rash on your back was worth it…
Erotic?
January 6th, 2008
OK…some more on the whole erotic issue. I’m very pleased that one of my favorites of all my photos has been selected to appear in the book, The World’s Greatest Erotic Art of Today, Vol 2 set for publication in the spring. http://eroticsignature.com/ It’s another contest I entered with some reluctance. The photo of Lani that you see here is beautiful and has a sensuality to it, certainly, but I really can’t see it as an erotic photograph. In fact, to me, it is the least erotic of the several photos I entered in this contest. But it’s the one they selected as a winner to include in their book.
So, ok…some of you are asking, essentially, if I don’t like my work to be considered erotic, why do I enter things like the Erotic Signature contest and the Dirty Show. It’s certainly a legitimate question. And the answer is the core of my dilemma. In this country there just doesn’t seem to be an appropriate venue for exhibit of the kind of work I do. In other countries, like France, my work is seen as art and presented in the mainstream of photography, such as publication in French PHOTO. I’ve had a good bit of my work exhibited in Europe with no issues at all about nudity.
But here in the US it seems if it’s nude, it’s considered erotic, or even pornographic. I find that very sad. Nudes are seldom published in the mainstream photo magazines in the US. That’s a change from 40 years ago when I was a young photographer just starting out. Nudes appeared regularly in all the popular photography magazines. Now, because of companies like Walmart which will not put magazines with nudes on their newsstands, publishers won’t print nudes because it affects those newsstand sales.
There’s a wonderful art gallery in my home town. Friends of mine have had great shows of their photography there. It’s the sort of place, in a small town, that would take great pride in showing the work of a home town artist who has earned international recognition for his work. I know the woman who runs the gallery and she loves my work. But I’ll never have a show there because the gallery has an absolute policy to never exhibit nudes.
So, I look for galleries and publications and shows where nudity is not an issue. More often than not those venues turn out to be focused on erotic art. And, if it’s nude it must be erotic…at least in the good old USA.
So, what’s a figure photographer to do? Plenty of folks doing figure work have moved their work more toward the erotic. I’m not inclined to do that. In fact, I try very hard to not let any factors like this have any influence on what I do with my photography. My photos are my vision. I try to follow that vision and make photos that reflect it and not any current fashion or trend. And certainly not what any particular show or publication or contest is looking for.
While it is nice if I can sell some prints or get published or win competitions, those are not the goals that drive my work. In fact, I have serious issues with the whole idea of art competitions. Art is not a competitive sport. It’s an individual act of self-expression. Competitions are meaningless as far as art is concerned. I enter competitions as a way to allow my work to be seen by a wider audience, not in any way to measure it against the work of other artists.
So, I’m in the Dirty Show and several thousand people who attend that show will see some of my work. Maybe some of them will buy prints and help me save up for that Nikon D300 I’m going to have to buy this year. And my photo of Lani will appear in the Erotic Signature book where another group of people around the world will have a chance to see it. And where it will be preserved for some time into the future. I’ll admit to liking the idea that my work will still be around on this planet after I’ve gone. Maybe it will mean something to someone in the future. Maybe it’s just a tiny bit of beauty that I’ve contributed to this world. That’s good enough for me. If someone finds it erotic, well, who am I to say they are wrong?
