VoxPhotographs Weblog

F. Holland Day exhibit – take some time here…

Posted in EXHIBITS/SHOWS, New England on May 23, 2012 by voxphotographs

F. Holland Day in Algerian Costume, c. 1901, platinum print, Frederick Henry Evans, F. Holland Day Collection, Norwood Historical Society, Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

F. Holland Day – (“Fred”) to his hometown of Norwood, MA – was a strange guy in many respects. In a mid-to-late 1800′s culture of Victorian intolerance, Day managed to define a lifestyle that was all his own and the rest of the world be hanged.

The Addison Gallery of American Art is a gem of huge proportions and right now, through 7/31, its featured exhibit is “Making a Presence: F. Holland Day in Artistic Photography”. I will say right now that this exhibit is traveling to Bowdoin College Museum of Art and opening on September 6, 2012 so if you just can’t get down to Andover, MA before the end of July, you’ll have the good fortune of seeing it here in Maine. But the Addison is worthy of your time and price of a tank of gas or two, so you will get a double treat if you go.

Born in 1864, there are many early studio pictures of Day as a child and young man. He really got into it. The exhibit is, of course, in chronological order and the first photo is dated 1866-7. The last in the exhibit is 1915. The toddler photo is a hand-colored albumen print, and then you see albumen cabinet cards (1874, 1878), cartes-de-visite (1879), tintypes (1881-2), salted paper albumen prints (1893), hand-colored platinum prints and cyanotypes (1902). There’s even a big dark platinum and gum bichromate combination print portrait of Day taken by James Craig Annan and it’s one of my favorites in the exhibit.

But my point is that this exhibit served the excellent purpose of better helping me understand the history of historic process photographs – something I am always trying to absorb. Seeing these processes side-by-side helps me understand the differences and marvel at how the photographic process developed surely and steadily until the silver gelatin print kind of became the major plateau in a world of experimentation.

No Day exhibit is complete without the outrageous self-portrait “Christ With Crown of Thorns” (frontal, head back), 1898 and it’s here in a platinum print and the actual crown of thorns is on display in a glass case.

Solitude, 1901. Day portrait by Edward Steichen, reproduced in Camera Work in 1906. F. Holland Day Collection, Norwood Historical Society, Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

In “Making a Presence:..”, you will enjoy portraits of Day by Gertrude Kasebier (3 – 1898-1900), Alvin Langdon Coburn (2 – 1900), Edward Steichen (2), Frederick H. Evans, James Craig Annan, Clarence H. White and others. This bountiful offering alone is worth a trip to see this exhibit – another opportunity to compare and understand.

Ironically, my two favorite photos in the whole exhibit are anonymous. They are terrifically atmospheric platinum prints of Day taken in 1909 “at his dinner table in Maine” and looking out to sea from the shore of his Maine compound “Little Good Harbor” on Five Islands, Sheepscot Bay, Maine.

The Day homestead in Norwood, MA is a museum operated by the Norwood Historical Society. It’s 45 miles south of Andover, so a day could be spent very well in search a deeper understanding of Fred Holland Day and the vital contribution he made to us all.

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anything goes…?

Posted in PHOTOQUOTES on May 22, 2012 by voxphotographs

Hey, it’s art! Can’t be panned! It’s a personal journey! It’s art!

I prefer Beaumont Newhall’s approach:

“The camera is a deceptive tool. With today’s technology mediocre results can be achieved automatically. Unfortunately, mediocrity is all too often confused with success; we are too easily pleased.”: Beaumont Newhall, “One Mind’s Eye -The Portraits and other Photographs of Arnold Newman.” (1974)

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Commitment…

Posted in OUT THERE - PHOTOGRAPHER SPOTLIGHT, REVIEWS on May 20, 2012 by voxphotographs

I’ve found the fine art photographers I’ve met here in Maine to be a singularly committed group. They have to be. With few outlets for their work in their home state, and even fewer serious collectors of fine art photography here, they have to be fueled by passion. I respect their drive to produce new bodies of work and their willingness to commit dollars to exhibiting it when they know the chance of recouping such an investment is slight.

On May 12, I met three more such passionate artists. For three years now I’ve traveled down to Boston to review portfolios during the two day New England Portfolio Reviews event organized by the Griffin Museum of Photography and PRC (Photographic Resource Center). Last Saturday, I spent 25 minutes each with John Roy, Phillip Jones, and David Torcoletti. I met with John Roy last year and he wanted to update me. I don’t know how I got on the lists of Phillip and David, but I’m glad I did. I was also pleased to see two of the artists whose work is represented by VoxPhotographs invest in this opportunity - Sharon Arnold and Dave Wade.

