VoxPhotographs Weblog

I knew Maine was kinda quirky, but I never realized just how quirky Maine is until I was confronted by the work of the 2008 graduating class of SALT - Institute for Documentary Studies - currently and briefly showing at SPACE GALLERY, 538 Congress St. in Portland. Believe me…it’s quirky.

Documentary photographs by Maine photographers are guaranteed to feature the disenfranchised and unprivileged - the “marginal” in our communities. It’s a given, it’s getting old and derivative and I quickly pass by exhibits of this ilk. It’s a lot harder work to discover what is interesting about a mainstream person, maybe even a person who has money in the bank, and present a unique view/vision that doesn’t shock or feel like a voyeuristic (thank god it isn’t me) experience.

But I do make an exception for SALT. After all, this is not a photo exhibit, it’s a chance for its graduating class to each show a small project - photos accompanied by a written documentary presentation. And I found a few “normal” people in there. I spent a long time studying the photographs and reading each writing piece. I learned a lot. SALT itself is a unique organization and one that I hope will raise awareness about itself with the public so it’s easier to know what the heck it’s up to. And I hope its next group of graduating students are open to documenting a more balanced cross-section of my home state.

The work is only up for three days in Portland, but if you don’t get to Space Gallery by Sunday May 17, you can see it in Brunswick during the month of June (2-28 ) at Frontier Cafe and Gallery. If you haven’t had lunch at Frontier, you haven’t lived. But…there will be no excuse for missing the opening celebration of the new space SALT is moving to at 561 Congress St. this summer. I’m sure detailed info. will be on their website soon.

I love to see something I’ve never seen before and I saw it yesterday at Whitney Art Works at 492 Congress St. in Portland. And it’s gorgeous stuff.

Geoffrey Leven scans actual flowers (in a darkened space) and prints them on metallic paper. You have to take the time put your face right up to the works and ponder the effect. But that’s not because they are small. The images I’m talking about are very big. Some are multiple image panels like the one here:

Stealing Beauty ©2007 Geoffrey Leven

Then you step back and your senses get socked. These images are not a one-time look. You’ll want to wander around the rest of the show and start with Leven’s metallic prints all over again. Don’t miss it.

Joining him are Portland artist Shoshanna White with an impressive array of mulit-media flora closeups. White takes a photograph and then applies several layers of a combo of beeswax, resin and oil paint. I particularly like two small works: Dandelion Puff and Apple Blossom. Once glance at her bio page tells you this photographer gets around -including four major recent Percent for Art commissions. She is committed and working hard, no doubt about it.

Robert Diamante, a well-known and highly successful commercial artist has presented a thoughtful view of Bali’s myriad spiritual offerings. There are three custom-bound books available as well as a few individual prints and it’s creatively presented by both the photographer and the gallery.

If you follow any other photography news sites or blogs, you’ve probably heard about the new Orphan Works legislation currently being pushed through both houses of Congress. This legislation, depending on how it looks when and if it actually passes this year, could dramatically impact the rights of photographers. There appears to be a split in opinion among the professional photographer associations as to whether this law would actually be a good thing, but most photographers rightly fear new laws that will lessen their rights.

What is this all about? Basically, Orphan Works are copyrighted items (such as photographs) for which the copyright owner/author are unknown. What the new legislation is trying to accomplish is to provide for letting publishers use these orphan works as long as they put forth some reasonable level of effort in determining who the owner is (and thus who should be compensated). If they can’t determine the owner, they can then use the work without having to pay anyone and without fear of lawsuit.

Publishers, particularly on-lines ones, feel such a law is necessary so that they can use public domain works as well as works that they find on-line without fear of being peppered with lawsuits. Artists and other copyright owners fear that publishers will use the new law as an excuse to steal author’s work and have legal cover for doing so. As with all such situations, the devil will be in the details as to how this is actually implemented.

For a good list of links of where the law currently stands, check out the excellent PhotoAttorney website and her update on the law.

