The Postmodern Luxuries of Self-Discovery

Miami: Part Two

2009-12-07T20:01:00.002-05:00

Hopped on a shuttle Friday morning and headed back to Miami’s Wynwood Arts district to make my way towards two private collections, The Margulies and Rubell Family collections. One idea for the organizers of the Miami fairs: Please figure out a way to coordinate one single comprehensive shuttle system that stops at all the major locations. The current system seems to be certain individual fairs sponsoring their own shuttles, which make the arduous and time consuming haul from Miami Beach to the arts district, drop-off and pick-up at disparate locations, and just doesn’t work well. A circuitous route with shuttles running every 15 minutes would be much better.

After a 15 block walk from the closest shuttle stop, I joined my Chicagrapher pals at the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse. This private collection rivals the Menil Collection in Houston, and honestly is worth a trip to Miami in itself. In it’s current installation, you are greeted by major work by Sol Lewitt, Richard Serra, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, George Segal and more. That’s just the beginning. The cavernous warehouse seems unending, and two mezzanine spaces contain even more art. The Margulies collection is balanced between major works of 20th century art and contemporary art, representing all mediums, and especially my favorite – photography.

Ranging from a great installation from the New York photo league of the 30’s and 40’s and early photographs by Margaret Bourke-White to contemporaries Justine Kurland and Alec Soth, the photography work here is amazing. A favorite of mine: Jason Schmidt's portraits of artists, of which I have seen a few, but the Margulies collection displayed ninety-four.

I could go on and on about this collection, but time does not permit. More favorites below.

Danny Lyons, 74 photos from 'Conversations With the Dead.'

Paul Fusco images from the Kennedy Funeral Train

Ursula Schulz, bus stops

Justine Kurland

Angel Marcos, Un Coup De Des #16

An incredible light installation by Anthony McCall, You and I, Horizontal (III), which pictures cannot really capture the experience of

The Olafur Eliasson skylight rooftop installation Your Now is My Surroundings

Chul-Hyun Ahn's Well

After the art overload of Margulies, we headed a few blocks over to the Rubell Family Collection. It was also impressive, but very postmodern by our analysis. images below.

Matt Siber studies Piotr Uklanski's Nazis, 1998, perhaps my favorite piece in the collection

Uklanski's Untitled (American Eagle)

Kelly Walker's "Black Star Press, Star Press Star, Black Press (Rotated 90 degrees clockwise)" and Wade Guyton (from Hammond, IN) X

Gallery of work by Aaron Curry

A great set of early Cindy Sherman prints, Untitled #427-446 from 1976

We left the Rubell and promptly recaffienated at a great little local cafe. We then headed to Pulse, which was a great fair. I'll have to blog that in the next post - back to the fairs for now!

Miami: Part One

2009-12-07T19:46:00.001-05:00

Above, Workshop Workshop at Design Miami

The brutal 6am flight to Miami via Baltimore became worthwhile when I stepped off the plane into 86 degree heat, a welcome change from the waning temperatures in Indiana. I dropped my bags, devoured a plate of fish tacos (the kind that you get in the south with cabbage and vinaigrette), removed my socks and diligently headed toward the art fairs.

For those not familiar with the Miami art fairs, let me say this: They are THE events in the US for art galleries to showcase and sell new work. Here is a link that I am using with a comprehensive look at the fairs, just to give you an idea of the scale: http://www.boydlevel.com/pdf/MiamiGuide2009_FinalV3.pdf. Take these 24 fairs and multiply by VIP parties, brunches, lectures, and book release parties, and you get a sense of the overwhelming nature of this week.

First stop – the Design District to catch Photo Miami and Design Miami.

This is my first trip to the fairs in Miami, so I have little context for the changes which have occurred year to year. I’m told by friends that some photo dealers have left Photo Miami for the other contemporary fairs Pulse and Art Miami. Knowing some of those galleries, I could see their absence as lessening the overall impact of Photo Miami.

