Happy Halloween - Photos of Terror

Nightmares Fear Factory in Niagara Falls has the best attraction photo booth I've ever seen.  The raw emotion on everyone's faces is authentic and fun - one of the best photo series I've seen in a while, even if it's vernacular.  I'd say these tell us a lot more about humanity than most sterile, straight-faced portraiture we see on gallery walls.

Happy Halloween everyone.

Visit their flickr for more.

Jocelyn Lee at Rose Gallery

I'm a little late on this one but there are still three weeks left to see the show.  Jocelyn Lee (who triggered the first WTF Quote of the Week) by no fault of her own has what looks to be a great portraiture show up at Rose Gallery through November 19.

WTF Quote of the Week

So I'm introducing a new feature, the WTF Quote of the Week.  Where the normal Quote of the Week is meant to be taken seriously or speaks to something I find interesting or inspiring, the WTF quote will be something I've seen in an artist statement or critical piece that's pure art talk nonsense.  Knowing myself, the WTF Quote of the Week will probably be more like every other week or maybe I'll just drop it at some point all together, but I think it will be fun to try for a while.  Without further ado, I give you the first:

"Posed indoors as well as outside, the women look toward as well as away from the camera."

- JZ, in a review of Jocelyn Lee's show at Rose Gallery in ArtScene.

It's an artspeak cliche to say something is or does both one thing and it's polar opposite, which results in saying nothing at all.

Opening Friday - Ejen Chuang's Cosplay @ The Icon

Ejen Chuang, who runs the all-encompassing photo resource blog for LA, Pix Feed LA, traveled all around the country to comic conventions shooting cosplayers. He even managed to make a 272-page hardcover book, which is a steal at $40.

His show's opening reception is Friday, Oct. 28 at the Icon Projects from 7-9 but there's an after party also, where there will be lots of cosplayers in attendance.  Info on the night is here.

Project site is here.

Quote of the Week - Sebastian Smee

"Still, there is a basic reticence about his approach that feels refreshing in today’s culture of maximum exposure. Brandt did not go to great lengths to turn people into icons, nor did he presume to show their “true nature” in something so transient as a photograph. Instead, he used photography’s special qualities to suggest intimate things about his subjects, things that cannot be put into words, and may not even be possible to put into pictures."

 - Sebastian Smee

Via

Feature - Andrew George

"Several years ago, when I met one of the models that I ended up photographing (and who inadvertently inspired this project), I began wondering why an attractive, healthy model in this famously glamorous and trendy city would choose to rid herself of the individual trademark of hair that seems to play such a central role in how we are defined.  She explained that she wanted to overcome the stereotype of how most of us express -what she believed to be- a very conventional and predictable definition of beauty, and opt instead for something more striking where the expression of her face and the look in her eyes would be clearly seen.  I found her decision compelling, vulnerable and yet quite bold - she was exposed, and in that exposure there was something very distinct and real beneath her gaze.  I was struck by the extreme choice she had made in presenting herself to the world.  There was nothing for her to hide behind with her shaved head; even clothed, she looked naked."


- Andrew George


See the whole series here and Andrew's other work on his website here.

Opening Sat - Sam Comen

Sam Comen, whose work I've featured before is having a solo show of his 28 at 28 project (and also 29 at 29 and 30 at 30) and the opening reception is Saturday from 6-9 pm.  It's also his 31st birthday so he'd better get started on the next one.

Quote of the Week - Joanna Hurley

"That desire for recognition and acclaim is not new; what does seem new to me, looking at this from a perspective of 35 years in the publishing business, is that desire often overtakes perspective, and the sense of where one really is in one’s career as an artist, that is, where the work is, and whether or not it is truly ready for a book. While doing a book at the right time and in the right way can jump-start or revive a career, if you do a book too soon or at the wrong time, and without any kind of creative team behind you (such as a publishing company), then it can look like vanity because there has been no one objectively vetting the work and helping you shape its presentation into a coherent, well-designed narrative."


- Joanna Hurley


(Emphasis mine, and I'd add to that, "and whether the type of work is even appropriate for book form."

Quote of the Week: Lee Friedlander

Copyright: Lee Friedlander

"I only wanted Uncle Vernon standing by his own car (a Hudson) on a clear day, I got him and the car. I also got a bit of Aunt Mary’s laundry and Beau Jack, the dog, peeing on the fence, and a row of potted tuberous begonias on the porch and 78 trees and a million pebbles in the driveway and more. It’s a generous medium, photography."

- Lee Friedlander

Youth Lagoon - Seventeen

This relates to last week's quote of the week.  Give a listen.

PDF - Bill Brandt - "A Night in London"

I've wanted to see this book for so long but was unable to locate a (very expensive) copy to do so.  Luckily, Andy Frazier just posted a link to a PDF copy of it on his Night Photography blog here.  I love how Brandt showed both the working class and the elites of the time.

Quote of the Week - Bill Brandt

"It is part of the photographer’s job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country. Most photographers would feel a certain embarrassment in admitting publicly that they carried within them a sense of wonder, yet without it they would not produce the work they do, whatever their particular field. It is the gift of seeing the life around them clearly and vividly, as something that is exciting in its own right. It is an innate gift, varying in intensity with the individual’s temperament and environment."


- Bill Brandt

Charity Water - Sept. Campaign

I decided in the beginning not to advertise on here and instead use the space for a banner for a cause I felt was important, Charity: Water.  They're launching a five-year anniversary campaign to buy a rig and supplies capable of digging 80 wells that will provide clean water for 40,000 people each year.  I love that 100% of donations goes to the cause and they secure other funding for their operations.  Head over and donate if you can.

http://charitywater.org/september/

Related: NYT Op Ed piece here.



The 2011 September Campaign. Our 5-year-anniversary video from charity: water on Vimeo.

Opening Sat. - Nickolas Muray, Frida

The first time I saw Nickolas Muray's portraits of Frida Kahlo, I was blown away.  Shot in 1931, they are just gorgeous color work.  Frida Kahlo: Through the lens of Nickolas Muray opens tomorrow at the Fullerton Museum from 6-9 and there will be a curator's talk as well.

Opening Tonight - Vivian Maier @ Stephen Cohen

Vivian Maier: Street Photographer opens tonight from 6-9pm at Stephen Cohen Gallery.

The Stephen Cohen Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by recently discovered Chicago street photographer Vivian Maier (1926 - 2009).  The exhibition will showcase Maier’s wide range of images, from her wonderfully inspired self-portraits, and architectural views to her street portraits from New York, Chicago, and other cities, which document post-war America of the 1950s and 60s. 

Obscure until her work's recent discovery in abandoned storage lockers, Vivian Maier worked as a nanny in Chicago from the mid 1950s.  Born in New York and spending part of her youth in France, Maier traveled widely in the United States, Canada, Europe, South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

The black-and-white images document Maier’s unconditional interest in the human figure set against a diverse and ever-changing urban culture.  Her images are clearly of their time, and it appears that Maier may have been influenced by the work of some of her well-know peers, whose photographs were being exhibited during the period that she was photographing.

The exhibition will highlight contemporary prints made by Chicago master printer Ron Gordon, and Sandy Steinbrecher from original negatives in the collection of Jeffrey Goldstein.  Maier’s images have been exhibited in Chicago, Germany, and Norway, and are currently on view at the Hearst Corporation in New York.  She has been the subject of media coverage from CBS, BBC, The New York Times, Time Magazine, and many others.