05.09.08 - 11:06am
Each year, NY features several gallery- and collector-oriented photography events such as AIPAD or equipment-focused events like the PhotoPlus Expo. They tend to be light on the sorts of craft-oriented or theoretical discussions I lean towards. When I heard about things like the month-long festivals in Toronto (CONTACT) or Atlanta (ACP), I always wondered why we weren’t able to have something similar in NY. It’s like when I moved there originally and thought that since I was at the center of the world I’d finally be the first to get things like broadband Internet (even though that didn’t exist yet). Not true. Of course it would take me leaving the city to get something like this off the ground! Check out What’s the Jackanory’s summary of the inaugural New York Photo Festival, running May 14 - 18. It’s only a few days long, but that’s a good start. (Toronto’s CONTACT is currently underway, too, through the end of May.)
Category: Events, NYC, New York | Tags: | Be the First to Comment »
05.09.08 - 08:56am
When you have the impulse to make a picture, follow it as quickly as you can. You might not get another chance. As a father, you would think I learned this by watching my son grow up, leaving each phase of childhood behind, never to be seen again. But that’s a slow, nearly imperceptible process, so I’m grateful to have had another experience to bring the lesson into stark relief.
Round Shed, Windsor, CO, 2008, Todd Walker
I passed the shed pictured above every morning and night on my way to work, probably about 100 times so far since we moved to Colorado in March. One afternoon when I had a few minutes free, I raced out to shoot it where it sat on the side of the highway just south of my wife’s childhood home. In addition to the exterior, I’d shot some interiors, focusing on a broken hole in the roof and the shaft of light it let inside. I ran out of time and left, planning to return another time shoot some images from the inside back through the open doorway. The results were mostly over exposed, showing too much of the interior roof structure (compared to my mental pre-visualization) so I wanted to be more patient next time around and make better pictures.
Yesterday evening as I returned home from work, I saw the intact roof sitting on the ground, but the brick shed itself was reduced to few rows of masonry and a heap of internal supports. Someone had demolished the structure in the few days since I’d last passed by. My chance to make those pictures was gone. Now, anytime I hear my eyes telling me to take a shot, I may not listen, but it’ll be plenty clear what the consequences could be.
Category: Color photography, Colorado, Craft | Tags: | Be the First to Comment »
05.07.08 - 12:20am
The Internet meme is a wonderful thing. I couldn’t sleep tonight and got up to browse what the Internet was thinking, in the form of the del.icio.us popular links. One of the top links tonight was a link-bait post from Mental Floss entitled “Only the Creepiest Photos Ever Taken“, a short overview of Victorian death photography featuring a handful of examples. And it’s not just the vintage stuff that’s been drawing the eyeballs recently.
Elmira Sang Bastian, 2002, 2004, Walter Shells (detail only)
“Noch Mal Leben“, the work of photographer Walter Schels and journalist Beate Lakotta has been getting a lot of Internet love lately. Their project, translated as “Life Before Death”, documents terminal patients with before and after death portraits, putting a unique spin on what had historically been only a death portrait. The before portraits do humanize the subject in a way death portraits cannot, but I find the death sides of the diptychs, even with their artful lighting, as silently disturbing as anything shot in a Victorian funeral home.
Which brings me to Anthony Vizzari and his semi-public museum of memorial photography in his living room (visitation by appointment only.) The Museum of Mourning Photography and Memorial Practice, or MoMP for short. Vizzari and his wife collect death photography in addition to funeral artifacts and was featured in the Chicago Tribune a while back, though the article has been taken offline. He might find a great friend in Izima Kaoru, who asked the immortal question, “Why can’t a corpse be beautiful?” Apparently a great many people believe that it can.
Category: B&W photography, Documentary, History, On the Web, Portrait | Tags: | 1 Comment »
05.05.08 - 11:21am
It’s hard to keep up with the slew of new photography-related blogs that keep popping up. As more and more people start taking up the blog, so to speak, the subject matter is getting more specialized. A bunch of the more recent finds have more to do with the business side of photography, relating to advertising and such. That’s probably no coincidence, since I’ve started working at an honest-to-goodness advertising agency back in Feb and so I’m probably just more attuned to that slant. In any case, here’s a couple of new additions to the ol’ blogroll that you might want to consider checking in on from time to time.
I’ve been passing on posting some of the more high profile photography articles I’ve seen for fear that I give the impression that I only read the NY Times and nothing else. (Though, this weekend my wife and I discovered that our paid subscriptions now are limited to NY Times on weekend, The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine and the New Yorker. Read into that what you will.) One recent Times article proposed an evolving “Flickr aesthetic”, which was interesting, but Tim Conner’s commentary on that article is perhaps more interesting.
PhotographyLot posted a stream of consciousness about editing in-camera, post-production propaganda, the use of captions and objective truth - the sort of topics any photo geek can ramble on at length given the appropriate opening. No straight answers given, but fodder for discussion.
Category: Uncategorized | Tags: | Be the First to Comment »
05.02.08 - 09:00am
Sports Palace, Metairie, 2005, WIlliam Greiner
William Greiner’s show opened last night at Klompching Gallery in Brooklyn. William’s been documenting New Orleans for at least a decade, long before Katrina and the sudden rush of interest that drew by a ton of photographers. Now you can see a vision of the pre-flood New Orleans. And he’s been blogging his work for a while now, a site you should add to your reading list.