As a conceptual fine-art photographer myself, my first pass through photo Miami left me disappointed for a few reasons: First, because there was so much large-scale diasec-style (front-laminated print to acrylic) work which had so little substance – a trendy presentation method with little photographic mojo to back it up. Secondly, there were so many highly-romanticised photoshop-created works which relied upon misty sepia tones or depth-of-field manipulation or fauvistic color to create a dreamy yet contrived surrealism… I just couldn’t stomach most of these, yet I know that people buy them. People buy precious moments figurines too. Third, there was so little work that was about anything. Maybe I’m the one falling behind, but I find substance and depth in serial works of photography that dance around a concept. One more thing – and this is a straight up diss from me personally, a large-format photographer: If you’re shooting 35mm or medium format or even digital, don’t blow your prints up to 6’. Why would anyone intentionally lose the quality in their image to gain some massive proportion? Bigger is not better. Better is Better.

All that said generally about the fair, there was some great work to be seen. The work shown by Stephen Cohen Gallery (Los Angeles) was strong. In particular, I really liked the images of Icebergs in Greenland by Olaf Otto Becker.

They were peaceful and beautiful and relevant. I also liked Austrian Josef Hoflehner’s images of posts and sticks – immaculate and finely printed work which reminded me of Harry Callahan’s work, but a bit broader and more interesting.

Of the more abstract work, I admired (but was not totally taken by) the work of Nicholas Ruel, represented by Galerie Orange of Montreal.

These layered images are printed on aluminum or stainless steel, which can be entirely gimmicky. But these were the first I’ve seen that tonally blended well with the metal, utilized interesting photographs (which might stand alone) as layering material, and just presented a comprehensive and interesting image a la Rauschenberg, but different.

My favorite gallery and artwork of Photo Miami was MR Gallery (Mother River) of Beijing, China. Work by Tibetan artist Mo Yi (pictured below)

documents cultural phenomena of his neighborhood in objective series. I was also very fond of the work of Qiang Jin, who photographed Chinese villagers in reenactments of iconic catholic religious history, including the birth of Jesus and the last supper. At first I thought these were constructed images which spoke to the nature of China and how it’s growth and change was subsuming American Culture. Then, when speaking to Mr. Toni Nan Li from MR Gallery, I got the real story. These remote villagers from Liuhe Village had been converted to Catholocism 200 years ago and were devout. The photographer discovered this, and asked the villagers to re-create these historical Biblical scenes, which they did to glorify God and serve Him. I found this story very interesting in light of China’s changing culture… not to mention that the pictures were immaculate.

Also notable was the disturbing series of images from Jasper Debesier titled ”Udongo.” Irvine Gallery from Washington DC showed nice work by Phil Nesmith titled “Flight Patterns,” which were exceptional photograms on emulsified black glass, as well as some incredibly rendered fictional photographs (yes, photoshop constructed!) by Kahn & Selesnic.

I really loved Design Miami. My friend Dung Ngo, a Senior Editor at Rizzolli International publishers, curator and all-around design guru, told me that the fifteen or so exhibitors at the fair was about ten less than last year – a sad consequence of the economic downturn I’m sure. Below I'll post some of my favorites from Design Miami without much elaboration due to my time constraints - but great design speaks for itself as you will see.

After the fairs, I hit a whirlwind of mixers including a Rizzoli book launch party for "Indochine-Stories" at the fabulous Mondrian Hotel; Next met up with Chicagraphers Brian Ulrich, Matt Siber and John Gitelson at a really mediocre event party hosted by the Scope Fair where the muscle at the door turned away VIP Scope guests (me included) who failed to procure a blue wristband during the day; And finally we hit a party hosted by David Byrne promoting his work with bicycles at the amazing Standard Hotel. We didn't get to meet David, but we did sip cocktails waterside in the ocean breeze and geeked out with our iPhone apps for a great end to a long day.

Lamp and Table by Tom Dixon:

Amazing work by Maarten Baas:

"Tassenkast" by Lotty Lindeman:

Now, back out into the wilderness for more...