What can you do now to protect yourself if you are a photographer? Probably the most important step would be to make sure your work is correctly marked when it is put on-line or otherwise published - put your info in the metadata or on the image, require proper attribution from people using your work, etc. As always, you should properly register your copyrights in your work so that you can have a legal basis for pursuing people who infringe your work (more about this in a later post). You should, of course, contact an attorney for counsel specific to your situation - this is merely generalized advice and should not be considered legal advice or creating a lawyer-client relationship.

Keep an eye out for how this law actually shapes up, as it could be the biggest legal news for photographers this year if it actually passes.

- Jim Nickelson

I have a love/hate relationship with PHOTOGRAPH, my favorite photography periodical. I love the short articles about new books, new shows, news in general and their cover photographer/image. I love finding out exactly what’s happening in the world of photography just by reading every ad for upcoming shows and looking many up online.

But here are 10 good reasons why I hate PHOTOGRAPH for pointing out what I am missing by not living in NYC. And Atlanta. And Philadelphia. And LA.

1) The launch of the 5 day New York Photography Festival ‘08 on May 14 in a 75,000 square foot exhibition space showcasing contemporary photography.

2) Two shows at Howard Greenburg Gallery/NYC - TIMES SQUARE, and SAUL LEITER -Women (Saul Leiter is one of my very favorite photographers. If you missed the exhibit last year at University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor, you really blew it.)

3) HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON and HELEN LEVITT at Laurence Miller Gallery/NYC - June - August

4) AARON SISKIND at the Robert Mann Gallery/NYC

5) LEE FRIEDLANDER - Square Portraits at Janet Borden, Inc/NYC

6) W. EUGENE SMITH at Silverstein Photography/NYC

7) WILLIAM GREINER at Klompching Gallery/Brooklyn

8 ) BRUCE DAVIDSON at Jackson Fine Art/Atlanta

9) ARNOLD NEWMAN at Lumiere/Atlanta

10) FRANK PAULIN - Works in Color, 1950-2008, at Duncan Miller Gallery/LA

If the cost of visiting NYC wasn’t so high, I’d be down there for a weekend every other month. I’d find the time. But maybe what I need to find is someone with a place in NYC who would like to spend a weekend every other month in a fabulous condo in the center of Portland, Maine.

Anyone?

Click here to read an intriguing article in the April, 2008 issue of Vanity Fair about Robert Frank’s recent trip to China at age 83.

At last week’s salon at VoxPhotographs (hosted by Brenton Hamilton of Maine Media Workshops) we were discussing Robert Frank’s The Americans, along with Aaron Siskind’s radical (for the times) photographs - to try and better understand the American fifties culture. Brenton mentioned the Vanity Fair article, and a friend who happened to have the magazine handy lent it to me. I’m glad I read it.

Frank’s childhood in Switzerland was replete with detachment, disillusionment and parental tension. He learned early to instinctively parse the essence of the scenes pulsing around him and used this insight to make what some people feel are the most iconic shots of American life ever made. The beat artists and poets of the 50’s drew him like a magnet and his inspirations were Walker Evans and Bill Brandt. So, it comes as no surprise that he was particularly in tune to documenting the fringes of any situation.

You’re not going to like Robert Frank when you finish this article, but I gained some serious insight into his work by reading it. There is no doubt in my mind that The Americans forever changed photography in America and beyond. Pretty important stuff.

Most astonishing is to understand that Frank shot 28,000 photographs on his Guggenheim-supported trips zigzagging across the USA in 1955-56, and that in the end he chose only 83 carefully sequenced images to represent the absolute essence of his impressions.

From our discussion last week I learned Frank has come to despise the endless attention The Americans has received at the expense of all of the rest of his creative work since. He is sick to death of talking and answering questions about it. But he has made millions from it and is internationally renowned because of it. He would have made his father proud - a man whose own dream to be a famous interior designer was quashed by a loveless marriage, leaving him cold, distant and bitter.

Well, if nothing else, Robert Frank understands the uniqueness of America by observing his adopted country over the last five decades - as he says in the article - “Essentially, an American is a free man. There is no history. The American Dream? Well, I don’t know. But there, everything is possible.” Well and truly said from my experience. Only in America.

A few weeks ago I mentioned the new Sigma DP-1 camera and, since that time, a number of new reviews have popped up on the Internet. These new reviews seem pretty consistent with the earlier ones - great sensor, too bad about the camera.

