The View from the Edge of the Universe

Bitter Old Man or Enlightened Coot?

Last week I had the pleasure of hearing Duane Micheals speak at the Strand in NYC.  At 75, he pretty much calls it like it is.  He has a new book out, Foto Follies, a biting satire on the money-fueled photography world.

Here are several of Michals' comments:

"I've always relied on the kindness of ideas"

"Everything you think makes sense doesn't.  Get out of the fuckin' box."

"My gift to you is that I'm not you"

"As long as you believe in consensus reality, you will never experience true reality"

"What I cheap joint, I have to do my own slides" .... and .... "Jesus, what do I have to do to get fucked around here"

"You are the alpha, the omega. You are the event"

"You affect what you see through the participation of your observations"

"Have you ever thought about the not-nowness of now?"

"I love to photograph what cannot be seen"

"Reality is not a set of observable facts walking down the street."

"Photography is not about looking, its about feeling"

"Can you imagine defining your life so narrowly that Nirvana is sex with 72 virgins"

"Someone just paid $3 million for a Gursky. $2.5 million I can see, but 3?"

"You should always be a beginner"

"I love ideas I've never thought of before"

Evidence Redux

Its All in the Editing

Since I've stepped to the other side of the desk and became a dealer, the word that constantly is ringing in my ears is editing.

Chris Verene:  "Camera's don't take great pictures, cameras take faulty pictures. Its editing that makes pictures great."

Jason Fulford stated that editing comprises about half of his artistic practice.

And me, I've become one of the hundreds of gate keepers across the country.  We're called art dealers.  What collectors, museum types, etc. don't get to see are the hundreds and hundreds of submissions that a dealer receives, solicited or not.  I have become another editor of sorts.
Photography collectors may not realize is how massively edited the work is that makes it to their eyes.  There are filters on top of filters, whittling down an enormous number of photographs vying to be called art.  And as as often as not its the marketable ones that make it through.  This is different than the best of the lot, although I will admit that despite the filters, I firmly believe that the great art still makes it through.  What is unfortunate is just how many very good pictures get edited right out of art history because of one person's filter, valid or not.

As a result, I have put back on my collectors had and now look for the finest photos I can find, by famous people or not, rare or not.  I just want the great images.  A perfect example accompanies this post.  The photo is by Joel Preston Smith and is a masterpiece of art-journalism.  The piece is captioned "A US soldier swims in the south fork of the Euphrates River, Ar Ramadi." 
To start:  the photo is both a portrait and a landscape.  Plus the point of view shifts from looking down at the soldier to across the water at the landscape.  The soldier is right a the location where the Euphrates splits and this is apparent in the flow of the water.
Further, the water on either side of the soldier looks more like camouflage than water, reinforcing the subject matter of the image.  There is also a cross-hair formed by the water directly in the middle of the soldier's head.  Finally, the color change in the soldiers eyes matches the color change in the water.  Its these elements, intentional or not, that make a photograph great.  And this is a great one despite the fact that the artist is not well known (okay, he has a book published on this series) and will likely never see the walls of a museum (okay the Houston MFA owns a copy).   And the best part:  $325 framed from 23 Sandy in Portland.

Marc Joseph at Reed College

I made time last week to take in my first show at Reed College: New and Used, a series of photos of used record and book stores by noted photographer, Marc Joseph.  Joseph made a name for himself with an earlier series, American Pit Bull.  "New and Used" is described as "a chronicle, a reader, a memento and an archive."  This most likely applies as much to the book as the exhibit.
What was most striking to me was how opposite the experience of seeing the exhibit was as compared to my experience of browsing through these used-good shops.  Where the stores themselves are usually musty, dusty labyrinths of treasures and trash, Joseph's photos could be described as "hyper-realism" or "super-forensic".  The large-format richly-colored photos, usually shot head-on in dazzling detail, are void of any sense of nostalgia or history. Its as if a scientist had to come quantify and document these locales.  I do like the contrast of the images with my experience of being there, but I'm not sure that they warrant such an unforgiving examination.  It seems sort of like going in for a cat scan when you stub your toe...sometimes a kiss is better than surgery.

A Quotable Quote from Chris Verene

Chris spoke at Evergreen State College last week as part of the Gallery's grand opening events.  During the lecture, Chris made one of the more memorable comments on photography that I've heard in quite a while:

"Cameras don't take great pictures; cameras take faulty pictures. Editing makes pictures great."

In a nutshell.....you have to kiss a lot of frogs....

Yosemite Rant

Have you been to Yosemite?  After visiting with my sis and her family last month in Mammoth Lakes, we took a trip through Yosemite and I have to admit that I have a little less respect for Ansel Adams as a result.
Why?  Yosemite hands you its photographic beauty on a silver platter.  Adams' images are right there for the taking.  This is not to detract one bit from Adams artistry in the darkroom, but his images of Yosemite are pretty standard fare. 

I know I'm going to get villified for this entry, but really, go see for yourself. 