Catching Up

2009-10-21T22:21:00.008-04:00

It's been a busy few months and I've neglected my blog. I knew this would happen. As I try to balance my architectural work with my photography, sometimes photography gets the back burner.

A few weeks ago I did complete nine days on the road working on Economic Entropy, focusing specifically on one aspect of the project - Whitewashed. It was refreshing to take time and focus on shooting without any distractions. Here are a number of iPhone pics from the trip:

Fighting for Scraps

2009-07-23T01:36:00.002-04:00

Over at OnTheCusp I made a post about public arts funding in Indianapolis. Please join the conversation, and don't hold back.

The Great Julius Shulman

2009-07-17T10:55:00.002-04:00

This is a repost of a comment I left at Atomic Indy about the Great Julius Shulman who passed away on Wednesday at the age of 98:

As an architect and photographer, I have always admired Shulman's work. I have seen him speak a few times and spoke to him briefly after a lecture in Houston. What a gem.

He half-jokingly referred to himself in lectures as "The Great Julius Shulman," a moniker I'm sure he picked up by hearing himself referred to as such. But he was actually an enormously down-to-earth, hardworking artist who was one of the first to share the vision of the early modern California architects. The Case Study House Program owes a great deal of success to Shulman's vision of modern living.

What I remember most about his lectures and what inspires me most today is the complete dedication to getting the shots and getting the work done regardless of itchy business realities such as whether he would be paid or not. He did this casually, cheerfully, and jokingly, and he knew how important it was to represent California modernism so ideally in pictures. Philosophically, he knew that success would come if he just continued to do good work. And he was right. Shulman came to the site, he spent the time, he waited for the moment, he got the shots. The amazing shots.

What is lost in our hindsight and reverence for the Case Study House Program is the fact that it was groundbreaking, difficult and financially stressed. Yet Shulman brought his best because he believed in the art.

Not only that, but he continued working well into his eighties (maybe later?). Lugging view camera equipment around and staging shots is not for the meek, even with assistants.

I don't feel that he will be missed the way I often do when people pass. For Shulman, I feel that his amazing legacy will continue to be revered after a long and fruitful life. What more could a person want?

I'm looking forward to seeing this film about Shulman... it would be great to see it screened in the Toby at the IMA (hint, hint).

Ruins of Truth in Content

2009-07-11T13:53:00.006-04:00

The most blogged-about topic on photography blogs this week is The New York Times Magazine's publishing and subsequent pulling (from the web) of Edgar Martins' Ruins of the Second Gilded Age which the Times commissioned from Martins last fall. One blog commenter compared this charade to the Oprah-James Frey incident.

Martins is a 32-year-old Portugese photographer who has produced an incredible body of minimal, conceptual photographic work. He has advertised his work as being "without digital manipulation," which is quite a cavalier statement, even taken liberally. With few exceptions, every large format photographer who prepares museum-quality prints utilizes some level of post-production for the simple ability to remove dust or other aberrations from the picture which are natural and inevitable to shooting. This is really no different than the analog tedium of dust removal and retouching of prints in old-school wet photography.

Claiming "no digital manipulation" and no post-production is very ethical high ground in photography. Most who genuinely do this shoot large format (up to 8x10) or ULF, ultra-large format (up to 20x24) film and contact print or still enlarge wet - primarily black & white. Martins' work however is pristine color work, and frankly it's difficult to believe that it is without digital post production. Analysis of Ruins of the Second Gilded Age at PDN seem to agree, and now bloggers are combing through Martins' earlier photographs and pointing out bits of editing in the work.

Which brings us to the most interesting question: Why? Why do this? If you are Martins, you are a fine artist whose work is strong enough that it does not need further justification by claiming no digital manipulation. If you are the New York Times Magazine, why hire a Portugese fine art photographer to document an American housing crisis? I can think of quite a few who could have produced this project exceptionally well in the required editorial means (no manipulation to change the content or meaning of the work). Why did these get past photo editors - was there some gambling with grace or did they really not catch it?