The first review is from Toronto-based landscape photographer Michael Reichmann at his popular site The Luminous Landscape. Reichmann is pretty critical of the DP-1 and its handling characteristics. The reviews on this site are generally very good and, importantly, focus mostly on what the camera is like to use instead of analyzing resolution charts and the like. If you want highly-detailed camera reviews with page after page of detailed image analysis, dpreview will be your favorite site. There are many others out there but dpreview seems to be the best for professionally done digital camera reviews.

Another site with a recently-completed DP-1 review is Reid Reviews, which I consider to be the best review site out there. Sean Reid is a Vermont-based photographer in the black & white documentary-style mold. For digital rangefinder and high-end point & shoot camera reviews, this is clearly the best resource available, but his less frequent reviews of DSLRs are also quite valuable.

Reid Reviews is a pay site ($32.95 for a year subscription) but well worth it. Most on the Web resist paying for content in any fashion, but sometimes you get what you pay for - and less than 35 bucks a year for a very comprehensive, advertiser-free review site is a bargain (especially when compared to the price of the cameras!). Reid reviews cameras from the perspective of a working professional, and also includes other articles on more general topics in photography. Incidentally, his review was more positive than Reichmann’s, particularly on image quality, but he also noted the many usability concerns of the camera.

- Jim Nickelson

Andy Warhol isn’t just visiting these places in Maine, he’s staying.

If you didn’t catch it in the papers about a month ago, the University of Maine at Presque Isle, University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor and the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, are 3 of 183 college art museums in the USA to receive Warhol photographs as a gift to their permanent collections.

The Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program, under the auspices of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, wants his photographs to get out where people can see them - broaden the accessibility to them even in the corners of the country, like Presque Isle. Each Art Museum is getting in the range of 150 pics each, some polaroids, some b&w gelatin silver prints.

Keep in touch with these institutions because they plan on displaying some of the images as soon as they get their heads around the gifts, catalog them and figure out the best way to make them accessible to…you.

I left the Portland Museum of Art grinning to myself last week. And feeling a little sheepish as well.

I had just viewed the URBAN SEEN exhibit on the second floor. Even being a photographs broker, it hadn’t occurred to me there would be photographs included in the exhibit. Hello, Heather??

Not only are they included, they make up almost 30% of the exhibit. We have arrived, people! I need to get with it and ASSUME everyone else is assuming that photographs are fine art worthy of inclusion in any appropriate exhibition!

First there is the cool 1921 video segment. It’s an excerpt from “Manhattan”, a film by Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand of all people. I said “WOW” as I studied Julee Holcombe’s image montage titled “Babel Revisited” (2003). In the same room is Elke Morris’ “Domicile 1″ (2004). I feel like I’ve seen that picture everywhere, but never lose my liking for it. John Dowell’s night image called “Portland II” (2005) is a beauty and makes me want to see more of his work.

Portland II,2005 © John Dowell. Used with permission of the Portland Museum of Art.

Keep counting: John P. Soule has created a good-sized piece showcasing stereo cards of the Great Fire in Portland - these are obviously dated 7/4/1866. On the other side of the spectrum is Scott Peterman’s “NY14D” (2008), hot off the press and as exquisite as only Scott’s work can be. A blurb of his winter NYC show was one of my first blog postings and quite frankly I would love to see a show of just his work one of these days.

I studied for a long time Todd Webb’s NYC scene from 1946 “6th Ave….”. It’s got to be 8′ long and I believe is several images stitched together. Loved it and will go back to study it more.

All in all there are 25 pieces in this show, 8 of which are photography. Spread the word. Better yet, make a visit to appreciate it yourself. Through August 17.

After years of discussion and delays, Sigma’s long-awaited DP-1 has finally arrived and is slowly trickling into the hands of consumers and reviewers. What’s the big deal? Why the excitement for yet another digital camera on the market?

The promise of the DP-1 is to deliver SLR-like quality in a point & shoot-sized package. In what may be the first of its kind, it provides very high quality images in a compact package.

