Roger Ballen

Broken Bag. 2003. Roger Ballen.

This past semester, my teacher Caroline Allison, showed us Roger Ballen's work.  This was the first time I had ever seen his images and I was enamored by them.  He actually achieves to make me want to shoot black and white photography again, which I never thought anyone or thing could make me want to do again.  You may have or have not heard of him, but regardless there is a new audio interview of him on the lens culture site where he talks about how he started shooting photography and some of the things that recur in his photographs and why they do and you should go listen to it. I love listening to photographers talk about their craft. 

Mark Wickens

Mark Wickens. 2009.

I can't get this image out of my head.  It just strikes me as so odd.  I grew up in Florida surrounded by pelicans and I cannot recall ever seeing one dead.  This is a beautiful image and he captured the essence of this moment wonderfully.  I love all the foot prints in the wet sand surrounding the pelican and the fact that the water must keep rolling in and out deepening the colors and saturating the dead bird. I honestly keep going back to his flickr to look at this image over and over again. 

The Most Beautiful Photos Of My Life Occurred Yesterday and I Didn't Have a Camera.

Being a photographer and being without a camera can be absolute torture-or it can be a blessing in disguise.  Yesterday my sister and I went on a drive and it was quite warm out for what it has been recently.  The sun was shining in all the right places.  We had my mom's car-left mine at home to save gas (ha!), which meant that I did not have my camera on me since it was in my car.  In all fairness, we were not supposed to go driving, we were supposed to be looking for jobs, but it was just too nice outside!! Consequently, everywhere I looked yesterday I saw an amazing photograph in front of me.  Of course that type of lighting makes everything beautiful, and it did...but that's the point anyway. At some points I almost felt moved to tears at the beauty in front of us. 

Missed Photograph #1:

We went to a lake and my sister was sitting on a dock, she was wearing mostly black with red shoes and her red fingernails and I could see this pop of red from quite a distance while she was surrounded by water and the last burst of sunshine for the day was hitting her face.  

Missed Photograph #2:

All the meantime I'm walking by this pavement that has insane tire markings that made many a design.  

Missed Photograph #3:

When we had first pulled up Katie got out of the car to make a bouquet and as she did that I sat in the car noticing the side-view mirror's reflection was of the lake behind us, the sun setting gradient sky, and the silhouettes of the leaf barren tree and foothills and the light falling inside of the car was quite soft while Katie stood behind the side-view mirror in front of bushes that were being kissed by the last of the sunlight.  

Missed Photograph #4:

On our way to the lake, there was this guy on his motorcycle next to us.  I could see him in the review mirror perfectly with his oakley style sunglasses wrapped around his eyes.

Missed Photograph #5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12....:

Everywhere I looked yesterday.

Missed Series #1:

Central Pike, Mt. Juliet, TN. 2009. I want to shoot an entire series down this road. Ending with the end of the road where there is a high school.  There is this exposed rock from part of the foothills and they pained a huge flag on it along with a peace sign and names. 

As much as it hurt not to have a camera on me, I realized that if I did have my camera on me yesterday, I would not have been able to see as much as we did because we simply would never have had the time to get to all the places we did before the sunset and now I know of all the places we went to and can go back to them and take my time discovering the areas with the camera.  It will probably never be quite the same again, but I can at least try and capture the essence of the beauty we saw yesterday. 

When the Snow Melts...

As we all know, yes all-as in the whole world, today is the last day the Bush regime will be in office.  I have to say as much as everyone hates him, I think he was just as scapegoat.  I don't think he was smart enough to pull off the majority of the things that went wrong the past eight years, nor do I think he even really knew about it, but rather that the people in his cabinet used him to get away with all of the atrocities that occurred in the past eight years.  This way we all turned our eyes away from the source and kept them on the monkey in front of the cameras.  And he was a monkey. 

By the time the snow melts today Barack Obama will become America's president.  I couldn't be more happy that the right person finally gets to be in office.  I don't know if he will or can fix everything that's been left to him, but the entire world has hope in him which is a lot more than you can say for anyone else that was or could be in his position.  

It's the first snow of the year here in Nashville, and by the time the snow melts we will have a new president.  You know, once the white stuff is gone, the snow I mean! 

And They Brought Their Swedish Cats-Part Two

Sannah Kvist. from Habitat. 2007-2008

Thobias Faldt. from Alternative Universe.

 

Gustav Gustafsson. Two Cats, One Stone. 2008

Gustav Gustafsson. 

Erika Svensson. 

Sannah Kvist. from Habitat. 2007-2008.

I couldn't help but notice the aforementioned photographers affinity for capturing their feline friends.  I love this because I remember being in photo 1 and my teacher was furious when a student put up an image of their cat on the wall.  From then on we were not allowed to have any images of animals in critique.  So here's to her!

The Swedes Are Coming. Part One.

This entry is dedicated to all things Swedish. I've been looking a lot of Swedish photographers lately so I though I'd post a collection of images from some of them. I had been fascinated with their use of flash and because of the flash, the whites they were able to achieve. I asked Gustav Gustafsson why it seemed that everyone in Sweden uses a flash, and when he gave me the answer, it was all too apparent-because it is so dark in Sweden for part of the year! Their images are often ironic. They document life, both their own-and society's, which often yield hilarious results as they so cleverly point out the idiosyncrasies of society. 