WIlliam will be doing a talk and book signing on tomorrow from 1pm - 3pm.
William Greiner, Fallen Paradise
Klompching Gallery
(212) 796 2070
111 Front Street, Suite 206
Brooklyn NY
Category: Color photography, Documentary, Galleries, NYC, New York, Photographers, fine art | Tags: | Be the First to Comment »
04.16.08 - 11:39am
Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) has launched a photography podcast, available for download or through iTunes. Looks promising, something for me to listen to on my commute. Not sure what the publishing schedule is, but I hope they keep at it. They are apparently taking a magazine approach, with multiple topics in the first edition: Christenberry and Friedlander, Wegman’s dog photos, and the recent We the People exhibit are featured.
Category: Museums, On the Web, Washington DC | Tags: | 1 Comment »
04.15.08 - 01:43pm
Today’s Wall Street Journal has a review of two photography shows at the National Gallery in Washington DC. Both shows focus on mid-19th century photography. I think this period is particularly interesting because of the rapid technological changes photography was experiencing at the time, not unlike what we have today in the speedily advancing migration from film to digital.
I was able to see “Impressed by the Light” at the Met just before I left NYC in January, though my experience was rushed by a three-year-old who was more interested in seeing Damian Hirst’s shark. I suppose my American blood shows through when I say I prefer the daguerreotype.
Category: Museums, Washington DC, reviews | Tags: | Be the First to Comment »
04.07.08 - 10:08am
Roadside memorial, Greeley, CO ©2008 Todd Walker
I’ve never posted my own work here. There are probably a bunch of deep seated psychological reasons for that, but the surface reason has always been I don’t want to promote the work on the backs of the links I make to other, more established photographers. Seems underhanded.
Since I moved to Colorado, the focus of this blog has changed and I want to start using it as an outlet for my personal growth and development. When I started blogging about photographer, Gallery Hopper was a reason to keep engaged with the work being shown in NY, to give me an incentive to go out and see work, so as to influence my own development. Ultimately, that became an end in itself and my practical growth took a back seat. Now is the time to start creating work again and talking through my thought processes, challenges and learning.
I took the image above over the weekend. One of the biggest changes in leaving NYC is the greater role of cars in life. I drive about 80 miles a day to get to and from work. I see about one auto accident every other day. They are in varying degrees of seriousness, but with commuter traffic on I-25 going 75 miles-an-hour you’re bound to see a fatality with reasonable frequency. Roadside memorials are a common sight.
When I shot this, I noticed the tiny birth/death dates on one cross. Through the viewfinder I read “1991-1998″. A seven-year-old. Coupled with the stuffed animals sitting at the feet of the crosses, I imagined this to be a family’s young children. A tragedy of innocent death, for sure. Later, when I pulled the photo up for editing, I saw I’d misread the dates. It actually read “1981 - 1998″. A seventeen-year-old. My context changed completely and my response as well. Now, was it a tragedy? Of a kind, of course. But the potential for self-inflicted demise suddenly came into view. Maybe those kids were driving recklessly. Or was there alcohol involved?
The dates are hard to see in a tiny digital thumbnail. One digit changes everything.
Category: Colorado, Craft, Landscape, digital | Tags: | Be the First to Comment »
03.19.08 - 12:49am
It’s that time of year again, a slew of auctions are about to be held in New York. Now’s the time to take advantage of the exhibitions that precede the auctions to see some great photographs.
Sotheby’s
The Quillan Collection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Photographs
April 7, 6 PM
Edward Weston’s Gifts to His Sister and Other Photographs
April 8, 10 AM
Photographs
April 8, 11 AM & 2 PM
Philips dePury & Company
Diane Arbus: Hubert’s Museum Work 1958-1963
8 April, 7PM
Collection of Corbeau et Renard assembled by Gerd Sander Part I
9 April, 10AM
Photographs
9 April, 2PM
Christie’s
Fine Photobooks From An Important Private Collection
April 10, 10 AM
Photographs From the Collection of Gert Elfering
April 10, 2 PM
Photographs by Diane Arbus
April 10
Photographs
11 April 2008, 10 AM & 2 PM
Photographs By Ansel Adams From A California Collection
11 April 2008, 5 PM
Last year there was an article in the NY Times about buying art online, site unseen. I’m skeptical. But check out the image viewer on the Sotheby’s site which allows for zooming in on details in an image. (I wonder how high resolution the original scan is.)
Category: Collecting, auctions | Tags: | Be the First to Comment »
03.08.08 - 05:09pm
Finnish photographer Esko Männikkö has won the 2008 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. This is probably the most prestigious award in fine art photography. Since early February, the UK’s Daily Telegraph made a serious of profiles of the four photographers who were vying for the prize, as well as a summary overview:
Männikkö had a show at Yancey Richardson in 2006 that I was able to attend. Interesting work, though the unusual rustic frames drew more attention than the work, in my opinion. The contenders struck me as oddly out of sync with the mainstream of fine art photography. Which maybe is the point. I’d only head of Männikkö, in any case, before seeing the profiles in the Telegraph. All four photographers are currently featured at The Photographers’ Gallery in London.
The Photographers’ Gallery
Feb 8 - April 6, 2008
5 & 8 Great Newport Street
London WC2H 7HY
+44 (0)20 7831 1772 ext 201
UPDATE: More coverage at muse-ings
Category: Collecting, Contests, Photographers | Tags: | 3 Comments »