So, what is it? Basically, it is a Foveon sensor that is sized like the most common Digital SLRs (such as those from Nikon and Canon) with a fixed 28 mm equivalent, f4.0 lens built into a very compact body similar in size to point & shoots like the Canon G9. As you may know, previous small cameras all had relatively tiny sensors which inevitably result in some sort of compromise on image quality. the DP-1 has no zoom lens and limited features but is very portable and has potentially great image quality and all for about $800 right now (if you can find it). Sigma has built a slick website showing all of its features if you are interested.

Does the DP-1 deliver on its promise? Maybe. Early reviews are decidedly mixed. Besides the inevitable bugs that will be fixed with firmware updates, reviewers are universally praising the image quality from the DP-1. A review on The Online Photographer blog provides a number of sample images and a discussion of handling and usability issues.

The criticisms of the DP-1 are related to its use as a camera - primarily that it is slow. Slow to record images, slow to react to the photographer’s input, just slow. Every camera has its compromises and that appears to be the primary one for the DP-1.

If you are interested, keep an eye out for more reviews and hope that eventually you can get your hands on one! For photographers whose style doesn’t require quick action, the DP-1 may just be a camera that can provide you major improvements. Hopefully the camera will succeed and result in other camera in this niche that provide different lens options, better usability, and other improvements.

Questions? Experiences with the DP-1? Feel free to comment below.

- Jim Nickelson

Brenton Hamilton teaches an exhausting nine months in Rockport at the Maine Media Workshops and then spends three summer months in his studio making cyanotypes. He actually exposes these by putting them in his studio window in the sun. He must pray for sunny summers. This is labor-intensive stuff in its truest form and I admire passionate pracitioners of the alternative or historic photographic processes. Consider that most of them are working in Maine in solitude without the camaraderie of others doing the same or similar things. They are really committed.

For instance, Brenton works at night in his studio, re-enacting this 1840’s process and then is dependent on the vagaries of the next several days’ weather to see the outcome of his inspirations. Sun, clouds, the water’s reflection? It all plays a part in the end result. So, you really need to know what you’re doing and that takes years of concentrated effort, trial and error and commitment. See two large Hamilton cyanotypes at the current New Natural History exhibition at the Portland Museum of Art through to May 11. Gorgeous.

Merging © Brenton Hamilton, 2007

David Puntel is an ambrotypist who lives in Casco, Maine. He is featured in the current issue of Black and White Magazine. He is, I think, the only actively exhibiting ambrotypist in the state. It takes David all day to produce an image, and it’s taken him years of work to get to the point where he has more successes than failures. It’s a highly instinctive skill to make an ambrotype, with myriad steps and chemicals involved. David even makes outdoor ambrotypes which is right up there on the Richter scale of insanity. Humidity, temperature, atmosphere, light and even transportation play huge roles in this process and Puntel is an expert at gaging the degree of importance of all of these factors on any given day There are only approximately 200 ambrotypists worldwide, many of whom are Civil War re-enactors, and not fine artists like David Puntel. He is represented by my gallery, VoxPhotographs.

Rhubarb © David Puntel, 2007

And then there is David Wolfe - featured in the upcoming May issue of Maine Home & Design. David Wolfe has spent a lifetime learning how to work with paper - his letterpress studio in Portland is worth a visit just so you can stand at the doorway and gape at the variety of ancient machinery he works on. Wolfe trained as a photographer and making palladium prints is a process he loves. Using a big old large format camera, he gets out into the streets of Portland and makes poetry, no kidding. The first image of his I saw was exhibited at Greenhut Gallery in Portland in 2006 and was a palladium print of Starbucks on Congress St. The tension of the 1880’s process and the iconic symbol of modern American culture is simply delicious to see and there’s no other way to say it if you’re into photography and understand its history. With palladiums, it’s all about midtones and a depth and clarity that often looks 3-dimensional. David Wolfe is represented by my gallery, VoxPhotographs.

Checkmate © David Wolfe, 2007

Street time © David Wolfe, 2007

I can tell you all three of these experts have earned their laurels. These historic processes are painstaking and finicky. Take a course sometime. You’ll find it’s 75% process and 25% photography and if you don’t like that ratio, stick to digital. Plus, it takes from 1-3 days to make these things, so you need patience, commitment and passion to be successful.

Did I mention vision? You need that too.