Ida Borg. from Sju Sorters Kakor. 2007

Thobias Faldt. from Life Returns.

Johan Bergstrom. from Untitled #1. 

 

Erika Svensson. 

Lars Tunbjork. Post Office, Stockholm,1998.

Erik Betshammar. from Corners with Doors.

Sannah Kvist. from Vivid. 2008.

Klara Kallstrom. 2007.

Jesper Ulvelius. Alien. 2007.

Gustav Gustafsson. Head Injury. 2008.

Additionally, my friend Gustav is considering a trip to the states to partake in the ol' classic American road trip.  I'm crossing my fingers! :)  He also pointed me in the direction of Lars Tunbjork and Johan Bergstrom, thank you for that! I hope you that if you haven't seen these photographers' work before that you'll take the time at some point or another to look at their websites, there is so much great work from all of them it took me all day just to pick out one image from each of them. 

Matt Lipps

Matt Lipps is a photographer and sculptor.  I love how he pushes photography to it's boundaries by taking the esthetic of collaging and placing it within in a frame.  He does the same with his sculptures, involving a variety of mediums.  His cutouts are central to his images and allow him to play with reality and fantasy by juxtaposing a photograph he has cutout and then photographing that photograph within a new context, giving it a new "reality".  

Herman van den Boom

Herman van den Boom is a German photographer.  I am in love with his older black and white work especially.  

Sunrise in Nashville.

I'm awake for yet again another sunrise. At least they are always beautiful. And yes, I took some with the hassy this morning. 

Video of Frigid Chicago Sunrise

Sunrise

WTF!!!

This is by far, the coldest weather I have ever felt.  Where's my Florida? Where's my Los Angeles? Do you know how much I hate cold weather?....

Zoe Crosher

I really love Zoe Crosher's series, Out the Window (LAX).  I first found her work while scouring UCLA's photography faculty.  I think this series is fun.  I can see how this simple idea was formed, just by a fascination of noticing-maybe even only once.  Looking at just one image is alright, but it doesn't do the series justice.  I can only imagine her preparation-how many planes must have gone by, and how she had to be ready at the right moment or rather wait for the right moment to get the plane in her frame.  

I think it would be beneficial to take a look at the rest of her work as well.  Her series, LA-Like, explores Los Angeles for what it is.  When I look at her images, I can automatically connect with them having lived there for a year.  Her images of sunlight pouring in through any and every crack possible remind of the blinding sunshine on my drive home from work.  In this series she is beginning to investigate each facet of what L.A. is known for.  

Nice to meet you.

So this is the first one.  Hello.  I decided it was time to stop talking only to myself, but to at least write my thoughts out to start a dialogue with the vast internet world.  I plan on using this blog to share ideas and images and thoughts.  So I encourage anyone reading who finds something interesting to share their thoughts as well.

With that said, lets start talking.

I went and saw the photographer, Jock Sturges, give an artist talk at Watkins College of Art and Design tonight.  He photographs mostly females and mostly adolescent in the nude.  Of course goes without saying there is some controversy surrounding his content.  That aside, the adolescent females he started photographing decades ago have grown up, which he has continued to shoot the females throughout their lives.  He has even shot their children and now he is starting a third generation.  He likes to keep in the family-well 20 families anyway.  He knows his subjects very well, some of which have even lived with him and his own family.  As he flipped through the slideshow he would tell the audience about each person or family within the image.  And it wasn't that he was just throwing out some facts for us, but that he was setting up a relationship for the subject to the audience.  I came out of the lecture feeling like I had just met a lot of new people.   

I think this relationship he has with his subjects comes through blatantly in his work.  His subjects seem at ease and he is able to capture an amazing image; although, he mentioned that it takes time to get it....lots of time and patience, even years with the same person to get a great image.  That's dedication.  

He was a very articulate speaker, in fact I'd say he was the best speaker I've seen as of yet.  He went off on some interesting tangents to say the least.  One of them being how he found some research on siblings and their roles.  He said that people have come up with statistics through researching what role a sibling will play based on when they are born.  The first born is typically more conservative, they know what their parents like and they know how to please them.  They are more studious and tend to live life by the rules.  Whereas the youngest sibling tends to be more creative because they have to figure out how get their parents attention.  I don't think I can personally stand behind that idea, but I do find it interesting nonetheless.   One of his tangents that I could stand behind was his thoughts on the word objective.  He doesn't believe it should be in our language and I can agree almost completely on that one.  I can honestly say I hate that word.  Mostly because people use it as if it is possible to say that a human being can be objective.  That one can "see" objectively.  We are humans, therefore we are subjective.  We all experience things differently, therefore, we could never see something on an objective level.  I do think the word can exist in language though, because I believe that objectivity does exist, just not in humans.  The entire world is objective.  Things exist and they exist objectively its the human senses that experience them subjectively.  Okay, I'm glad I got that one out.  To most of my friends, this hatred of objectivity comes as no surprise as I am forever voicing my opinion on it.  It's just a big pet peeve of mine.  

And I think that will close my own tangent for the night.