Polliwog Magazine

I will go ahead and crawl back into my cave of non-posting after this last one...you know, the important one and all since it's about myself...

Polliwog Magazine just came out with Issue #4, and I am amongst some really great talent which includes: Traci Matlock & Ashley Mclean, Shen Wei, Florian van Roekel, Jennifer Cox, Giorgio Bagnarelli, Lindley Warren and Katherine Squier.

I couldn't be more excited or honored to have been considered. Rebecca does such a great job and I'm glad she decided not to quit doing Polliwog because I am looking forward to what she produces in the future!

Urbanautica, Liz Kuball and Dave Jordano

Woke up this morning and made my daily rounds on this here interweb-which led me to discovering the website Urbanautica via Jennilee Marigomen's flickr (which she was just featured on).  It is a very neat site which forced itself upon me to look at every image and to read each statement by each photographer. I'm just warning you now to be prepared for its aggressive guerilla tactics at making the viewer stay on its site until completion :).  It's worth it though since there are so many amazing photographers on there some huge- like Alec Soth and Amy Stein along with the likes of up and comer's like Will Govus and Marigomen.  However, I was really struck by two people I had previously never seen, Liz Kuball and Dave Jordano.  The website is a compilation of photographers who work in documenting the land wherever it may be that people inhabit.

Liz Kuball is based out of Southern California by way of the east.  She followed the westward dream like many of us do(myself included) and documented this process of discerning reality from fantasy that us transplants often come to fruition.  

from In Store. Liz Kuball.

from California Vernacular. Liz Kuball.

from California Vernacular. Liz Kuball.

Dave Jordano returned to shooting outside of his studio after a 25 year stint hiatus of shooting images inside for clientele.  I am glad he ventured back out into the world and so far he has brought us the stories of life on the fringes of society along with portraying a life that once was in his series on the Chanute Military base in Illinois. 

from Prairieland-On the Fringe. Dave Jordano. 2005.

from Prairieland-Habitants. Dave Jordano. 2005.

from Chanute AFB. Dave Jordano. 2007.

Courtney Greenlee

My good friend Courtney Greenlee has recently just launched her new website.  These are just a few of my favorite images of hers, the rest can be found on her website.  Courtney was a fellow student at Watkins when I attended there, which she still currently attends.  I love her and her work and I wish her all the luck with the future.  It is a wonderful website and even more wonderful is that she has a place to show the world her wonderful work!  I love the way Courtney sees the world and I'm glad she has a showcase for it now. 

I Thought I Was Alone

Dana Goldstein.

Todd Fisher. 

Bea De Giacomo

Luca Gabino, from Queensland.

Jennilee Marigomen. image from Whimsical Bullshit. 

These are a few of my favorite images from the collection of photographs and photographers over at ithoughtiwasalone.com

It is definitely worth it to take a look at the rest as well, along with looking at these individuals websites. 

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. 

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.  

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.