Paul Strand – Under The Darkcloth Part 1

Paul Strand – Under The Darkcloth Part 2

Paul Strand – Under The Darkcloth Part 3

Paul Strand – Under The Darkcloth Part 4

Paul Strand – Under The Darkcloth Part 5

Paul Strand – Under The Darkcloth Part 6

This video offers remarkable insights into a the life and work of a remarkable photographer.

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Category: Video - Photography
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Exposures – American Photography – Part 1

Exposures – American Photography – Part 2

Exposures – American Photography – Part 3

Exposures – American Photography – Part 4

Exposures – American Photography – Part 5

Exposures – American Photography – Part 6

Exposures – American Photography – Part 7

Exposures – American Photography – Part 8

Exposures – American Photography – Part 9

Exposures surveys American photography.
It’s a history lesson. It’s food for thought. It’s inspiring.

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Sebastiao Salgado offers his cogent thoughts on the role of photography in activism.

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This 1957 documentary on Ansel Adams offers many insights into the man and his art.

The early production date of this piece adds an extra dimension into this window back in time.

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207 a feature of WCSH Channel 6 (Portland Maine’s NBC affiliate) recently visited our family. We shared thoughts and stories about living together creatively. (I really appreciate the very personal touch they took when they made this video.)

Category: Video - Photographers
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“The history of photography is Beaumont Newhall! Throughout most of the 20th century he has seen a central figure in the movement to have photography recognized as an art form. It might also be said that he created the “history of photography” as a distinct and respected field of study. As a founder and father of the history of photography, photographer, curator, art historian, writer, scholar, teacher and administrator it seems as if there has been more than one Beaumont Newhall. Beginning in 1938 at the Museum of Modern Art, he created the first retrospective exhibition of the 100-year-old art of photography. This documentary highlights some of Beaumont’s experiences of being a lifelong friend, mentor and confident of many photographers now in the annals of history.”

Beaumont Newhall’s The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present is the first classic history of art photography.

Category: Video - Photography
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Creative. Smart. Hillarious.
What will you do on your next flight?

“Improvising with materials close at hand, “Seat Assignment” consists of photographs, video, and digital images all made while in flight using only a camera phone. The project began spontaneously on a flight in March 2010 and is ongoing. At present, over 2500 photographs and video, made on more than 75 different flights to date, constitute the raw material of the project. Visit www.ninakatchadourian.com for more information.”

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If he wasn’t the first, Aaron Siskind was certainly the preeminent abstract expressionist photographer. The abstract details he presents as new hyper-flat surfaces stand independent of their original subjects.

Abstraction in non-representational art celebrated in the modernist movement early 20th century has taken many forms; Kandinsky’s expressionism, Piccasso’s Cubism, Malevich’s a Constructivism, Stella’s Minimalism, Vasarely’s Op Art, etc) While photography quickly became the gold-standard of realism and consequently it took it longer than painting to embrace abstraction. (It’s arguable that the invention of photography forced painting to embrace abstraction.) Siskind’s images helped establish photography’s credibility as an abstract art.

But what kind of abstraction is Siskind’s abstraction? And what is the function of abstraction in Siskind’s work? Coming late to the game his work aggregates many previous sensibilities and ideas.

Like so many modernist’s he emphasized that what he made was not a representation of something else but “the thing itself” – an idea that has metamorphosed chimera-like since the Greeks and been repurposed by nonrepresentational artists and realists alike. But, while most modernists took pains to avoid including elements that suggest figurative images, Siskind’s images are peppered with them and because of their photographic nature they always reference something else, no matter how covertly. Like Jackson Pollock, Siskind prized directness and immediacy of expression but the personal authenticity derived from this becomes ironic given the essentially appropriative nature of photography. Like Franz Kline, Siskind’s images are riddled with poetic gesture, but none of the gestures in his images are made by hand or by him. Like Wassily Kandinsky, Siskind drew an analogy between his images and musical scores or performances, never mind that he worked without color or purely with tone.

Siskind’s abstraction defies resolution. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Siskind’s abstraction is that so many forms of abstraction and the ideas behind them coalesce into a single arena, the photographic frame.

Siskind’s work fascinated me instantly because in representing so little it demonstrated so much. A literal recording can be supremely abstract. Sometimes a photograph looks nothing like the thing photographed. To photograph is to transform. (And there are many ways to bring about transformation and many kinds of transformations.) A photograph is never the thing it represents and never just a photograph.

Find out more about my influences here.

 

Category: Influences, Influences - Photographic
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Edward Burtynsky’s photographs deftly weave together aspects of a well-researched documentary expose and a beautifully constructed formal artistic statement, but it’s unclear which is more dominant, or if they’re something else entirely.

Burtynsky let’s the things he photographs speak for themselves. Yet he photographs specific kinds of things, related things; oil fields, mines, railways, highways, manufacturing plants, dumps and salvage yards, etc. More than the specific things he photographs it may be these relationships that he’s ultimately photographing. And like the effects of the global industrial complex his work has a cumulative effect.

Despite the restrained yet shocking quality of his images, Burtynsky claims not to be critical of industry and presents himself simply as a witness to the monumental changes man makes to land. At first his stance seems simple but the more one considers it the more complex it becomes, almost to the point of becoming enigmatic.

“I’d say, actually, that I’ve been careful not to frame the work in an activist or political kind of way. That would be too restrictive in terms of how the work can be used in society and how it can be interpreted. I see the work as being a bit like a Rorschach test. If you see an oil field and you see industrial heroism, then perhaps you’re some kind of entrepreneur in the oil business and you’re thinking, “That’s great! That’s money being made there!” But, if you’re somebody from Greenpeace or whatever, you’re going to see it very differently. Humans can really reveal themselves through what they choose to see as the most important or meaningful detail in an image.”

It might be easier to draw a clear line between us (the consumers) and them (the manufacturers), but Burtynsky doesn’t, because there isn’t one. Because of his approach, his work is richer, more layered, more nuanced and perhaps more relevant. Perhaps.

It can be tempting to think of advocacy for a cause as a matter of making a social statement for one thing and against another. But the issues and the approaches needed are much more complex. I appreciate that Burtynsky doesn’t take a simplistic cliched antagonistic stance towards industry. There can be no ecological solution without a related economic solution. I relate to his emphasis of a Rorschach-like quality of seeing, which involves and in the best of cases encourages self-reflection. Individual responsibility/action and connection/interaction is highlighted. Since I was a young man I’ve felt the standard ways of using photography for environmental advocacy, though they fulfill an important function, were not effective enough on their own and that new approaches are needed. Burtynsky offers one alternative and encourages me to think of others.

View Edward Burtynsky’s TED talk here.

Find out more about my influences here.

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Category: Influences, Influences - Photographic
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This is a great series on how photography changes the ways we see!

“In Vision & Photography BBC’s Explorations charts the advances in science and technology that have revealed hidden worlds and astonishing images. Well see how remarkable innovations in medicine, photography and astronomy have enhanced and altered our understanding. This is the story of how Mankind is driven to acquire these seemingly impossible visions; it is a journey through the images that have revolutionised how we understand our world.”

Category: Video - Photography
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