This incident is also a lesson on the ubiquity of the blogosphere and it's ability to affect change at the highest levels of media. Image posted above by Edgar Martins, 'raw flip' evidence animation by a blogger here.

One blogger on APhotoEditor claims that Martins will soon respond. I look forward to the dust settling on this one.

Pining for Texas

2009-07-11T01:28:00.003-04:00

I miss Texas a lot. It's one of those places that you grow to love : the smells, the heat, the genuine friendliness of the people, the slow and articulate cutting edge - in its dullness, sharper sometimes than the competitive edge of the east coast, and more tangible and relatable.

I really dig photographers who can speak Texan in their images. One of my favorites is Allison V. Smith. Her work feels like Texas to me.

Judy Levy Memory Cloud @ IMA

2009-07-10T00:55:00.003-04:00

My pal Judy Levy has a fantastic installation at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in the atrium. If Orly Genger made you nervous, you'll like Judy's installation. I only wish I had stilts to see more.

Social Justice

2009-06-23T13:33:00.001-04:00

The events surrounding the elections in Iran these past couple of weeks really have me thinking.

I think about my own preconceptions about Iran, formed by believing what has been poured forth in the news media in recent years. I am amazed that such a great number of the Iranian people are marching and fighting for freedom and justice. Who would have thought that this election in Iran would reveal the same courage and thirst for change that our own election brought less than a year ago? We are very much alike.

I also can't help but think that if these actions are in some part inspired by the change in philosophy and administration of our American government. If so, Barack Obama, by sheer inspiration, has done more to bring democracy to the middle east than years of warring and a trillion dollars will ever bring.

When I step away from the computer, the news, my phone and all the worldly information brought by modern living, I look for signs of social justice in my city and my neighborhood. Just a block away from my home, Larry and Beverly Newman protest quietly every Saturday, in every form of weather. They are humble and they are diligent. Humility and diligence are waning in America, replaced by self-consumption and addiction to immediacy. Is the current recession enough for us to regain our sense of humility as a people and become diligent and ethical in business and social responsibility? I fear that it is not - not in the way that 9/11 briefly unified us as a people.

I have been photographing the Newmans and will continue to do so as long as they stand quietly every Saturday morning for their deep belief in social justice.

Festival

2009-06-12T00:59:00.004-04:00

In the studio tonight sorting through prints as I get ready for IMAF (the Independent Music and Arts Festival) this Saturday at the Harrison Center for the Arts in Indianapolis. I've never done a local festival, but I have spent much time at IMAF in previous years. Good music, good people, good brew = good time. I'll be somewhere on the newly-landscaped Harrison Center lawn at 16th & Delaware, at the south end of the adjacent Talbott Street Art Fair.

Stop by if you're in the neighborhood. I'm pulling out original (mostly one-of-a-kind) prints from my experimental work from the mid-90's, many proofs and a few edition prints from Economic Entropy. Perhaps even a few large pieces... let's see what fits in the truck. Maybe I'll bring a camera. Economic recession pricing and Facebook friend discounts apply.

Abstraction and Humanism

2009-06-03T23:08:00.018-04:00

I'm hoping to get to NYC this month to take in a few shows, foremost The Edge of Vision at the Aperture Gallery. I cheated myself and bought the beautiful monograph first, something I don't usually do before seeing a show.

Abstraction, or a broader classification that I call 'experimental' photography, was what first drew me in after years of dispassionately knowing the techne of the medium. I learned photography at an early age from my father, a Marine Corps photojournalist and instructor. But I was never attracted the idea of being a photographer - no yearbook or newspaper staff in school, no photographic curiosity to speak of.

What first piqued my interest were crossover artists: Laslo Moholy-Nagy, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Smithson, Sol LeWitt, and LeCorbusier the architect painting (often in the nude) to exercise his vision and sense of composition. Bolstered by friends immersed in art and literature, I began experimenting with painting, collage and photography to inform the aesthetics of my architectural work. Along the way I discovered great image-makers who forever changed the way that I see: Harry Callahan, Ray Metzker, Barbara Morgan, and Sigmar Polke among others. I searched for ways (relatively unsuccessful to this day) to generate architectural form and aesthetics through art mediums.

