Millerprojects:Notes

Helen Levitt: August 31, 1913 – March 29, 2009

Helen Levitt Obit NYTimes

Helen Levitt Obit NPR

Helen Levitt Interview

Read my new piece on Helen Levitt here.

And the Nominees Are........

In the category of Independent Project, SOL-ART e.a.s.t!!!

We're nominated for the 2007-2008 Austin Critics' Table Award!

We were only on the ground for two days, thanks for remembering!

And in case you missed it and are curious about who and what we were, here are stills and VRs of the installations, thanks to Robert Harshman who does exceptional work himself.

Richard Mosse

I look at pictures on a daily basis, but it's not often that I see work that really impresses. Richard Mosse's work does, found via BLDBLG.

below, from the series Air Disaster.

Photoeye allies with Amazon!

Photoeye books has now allied with Amazon, meaning you can search for the best photography books on the photoeye website, and then choose to purchase from photoeye or from Amazon without leaving the site. This is far more convenient for us book buyers, and also means that when we choose to buy from Amazon, photoeye still benefits from the sale. Guilt-free buying! And you can search, via photoeye, for ANY book on Amazon, and roll all your orders into one sale.
A great idea and great service to us all, so please show your support for a small independent bookseller who has dedicated his life to bringing us the best in photography books. I've know Rixon Reed, photoeye's owner, since 1980 when he started selling photography books out of his house in Austin, Texas. In fact, I was his first employee, typing up invoices and packing books (and buying them, too!) The business quickly grew, and relocated to Santa Fe in 1991. Rick was and is a great friend and photoeye is a gift to all of us in love with photography. Thanks, Rick!

Here's the announcement:

Announcing photo-eye's Affiliation with Amazon.com
We are tremendously excited to announce the integration of Amazon's database of millions of books into the photo-eye website. Now you can order all types of books through photo-eye (even those that are out-of-print) and take advantage of Amazon's deep discounts and low shipping rates (including free shipping for qualified orders).

Bigger discounts, cheaper shipping charges, and fewer backorders are photo-eye's top three customer requests. Now we are able to make this a reality. Our new dual shopping cart system and the seamless integration of Amazon's book database into our website makes it incredibly easy to order a great variety of books. Please keep in mind that you will still be supporting photo-eye if you use the Amazon shopping cart system on our website. We receive credit for all orders fulfilled by Amazon through the use of this cart.

We'll continue to carry (and fulfill) our great selection of collectible books including signed, small press, limited editions, and foreign titles. In fact, letting Amazon fulfill many of the more widely available books frees us to focus more on what we do best: bringing you great new esoteric and collectible photography books from around the world.

Thank you for your continued support!

Serra on Steel

Lord's Future Ruins

Wish I could find more images from this online, but no luck so far. On BLDBLG is a post about an exhibit in the UK by artist Michelle Lord called Future Ruins. Read and see more at ballardian.com site.

Things Add Up

An upcoming show at Von Lintel Gallery by Chris Jordan sends home the message yet again about the reality of our massive consumption of all kinds of things, bringing visual form to the numbing statistics.  Jordan's series Running the Numbers  An American Self-Portrait should be yet another a wake-up call, even to those of us with all the right concerns in all the right places, or so we think.  We support green everything, but probably give little thought to our discarded cell phones and water bottles.  Two million plastic beverage bottles in the U.S. alone EVERY FIVE MINUTES.  What are we thinking?  We're not. 

While about 30% of plastic soda bottles are recycled, only 12% of water bottles are.  Overall, our total recycling of plastic has dropped dramatically in recent years, from 53% in 1994 to 19% in 2003.  And you would think it would be the opposite. In the early 90's, I gave a talk on recycling to my mom's ladies group in central Missouri.  Soon after, the town set up some recycling bins.  But after a short time, they gave up - it was too hard, too expensive, too whatever, so now there is no recycling done in that community, and it seems this trend is common.

Now that green is a very hot, fashionable trend (one of the best marketing tools we've ever seen, especially in the housing industry where developments are sold as green, but not always certified),  it's great that Jordan's work shows us what we are really up against. 

photo below:  Chris Jordan, Plastic Bottles, 2007 this depicts the 2 million plastic beverage bottles used every five minutes in the U.S.

And in case we've forgotten:

Temporarily Online

Some of the recent citywork project is online for just a few days. There is a selection of work here from the U.S. and China.

It's About Time, studio and live version

The Old Kids are Alright

First Views-New Work from China

I could probably work a little more slowly, but then again, maybe not. Finally have the new work from 2006 in a viewable, editable form, and getting new work from last week's trip to NYC processed and proofed this week. It's funny, the shooting process is so off-hand I don't see how it works. But it does. And I like the direction I'm headed.
Here's one from Beijing.

