VoxPhotographs Weblog

The other day I sold some photographs to a first-time client and it was an uplifting experience.

He asked questions and listened to the answers and asked more questions. He was respectful of the level of work available to him and “got it”.  He was there to enhance his family’s home and lives with art. He was engaged. And such a client is always a gratifying experience for a dealer.

Every sale I make at VoxPhotographs is a big deal whether it’s one image or 35 (yes, it happens). But the most meaningful sales – the ones that confirm that the artists whose work I represent and I are doing something truly worthwhile – are the sales that result when a collector views an image and something clicks in the soul. Without it in his life, there will be a void that didn’t exist a minute ago.

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” - Thomas Merton

I know the work in the portfolios at VoxPhotographs represents the best of what my artists have to give creatively. They think about their work all the time, and make sacrifices to create it and make it available for viewing by others. All of them make photographs because they must. In the end, these acts of creation are what feeds their souls.

  South Branch Pond©Mary Woodman

So the best gift for me is this: enhancing someone’s life with a work of art that colors their daily existence, takes them somewhere aesthetically they haven’t yet been. Connecting the soul of the artist to the soul of the collector. It’s what matters.

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” - Pablo Picasso

From time to time I invite a few fine art photographers to my gallery for a Salon. I serve a light supper and we talk about photographs and what’s on their minds as photographers – anything to do with themselves and the work. Each artist brings a new image, hangs it on the wall and after dinner each talks in turn about what he/she is doing and where they are going.

Last evening I changed the program a bit and invited Maine Media Workshop’s faculty member – and an extraordinary photographer in his own right – Brenton Hamilton to lecture on “Beyond Digital”. He had covered this topic in two separate Salons I hosted in the last six months for Museum curators and I knew the photographers themselves would get a lot out of it. They did.

Maine can be a bit isolated and isolating. Everyone’s busy taking pictures and making a living and many live hours from other artists, so it’s vital the fine art photography community be and stay connected with each other and the outside world. Last evening’s Salon worked on both counts: thirteen hard-working and  mature artists came together to re-connect or connect for the first time, AND , thanks to Brenton, they got a darn good look at what’s happening out there in the rest of the world – how imagery is being pushed well beyond the digital camera experience.

You can’t see the future without knowing the past and in my opinion, Brenton is the state’s foremost authority on the history of photography. I studied with him for three semesters and would do so nonstop if the history of photography course were scheduled at a time that works for me and my bi-city life. I tell my photographers over and over – study the history of photography and know what and who has come before you. It’s vital to moving forward with a unique vision of your own.

I like the way Maine’s fine art photography community is eager to connect and stay connected. Many of last evening’s guests drove 150-200 miles roundtrip to have an evening with other professionals and increase their insight into their own work. I know friendships, professional relationships and real and valuable technical information being traded are some of the results of past Salons. Add the insight and knowledge of Brenton Hamilton to the experience and it’s a picture-perfect evening.

As I’m pulling together the fall artist list for FOCUSMAINE.COM, it gets clearer and clearer that many of Maine’s fine art photographers are way behind in getting their work online. One of the requirements we have for any artist to consider being featured is that the artist must have an active, up-to-date website of their work. Wow. People are scrambling to get it done. Way too many of you.

Mary Virginia Swanson, guru of the fine art photography community on the east coast and beyond, is leading a seminar in Portsmouth NH on Sunday, Sept. 26 called: “Your Website/Your Voice: Effective Communication in the Online Environment”. I would get on her website, get the where and when details and go if you do not have an up-to-date and compelling website of your work.

FOCUSMAINE.COM is designed to create a collector base for fine art photographers here in Maine. But why are many of you hiding from the world?

Here’s your chance to leap into 2010. You will be energized beyond belief.

On Monday afternoon (7/19) I went to heaven – for 75 minutes. That was how long I sat in the (practically standing room only) audience at the Strand Theatre in Rockland listening to Jeff Rosenheim’s lecture (organized by Maine Media Workshops) on Helen Levitt, who I think is one of the 20th century’s most important photographers.

© Estate of Helen Levitt. All Rights Reserved.

Not only is Mr. Rosenheim the Curator, Dept. of Photographs at the Met, but he was actually a friend of Ms. Levitt’s for over 15 years. He went to see her as a student and she kind of took him under her wing until she died last March at the age of 95. Last year he lectured on Robert Frank. The previous two years he focused on Walker Evans.