When I met with John Roy last year, I saw promise, but no focus. Several images were terrific. But a mature artist needs to be able to realize a vision and see the creation of a body of work through – and I told John that. There’s nothing the matter with shooting a variety of subjects and styles, but… a formal portfolio review should include one or more edited bodies of work. John was clearly eager this year to tell me he had taken my advice seriously, but what he showed me this time around told me that loud and clear without words. He created a series that explored abandoned railways. He had a vision and showed me he could communicate that vision clearly to others, with an exciting and often challenging group of about 15 photographs he had edited down from close to 100. It wasn’t a perfect group, but once I weeded out a couple images that didn’t bring much to the table, I can easily state that an exhibit of the dozen remaining images would be of great satisfaction to anyone viewing it. I loved the portrait of the “Railroad Spike” so much, I asked him to send it on to me to include in my revolving desktop images.

These reviews demand I stay focused – completely – as every 30 minutes I enter a totally different world and need to get right inside it. Next up was Phillip Jones. Phillip’s work is realized in large square selenium-toned silver gelatin prints and most of the work he presented to me was from his Shooting in the Dark and Industry series – gutsy and often riveting images. He also brought along a few strays from other series (and one of my favorite photographs viewed in a long time is the one at the end of this posting: “El Toro”. Everyone I’ve shown it to loves it. There is the obvious appeal of the image which doesn’t have to be explained to anyone reading this blog, but in the large print itself, if you spend time with it, you get beyond everything else to the tiny evidence of humanity in the bottom right-hand corner. Ah, these are the images that make it worth getting up in the morning!) But here’s a guy who takes no short cuts and the results are extraordinary works that allow the viewer the best experience – to see something in a new way. One long look through this artist’s website and it’s clear he works hard – very hard – and has honed his craft to a very high level.

I’m constantly amazed at what slices of life artists home in on and bring to light: David Torcoletti brought me an amazing series to review – a former co-worker had been a radio personality in Vietnam and had received thousands of photographs from her American listeners stationed there during the war. She was evacuated (yes, in the helicopters) and settled in the USA, and the only thing she had time to grab was…a small box of some of these photographs the GI’s had sent her. Hundreds were left behind. When she showed them to David 25 years later, many of the photographs had deteriorated, but she thought he might appreciate them, as a photographer. He did and he immortalized them, just as he found them – distressed, peeling and haunting. It’s an incredible group of images and so moving, there is little to verbalize. They are no longer about individuals, but about the loss and destruction of war and “men living in impossible circumstances”. I tend to spend the first 10 minutes of these reviews silently looking at the work – it sometimes throws off the photographer who is hepped up to talk about it all. But I need to spend time with it visually and dislike having images explained to me most of the time. But with this series? It hugely impacted my understanding of the photographs to hear the story behind them and I honor it by repeating it to you.

All three photographers took the time to let me know the short time we spent together had been worth while and nothing makes me happier to learn a photographer moved forward in some way after I talked with them about their work. “…awesome photography review” ” … thanks for your time, insight and sense of humor. You were helpful, and also good company (my grandmother’s highest compliment).” Your analysis of what’s actually going on within a photo is marvelous. Time will tell, but I believe that you demonstrated tools that will help me discern a competent, interesting image from a resonant work of art.”

Remember what I said about what’s worth getting up in the morning for? To have the opportunity to share, if only briefly, in the light that shines from the works of committed, talented photographers…that’s one of the best reasons I know.

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Meggan Gould’s unique vision(s): see one at Space Gallery…

Posted in EXHIBITS/SHOWS, Maine, OUT THERE - PHOTOGRAPHER SPOTLIGHT on April 30, 2012 by voxphotographs

Space Gallery on Congress St. in Portland has created a great new gallery space and the current show is Blind Spots: New work by Meggan Gould and Billie Mandle. (Gould’s work is offered through VoxPhotographs, in the interest of full disclosure.)

The show and the space are a terrific marriage as the lofty ceilings and industrial feel to the gallery bring out the best in the works on view. The big images by Mandle of parking garages hold their own here beautifully, and Gould’s face-mounted viewfinder portraits just glow. (To read a complete review that includes discussion of Mandle’s images, see Dan Kany’s insights in the 4/22 Maine Sunday Telegram.)

If you haven’t heard of Meggan Gould, click here to get educated as she’s building an impressive national reputation for her work. What you’ll see on this VoxPhotographs Artist News page is just what she’s up to in May. I’m not sure she’s appreciated here in Maine the way she should be.

Gould never takes the easy road. She created her GO OGLE series, sample below, by “averaging,” or merging, the first 100 images retrieved from a specific Google image search. A code was written that did it mathematically, averaging the size and then the pixel values. She didn’t just “try” twenty or so of these – she made 1000′s, eventually editing this mass of work down to several hundred she considers successful.