The Light's Different Out Here

My art collection showed up last week and I was very relieved to find that nothing had been damaged!  I had a semi-major freak out though, when I started unpacking the photos and the color on all of them seemed well, off.  It wasn't until a few days later that I realized that the color's not off, the light in the Pacific Northwest is different from Atlanta and it shows up markedly in the works. 
The light here looks just like the light in Jeff Wall's photos.  Same for Roy Arden's.  It's less yellow.  It sort of a pale white light instead. 

At least I hope it's the light.......

'New Photography' at the High

All I can say is that Julian Cox must be a force to be reckoned within the circle of decision makers at the High.  His latest coup: New Photography a massive exhibition that takes up the entire second floor of the new wing.  The show features two Atlanta phtographers: Angela West and Ruth Dusselaut as well as international stars Taryn Simon and Sze Tsung Leong.  Each artist is really given a complete solo exhibition and Cox has done a fine job of not only selecting photographers whose works  compliment one another but also in the individual selections of the works themselves whose context within the entire exhibiton I found particularly interesting.  Last Thursday at the opening reception, Atlanta collectors' jaws hit the floor over Simon's stunningly rich color photos.  The intensity and depth of the color and lighting made these portriats of wrongly-convicted murderers photographed at the scene-of-the-crime-they-didn't-commit seem highly theatrical...its probaly the look that Gregory Crewdson is going for but can never really get. 
Simon's images are real show stoppers but I am a bit critical of their overall theme...it seems more clever than complex...the irony of the situation is impossible to capture.  Nonetheless they are riveting portraits.  For the money though..I prefer Katy Grannan.
I also like Angela West's work which consists of landscapes mixed with images of her father.  When one sees West's separate bodies of work shown together (as it was at Emory earlier this year), you start to get an overall clearer sense of what she is exploring.  It's one of West's better talents:  her bodies of work stand together well on their own but also add to the understanding and complexity of other bodies of her work.  For instance, her recent corsage pieces add another layer of interest to her Sweet Sixteen series...at least in my mind. 

Also on view at the High is Nan Goldin's Cookie Mueller portfolio which was donated to the museum earlier this year.  I had the pleasure of a private viewing of the porfolio earlier this year.  It's worth a visit to the museum alone.

Inside Roger Ballen's Shadow Chamber

The lucky few who attended Roger Ballen's talk last night at the High's Hill Auditorium aren't likely to forget the experience any time soon.  More of a theatrical monologue than a lecture, Ballen delivered his hour-long performance in a style that was part Vincent Price, part William S. Burroughs and seemed designed to transport listeners inside their own "shadow chambers", that dark part of your mind where Ballen's images exist and that most of us avoid whenever possible.
It really was an astonishing experience.  Ballen, whose face appeared somewhat skeletal when illuminated only by the podium's reading light, spoke in low-key manner and delivered tightly cropped statements that alternated between comments about the people and places in his work ("...then this man stopped eating and drinking...no one cared or noticed...ten days later he was dead too.") to observations on photography ("The better the visual relationships [in a photo], the less you can say about the work.") to semi-patronizing inquisitions of the audience ("...you eat meat don't you...you're a killer too...").  Ballen's (intentional?) facial tic - baring his upper teeth -  added to the already menacing atmosphere of the performance.
Ballen succeeded in making the audience both uncomfortable and introspective so that his photographs resonated more personally.  He seems to want viewers to look at his work not with a detached voyeuristic eye: his images are not of some far away freak show but instead are right next door, inside the dark corners of all our psyches, one place that Ballen must believe people should allow themselves to visit more often. I just might. Maybe.

There is still time to see Ballen's photographs currently on display at the Atlanta College of Art Gallery.  I'm already writing my top ten of 2006 list and this show will be hard to topple from the number one spot.  While everyone else seems to be making big, digitally-perfected color photographs, Ballen is creating his own electrifying chapter of modernist history. 

Ballen is represented in Atlanta by Jackson Fine Art who has signed copies of his latest book "Shadow Chamber" available at the gallery.

Interiors, Exteriors and uh, Weirdteriors?

First, don't become a CPA.

Next, I love photos of interiors.  Galerie MC, just a few blocks from where I live, has a terrific show up of images by Christine Callahan from her series Inheritance that features photos of her father's home, someday to be hers.  Particularly strong are the two interior images in the show.  Their Eggleston-like colors and perfect attention to detail speak volumes about the photographer's father and the Florida home in which he lives.  Callahan's strength is in recognizing how subtle details can tell a powerful story.
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Scott Peterman has a new show up at Jackson Fine Art featuring cityscapes and landscapes, the follow-up to his highly acclaimed series of ice houses.  Peterman made a smart move by moving away from a very narrow subject matter to explore much broader themes allowing a recognizable style to emerge.  You can tell these photographs are "Petermans" - a promising trait for any young photographer.

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The most interesting photographer working today, Roger Ballen has a show up at the Atlanta College of Art Gallery that features a number of his photos from the last decade with an emphasis on his more recent work from the series Shadow Chamber.  Ballen is the savior of modernist photography, something that apparently (at least to most critics) is completely overshadowed by his subject matter.  When seeing this show (and you better), pay attention to the perfect composition and tonality of the photos.  When it comes to photography, I'm all about content and ideas, but with Ballen's photos the content pales in comparison to the formal perfection.  Given Ballen's content, that's saying something!