Did we get personal insights and behind-the-scenes chatter on Monday? Yeah, we sure did. Did we get a special treat? I call a “rare screening” of Levitt’s 1948 film “In the Street” (this copy was given to Mr. Rosenheim by Helen Levitt (!)) a VERY special treat. This street-photography-in-motion film is 14 minutes long and has got to be a national treasure.

Helen Levitt, 1988 © Estate of Helen Levitt. All Rights Reserved.

In 1965 Levitt published a book of photographs titled “A Way of Seeing” (you can buy a first edition here for $2400) with an essay by James Agee, her close friend. Originally scheduled for release in the 40′s, it was delayed for 20 years. It includes 50 of her earliest photographs.

I’m not going to give a short history of Levitt in this blog. There are tons of images online (that’s why this short posting took so long – I got waylaid for ages going through them again) and lots of bio material, so you can take a short course on your own.

© Estate of Helen Levitt. All Rights Reserved.

This annual lecture by Mr. Rosenheim is one of Maine Media Workshop’s annual gifts to its community. It was free, it was a chance of a lifetime, it was heaven.

© Estate of Helen Levitt. All Rights Reserved.

Anybody with a passion and/or profession can host a Salon. The rewards are immense and so far-reaching, they can’t be measured. Are you a writer? A city planner? A professor? A painter? An attorney? A designer or architect? There’s much to be gained by spending an evening over dinner drinking beer and talking about the why/where/how/when of what you’re doing.

A lot of my work focuses on connecting the farflung fine art photography community in Maine and sometimes beyond (the recent UNE exhibit “Going Forward, Looking Back – Practicing Historic Photographic Processes in the 21st Century” was a terrific regional reach that included 24 New England artists and grew out of my desire to broaden the market for two of my artists – David Puntel and David Wolfe).

One of the most rewarding ways to connect us has been through my Photographers’ Salons.

Alan Vlach answers questions about his “wheat paste” series of images of NYC wall art at the recent Photographers’ Salon at VoxPhotographs.

In the old days, a Salon brought together the intellectual/cultural elite of the day. They met at someone’s house and spent the afternoon or evening discussing literature, art, politics, science, etc… With the fine art photography community spread out over a huge state like Maine, it’s rare we get together in a casual atmosphere to hang out and talk shop.

Each quarter for the last two years I’ve hosted what I’ve come to call a Curators’ Salon at the gallery – each time it’s a different mix of arts professionals through the state – enjoying dinner together talking shop, having a host speaker and then talking more shop.

Last May, a class from SALT came to the gallery to talk with Jon Edwards who had new work up for the month. As the kids left, I saw Jon and class instructor Scott Peterman in deep discussion over in the corner and had an epiphany. Fine art photographers in Maine are hungry to connect. Photographers’ Salons were the answer.

Last Thursday I hosted my fourth or fifth Photographers’ Salon here at the gallery space in Portland. I keep them small – 6-10 people. I send out an invite announcing the date to almost 60 artists, make a running list of those who respond that they would like to attend, and then cull a final guest list from the running list – the final list reflects a mix of personalities and more importantly – work – that I think will allow the artists to gain the most from spending time together. Everyone brings a photograph to hang on the wall for the evening. One or two attending spend 15 min. or so talking about their work – everyone else gets five minutes. But of course, the entire evening is spent talking about the work.

I can’t tell you how successful these events are. Last summer, several guests were still out in the parking lot talking at 11 p.m.! I had thrown them all out at 10:30 pm. and they had spent five hours together at that point. Hungry to connect? Obviously!

The 3/11 Salon brought together Denise Froehlich, Hayes Porterfield, Ilya Askinazi, John G. Kelley, Alan Vlach and Liv Kristin Robinson (Kristin is represented exclusively by VoxPhotographs).

Self-portrait, 2009 © Hayes Porterfield. All rights reserved.

Hayes Porterfield tells me this image was made using a fiber paper neg. He then contact printed it wet to fiber paper. He used his 100 year old 5×7 Kodak Eastman view camera! This image and information alone could have filled most of an evening’s discussion, questions and eureka moments. Don’t you just itch to ask him a question about how he works after seeing at this image?

Liv Kristin Robinson was the evening’s presenter: she brought along two newly completed and framed images from her “En Route” series to hang on the wall. Kristin started out 20 years ago making black and white images in the darkroom and then hand-painting them. She is now making color digital images and painting them digitally. The cinematic overtones are the same with either approach. Kristin brought a half dozen of her earliest hand-painted images and there was some lively discussion and interest as everyone delved into the work and the history of Kristin’s artistic process.