In her PINHOLE series, Gould made digital pinhole photographs while driving or riding on a train mostly in New England – quite the multi-tasking challenge. She wanted to record what she had zipped by regularly without taking it in – and it’s a terrific, challenging and complete series. She says: “I was interested in looking at the aesthetics of transition – of being in motion, and observing the classic points of landscape streaming by me. In this case I was driving through familiar (daily commute) territory, looking at the highway spaces but aware I could not always be actively engaged with them. The pinhole aspect allowed me to further abstract this peripheral vision, by necessitating longer shutter speeds.”

Back to the Viewfinder series on view at Space Gallery – who would have thought these little manufactured camera parts would have such unique personalities? Yes, each manufacturer has its own specific design with unique (and often enigmatic, Gould says) marks, but what happens to it over the life of the camera in the hands of possibly several owners is what dictates the unique personality of scratches, dust, hair and other detritus. With Single Lens Reflex cameras, this is how we saw the world for soooo long, but what happens when our vision stops with the viewfinder instead of traveling through and beyond? Gould asked herself. So, as per her habit, she set out to find the answer with her camera.

The Viewfinder series was selected as second place Curator’s Choice winner in the Santa Fe CENTER competition, and included in the May 26 opening of Second Nature: Abstract Photography Then and Now at the De Cordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA. Viewfinder is another very challenging project and Gould says “I shoot these with crazy macro extensions, and usually have to digitally composite them together, as more often than not I have to take multiple photographs to capture one, because of the tiny focusing area.” Isn’t being a fine art photographer about stretching your vision, your ability and the technology available? Gould does it in spades with each new body of work.

The presentation of her work at Space Gallery is second only to the images themselves, and her choice to have Keith Fitzgerald at Zero Station face-mount all of these behind plexi is inspired and completes the vision, as more photographers need to understand. Not only does Meggan Gould serve as an inspiring role model to the young photographers she teaches at Bowdoin, but to photographers at all levels she provides an example of how important quality and thoughtful presentation is to any exhibition of her unique visions.

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Lousy print quality sinks 2012 Maine Photography Show in Boothbay Harbor

Posted in EXHIBITS/SHOWS, HELP!! Doing it right..., Maine on April 24, 2012 by voxphotographs

Is bad print quality the new Brownie camera? If so, Alfred Stieglitz got it right: SECEDE!

When I first started studying photo history I cringed a bit when I learned Stieglitz started the Photo Secession movement because too many people were getting into photography and blurring the lines between “real” photographers and the masses. Yikes, arrogant, a tiny bit? Elitist? Well, he was both, no doubt about it, but further study has proved his indignation and instincts right on.

Photography, up to the advent of Eastman Kodak’s amazingly handy Brownie camera in 1900, had been mostly for those with the time and resources, or passion, to pursue the complexities of equipment and processing. But what happened was that with everyone now able to take photographs (“You push the button, we’ll do the rest!”), the mystique of the craft was lost to the viewer of photographs, and Stieglitz realized that in order to survive, fine art photographers had to separate themselves and insist on continuing to explore the marriage of science and art on the highest level of aesthetics possible. Hence, the Photo-Secessionists – committed to creating works of art that could be held up to the same standards as other media, such as painting and sculpture, and getting as far away as possible from “snapshots”. Stieglitz explained it thus: “Photo-Secession actually means a seceding from the accepted idea of what constitutes a photograph.”

Well, folks, it’s time for SECEDE – The Sequel. Many of us are taking cool photographs and I’ve written before about the amazing photographs my Canon PowerShot takes by itself once I take it out of its cozy pouch. But the downside of photography becoming ubiquitous is that alongside these digital cameras, amazing printers have popped up, and they are amazing. The problem I’m seeing, and it’s a big one at the 2012 Maine Photography Show at the Boothbay Region Art Foundation Gallery in Boothbay Harbor, is that almost no one is remembering the rather important piece of the final product called “print quality.”

If photographs are being billed as “fine art photographs” they had better be darn fine prints. And if photographs are being selected for exhibition they had better be darn fine prints. This means a total absence of pink, green and turquoise dots (noise), content broken down to the point of total distortion due to enlarging a digital file that was not meant to be so enlarged, and other digital artifacts. I know many of the photographers in this show are hobbyists and love taking great pictures as much as I do, but this era of digital photography for “everyman” has created a huge problem that needs to be addressed: just because you can take cool pictures doesn’t mean you have the skill to print them for exhibition. Printing fine art digital photographs is not about pressing the PRINT button.