My early experimental photographic work was largely predicated on dissolving the illusion of deep space and expanding the 'frozen moment' into something not so... singular. Reading these abstractions, I made many attempts to translate the resulting forms back into architectural compositions. The only results which I thought began to translate successfully were in my brief series Brutalities / Cartographies. These images began as recording architecture and in a sense were regurgitated into a more interesting image of an architecture. I made a few line drawings and projections inspired by my friend Mark Kroeckel (of OpenShop Studio) and his exploration Acting Space, but alas, I let the project rest. All of these photo>architecture translations seemed forced, arbitrary, and ultimately aesthetic.

Which brings me (via the scenic route) to a thought about Joerg Colberg's Not a Review of the Edge of Vision show. As a photographic outsider (in a sense, never formally schooled in photography) I find it very interesting observing the differences between the few aesthetic ideologies in contemporary photography today. Joerg states, "I have never spent much time looking at abstract photography, because, well, I find most of it too decorative." I admire Joerg's eye and his blog commentary. A fair opinion, I suppose.

What I find interesting is that in the field of architecture, formal and visual abstraction is actually the basis of modern and conceptual design - quite different than in photography. The antithesis of this kind of architecture might be postmodern architecture... which is very different than postmodernism and all of it's derivatives in the world of art and photography.

Based on my history, my inclination here is to make a connection between abstract photography as seen in The Edge of Vision and modern design. Maybe that connection is simplistic. Maybe the connection is in the relation of the two mediums (photography and architecture) to people - how each affects our thoughts and interactions.

From reading his blog for a couple of years, I deduce that Joerg seems largely intrigued with portraiture - the relationships among: the photographer, a person as subject, the camera and ultimately the art object result on the wall. Among these relations are intense subtleties which reveal interesting aspects of the human condition. Eyes looking there, the gesture of the hand, light revealing lines on skin... all captured in the medium and speaking to us about what it is to be human.

There is much more here to think about here... I'll rest my fingers for a while. Maybe I'll expand my thoughts on abstraction and humanism in photography at a later date.

Whitewashed

2009-05-28T23:34:00.008-04:00

One of the themes I have been exploring in my series Economic Entropy is the idea of whitewash. Whitewashing is a method often used by real estate brokers to erase the graphic history of a site or previous use of a commercial building by painting it over.

The day I shot this photo, I was waiting for friends Kipp Normand and Ray Raposa to arrive at a location for a press photo shoot for Ray (the same location where I coincidentally shot Thonet). I was parked on Hamilton Avenue in Indianapolis about a block from the location. As I stood staring at this fence, I realized that just a few blocks down on Hamilton was the site if the grizzly Hamilton Avenue mass murders of 2006, where seven people were senselessly killed. I was immediately tempted to go shoot the house, but as I looked at this half-painted fence, I saw a more poetic image: that of a partially whitewashed fence which seemed an impossible task to complete. The history of Hamilton Avenue could not be erased. And the fence was one of the most modest, genuine examples of economic entropy that I had encountered.

I received good news this week from the Griffin Museum of Photography in Boston (Winchester) MA. This photograph was selected for it's annual juried exhibition which runs July 8th through August 30th. Selected by Catherine Edelman, it looks like an interesting show with work by Colleen Plumb, Katrina d'Autremont, and Eve Morgenstern among others. Check it out if you're in Beantown.

To Blog or Not to Blog...

2009-05-25T23:44:00.017-04:00

That has been the question. And for about five years, I've chosen not to blog(v)... at least not on my own blog(n). But recently, I find my attic filled with too many thoughts that don't neatly fit into the parameters of onthecusp or the comment wall of someone else's blog. So here I go. And give me whatever you've got right back. I want it.