Queensboro Bridge, from the “En Route” series, 2002/2010 © Liv Kristin Robinson. All rights reserved.

John Kelley also brought new work. John’s “Hibernation” is a ghostly image – hard to get the impact of it online, perhaps, but unforgettable when you see it in the flesh. A South Portland boatyard in winter is the subject and brilliantly interpreted by a master landscape photographer.

Hibernation, 2010 © John G. Kelley. All rights reserved.

Denise Froehlich brought a terrific piece from a life-changing trip in 2002 to the Czech Republic -it was a square-format shot of many skulls arrayed up and down a wall and the history behind this display was fascinating. Here is one of her closer-to-home images:

My grandfather’s wake, Guilford, CT, 1998 © Denise Froehlich. All rights reserved.

Ilya Askinazi lives and works in Bangor. He was in town dropping off work for a show opening March 27 at the Elizabeth Moss Galleries in Falmouth and brought one of the pieces to show us. Ilya works one way: 8.5 x 11 gelatin silver prints. The image he brought to talk about that evening was a minimalist shot of a car on the top outdoor level of a parking garage. It was a perfect photograph. I don’t have it here to show you – you can see it and 29 others at the above show – but here’s another from Ilya’s website. Ilya’s work is also the subject of a one-person show opening this fall at the University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor.

Don’t think of all the reasons why you CAN’T host a salon. I guarantee you it will be an occasion to remember for all who attend. Here are some pointers:

• Start collecting the addresses of people who share your profession or passion and collect them into an address book group.

• Send out an invite at least 3 weeks in advance giving a deadline for responses.

• Send out a final guest list to all and include website addresses for the attendees if they have one.

• Serve a light supper and preferably alcohol!

• Keep the group small – 6-10. It gives everyone there a chance to talk about their work, research, or whatever as well as be a part of the ongoing group discussion.

• Be a good host – keep the discussion on topic (rather than a digression into politics, sports, or one person’s long-winded autobiographical lecture!)

If you have any other questions about hosting a Salon – please write! info@voxphotographs.com.

Remember, some of my guests at Photographers’ Salons have driven 100 miles one way to be here. There’s a reason for that: community.

Nope. I’m not dead or too busy to post postings. We’ve just spent a month in New Zealand and the reason I’m mentioning it here is: if you are a landscape photographer don’t go there because you will very seriously consider staying forever if you do. At the very least, your career will be ruined because you’ll never stop thinking about how whatever it is you’re shooting at the moment is second best.

Look, we toured only the South Island. Before I get into how beautiful it is, let me just say New Zealanders or Kiwis are so good-natured and helpful, plus they know how beautiful their country is and have tremendous pride of place. Even better? They love sharing it with visitors. They love sports, so if you are a photographer AND enjoy hang-gliding, trout fishing, bungee-jumping and any other sport (how could I forget RUGBY/SOCCER/FOOTBALL?) you have two reasons to book your flight. Now. And two reasons to stay forever.

Everyone who had already been to NZ told us it was the most beautiful place on the earth and we believed them. I will tell YOU that there is no word in the English language to describe such a place. Every day we figured we had seen the best, most jaw-dropping beauty this earth had to offer, but then the next day…. it was “OH MY GOD” all day long. Déja vu of the best kind. Except every day offered something totally different.

Here’s the closest I can get: PRIMORDIAL. There is something about every type of landscape on the South Island that just gets you in your soul in an atavistic way. Here’s what you see driving along any old road, for example:

From the side of the road…

Whether it’s the plains, valleys, mountains, rolling hills, pastures, seascapes, beaches, coasts, farms, trees… it’s just too, too beautiful to imagine.

One morning, we drove 45 minutes up to Glenorchy from Queenstown to go on a 3 hour horsetrek in (almost) Lord of the Rings country (we’ve never seen the films, but will get them out now for nostalgia’s sake) and I took this from the van window:

En route to Glenorchy from the van while moving…

Are you getting where I’m going with this posting? If I, in a split second, with a whatever-little-digital-camera and trust me, NOT being a photographer AT ALL, can take pictures like this, don’t you just have to wonder what YOU could do with a camera?

Go and find out. And when you do, I’ll post them here. If you ever come back.

——————-

Horsetrek scene from the horse! While moving!

Lake Hawea, from the van while moving…no Photoshop color adjustment here!

Please, I can’t take much more hilarity! I’m still chuckling, hooting and grinning whenever I think of the latest issue of Black and White magazine – it’s Special Issue/2010  Single Image Contest Awards. The SEASCAPE/WATER section has some doozies.