There are resources in Maine where photographers can learn how to print their work digitally at an acceptable level of quality, the Bakery Photographic Collective in Westbrook for one. And if you find you don’t have the skill to make these prints well, hand the job over to a master printer, because let me tell you, there’s a difference.

At VoxPhotographs, I hold my artists to the highest standards of print quality and have had to part company with those who don’t agree with this definition of what makes a fine art photograph. And if jurors are asked to select photographs for exhibit based only on electronic images, it’s underscoring the very wrong perception that final print quality doesn’t matter one bit any more. In fact, exhibits of photographs that don’t adhere to the highest level of print quality are undermining the fine art photographs community more than any other factor.

So here’s the bottom line: If you want to be a fine art photographer, or even if you are an amateur and are submitting works to be exhibited, make print quality an absolute priority after the success of the photo-taking itself. Frankly, it can’t be separated. A lousy print of a great digital photograph is nothing more than just a lousy photograph.

And photographs on canvas? Holy smokes, don’t get me started.

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I found several black and white photographs at the Maine Photography Show that I really loved: “Three Pears” by Zoe Theberge from Harpswell; “Brooklyn Bridge Redefined” by Pamela Davis of Bar Mills; “The Dance” by LeeAnn LaFleur of Livermore Falls; and Harold Strout’s (North Monmouth) “Ice Bottle”. A very interesting small color image I’d like to see more of is “Cosmic Shape #1″ by Katie J. Wadsworth Buckley of Searsmont. I’ll include them throughout this posting as they come in to me in response to my requests for postable images.

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Panopticon Gallery – Boston’s gem…

Posted in EXHIBITS/SHOWS, New England on April 18, 2012 by voxphotographs

Two years ago Jason Landry took a leap, realized a long-time dream and landed on his feet: he purchased Panopticon Gallery in Boston, and hasn’t looked back since. Before this, he worked at the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University, and that has resulted in a huge plus for his new business: connections. But PRC isn’t the only place he got connected. The ABOUT feature on the gallery website states he earned a B.F.A in Photography and an M.F.A in Visual Arts, both from institutions in the Boston area.

So, why do I care? Because connections obviously aren’t the only thing Jason brings to his gallery ownership. Every time I get an update from the gallery, I instinctively re-check to make sure it’s not from a NYC gallery. This guy has an eye. He knows how to pick ‘em. Panopticon Gallery brings to Boston an important and genuine venue for seeing the real thing in photography and when I got the most recent update, I decided to write about the gallery to make sure everyone in NE and beyond knows it’s there.

Forty years ago, Tony Decaneas decided to open a gallery room at his photo imaging lab, Panopticon. Eventually, he moved the gallery to inside the Hotel Commonwealth in Boston. He sold the lab in 2007 and the gallery in 2010 to Jason. As the ABOUT feature says, it was one of the oldest photography galleries in the country.

Under Jason Landry’s wing, Panopticon has blown into the future as a photography gallery to be taken very seriously. He features work by artists with high international visibility as well as emerging artists, often in an adjacent space called The Private Room. His first show this year “Processes and Dreams” (Jan/Feb) looked spectacular and included gelatin silver prints, photogravures, daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, cyanotypes, encaustic works, and archival pigment prints.

Currently on view through May 28 is “Child’s Play“ – contemporary works by five artists. Coming up for June/July is “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” and it looks like it will continues Panopticon’s winning streak.

If you can’t get to Boston every six weeks to see these shows in person, sign up on the gallery site’s Home page for Panopticon’s e-mail updates so you can at least pretend you’re there as you scroll through some of the images on view. You may find the call to action impossible to ignore.

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A worthy quartet at Addison-Woolley

Posted in EXHIBITS/SHOWS, Maine on April 11, 2012 by voxphotographs

Addison-Woolley Director Susan Porter says she really enjoyed curating the current show there “In and Out of Abstraction” and it shows.

Featuring the work of Mary Woodman (whose work is also represented by VoxPhotographs),Richard Veit, Robert Moran and Brad Maushart, the gallery sparkles with fresh vision. I was delighted to see eight beautiful prints in Woodman’s new “Surf” series, new images in Moran’s series of portraits of antique artifacts, sensitive black and white abstracts by Veit and work representing Maushart’s many faces. I really enjoyed each image included in Maushart’s wall of small 4″x6″ “Snaps” as he refers to them on his website. They show off his sense of humor and good eye. Richard Veit’s two images included in last year’s Biennial at the Portland Museum of Art were exceptional and it’s good to see more work on view here.

Take a hike up the hill to Addison-Woolley and treat yourself. On view through April 28th, and this Saturday (4/14) at 2 p.m. you can meet the artists and hear them talk about their work.

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