No, it’s not the images… it’s the titles many of the artists have given them! It’s just plain perplexing why artists work so hard at being poets and writers. I must protest. Isn’t it enough that you are a talented photographer or painter or sculptor? Must you play at being a poet or writer as well? Lemme tell you, give it up.  There are experts out there.

Make a New Year’s resolution for 2010: I will not write artist statements. I will not title my images goofy things like: “Life’s Journey” or “Goodbyes Are Never Easy” or “Eternity of the Moment”. Holy Smokes, nothing ruins a piece of artwork faster than a ridiculous or clever or sappy title.

If you feel the need to give the viewer narrative context for your work, go out and keep shooting. Or become a filmmaker. Your photograph doesn’t need a narrative context if it’s your best work. Please… let me bring my own self to your work – make room for ME, the viewer. If you think your picture is about “goodbyes”, fine. I may think it’s about terrific design or I may not think it needs to be about anything at all. And if you need to tell me water is “fluid”, I must be cross-eyed.

In the Photojournalism/Documentary section there is a searing photo of Auschwitz. It’s title? “Sad Landscape #7″. Thanks for the help, but I don’t think there is a person in the world who needs to be nudged in the feelings dept. when viewing Holocaust prisoner camps.

It’s also surprising how many artists name their work with the exact description of what you are looking at. Why do you do this? There’s a photo in the Photojournalism/Documentary section titled “Man in Wheelchair with Flag, New York City, New York”. Yep, the artist got it right! That’s exactly what the photograph depicts. I can see if for myself, so I know he/she got it right! How about just “New York City” or “Madison Avenue” or “Independence Day” if those are the simple facts?

You should really order a copy of this Special Issue if you don’t already subscribe to Black and White because there are some great photographs in it worth studying. But artists need to leave the clever wordsmithing to someone else and stick to what they know – creating art.

Jeanne-Claude, Cristo’s wife and artistic partner since 1960, just died. Here’s a quote from the obituary as written in The Week, the news magazine I read from cover to cover immediately upon receipt: “Our art has absolutely no purpose, except to be a work of art. We do not give messages.”

Thank goodness for that. If their work can speak for itself, so can yours.

Photo: Bryan Obrien, The Sydney Morning Herald

In March, Maine Medical Center invited submissions from Maine artists for works to enhance the walls of their new facility. I’ve just heard from the consultant company that fine art photographers were wasting their time when they responded.

Big bucks have been committed by the hospital to sculpture and paintings by Maine artists. But not one fine art photograph has been purchased. Instead, the fine art photographers who submitted works for consideration received notice yesterday that there is now a new call for submissions “specifically for photographers”. Before you rush to review your photo archives, read on:

1) The photographs selected will hang on a long corridor near the Staff Stations.

2) The smallest print size that will be accepted is 16×20.

3) No black and white photographs will be considered.

3) And for the “shutterbugs” who are successful? (Please don’t use the word “artist”) “An honorarium of $125 will be paid for each unframed photograph.

Healthcare facilities need a specific uplifting mood to prevail in their healing environments and hire professionals who are experts in this field to help them select appropriate art. Many of the submissions I made on behalf of two of the Maine Heritage photographers represented by VoxPhotographs, and the submissions labored over by several of the photographers exclusively represented by VoxPhotographs are gorgeous, positive and serene images from the early 1900′s through to 2008 that would allow patients and their families to lose themselves in a positive stream of thought, relax into a beautiful Maine landscape or generate hope to everyone who passes them on the walls. I’m sure other fine art photographers who submitted images felt their images would be considered as well.

Unfurling Sail, 1930 © Ralph Farnham Blood Estate

Acadia Sunset © 2007 Jim Nickelson

Okay, you’re thinking. Obvious sour grapes here.

Sorry to disappoint you. Both the gallery and the individual photographers could have handled a rejection. You win some, you lose some. We were all really curious to see the outcome of this long process for the Medical Center and how our work fit or didn’t. But to be totally shut out of the process as artist? Wow, that hurts.

I guess Maine’s fine art photographers and photograph galleries have a lot to learn – that photographs just aren’t worth the paper they are printed on. Are they ART? Hey, they’re just “prints” so why are they priced at….GASP!!!!! $750? Anyone can push a button, right?

Why didn’t Maine Medical clarify three months ago in the information supplied that fine art photographs would not be welcome as submissions? It would have saved the photographers a lot of time — time they could have spent learning how to paint.