I "Heart" Polar Bears

If there is one canary in the coal mine, it is the polar bear.  (But the sad thing is, there are many canaries in the global mine, and they are dying under OUR watch.)

The NRDC is one organization that is working to save them, and they could use some help.

Hello My Name Is

A great opening last night in the art gallery for the senior exhibition "Hello My Name Is..." and a nice suprise visit by several former students -- Nicky, Erica, Jessica, George and Wellington.

Round Two of the exhibit opens tonight at Studio 107 (the website here has links to student work in the show, thanks Liz!)

l-r: Wellington, Jessica, me, George, Nicky and Erica. Proof that life goes on after graduation!

Sweet Earth

In Plenty today there's a feature on Joel Sternfeld's new book Sweet Earth, about utopian communities, past and present.

Nina Berman

Nina Berman's Marine Wedding.

More here, including two "before" shots.

China Now

To see great photographs of the current massive transformation of Chinese cities, look at Sze Tsung Leong's work. There's also an interview in Guernica.

No. 15 Xiangluying Fourth Lane, Chun Shu, Xuanwu District, Beijing, 2004. (0403-044)

iMoMA

Go here.

Below is an excerpt from the website. To me, the grids themselves are the most interesting aspect of the project.

"iMoMa is a virtual museum. It will consist solely of photographs of works found within the Museum of Modern Art. While such a museum is nothing new—MoMA themselves have a virtual gallery of all their items—iMoMA will focus on the impressions of visitors to the museum.

For each item in MoMA’s collection, iMoMA will have a website displaying photographs visitors to MoMA have taken of that item, capturing their own unique impression of the art MoMA has on display.

The result will be a pastiche of images that will force the viewer to critique their own relationship to the artwork in the photographs. Furthermore, the viewer will have to question whether or not the photographs themselves are works of art. In this way, iMoMA is designed to educate viewers not only about the artwork in the photographs, but about art in general and the ways in which the Internet can change how we both see and perceive it.

Submissions to iMoMA will be collected via the Internet through a website established for the project."

Even Newer Studio

Here's the new new studio (which is now an Emily Little design that has an attached studio and lower level workshop/outdoor studio area). Hopefully will be moving there in June.

Massive Change

With the "news" today that global warming is really happening (really! it is! no kidding!), thought I'd post a bit on the Bruce Mau Massive Change exhibit making the rounds. I saw it in Chicago last November at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and my friend Rob, inspired by the exhibit, contacted Mau and arranged to do a series of VRs just before the exhibit closed. (Of course my favorite room was the image room.)

Follow the links

Take a look at Raul Gutierrez's work, straightforward pictures -- the absence of slick technique appeals to me, as well as the hand-held feel, a relief from so much view camera work these days, as good as some of it may be. He has a blog, too. His work from China was shown earlier this fall at the Nelson Hancock Gallery - I especially like this work, he shows all the places and things I saw myself there, but didn't bring back in pictures.

Helen Levitt

(UPDATE) My 2008 interview with Helen Levitt, post here.

While William Eggleston is often viewed as the "father of color photography," I find that Helen Levitt's work in color is of even greater significance. Levitt is best known for her earlier black & white work, but in 1959 and 1960, funded with two Guggenheim fellowships, she created her first body of work in color. While most of the slides were later lost due to theft, a few remaining images (along with later color work from the early 70's) were shown as a slide show at MoMA in 1974, two years before Eggleston's exhibit there.

Last year, PowerHouse Books published this work in Slide Show, but I first saw Levitt's color photographs in Aperture 19:4 (along with Mark Goodman's Millerton photographs) and soon after, in an exhibition at the Corcoran. It was Levitt's amazing use of color, and not Eggleston's, that started my own color explorations. I admired her work so much that I arranged to meet her at her New York apartment in 1981. She was generous with her time and comments, we watched public television a bit, talked about our cats, and I drove to my own apartment two hours north of Manhattan that night with one of the worst headaches ever! Well, luckily I don't have migraines anymore, but I still love Levitt's work and am glad she was willing to spend a little time with a young photographer who was just starting to learn.

New York 1959

Suzanne Opton

Take a look at Suzanne Opton's work, especially her three part series "Soldier," which was shown earlier this year at Lightwork and CEPA. Her commercial work is just as good, found at this site. She's represented by Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art in NYC.

Season of Thanks and Complaints

Linked to from Seth Godin's marketing blog is this video from a Finnish husband-wife artist team, Oliver Kochta Kalleinen and Tellervo Kalleinen.

The couple invited people in various international cities to submit their complaints, which were then set to churchly choir music under the direction of a local choral director. So far there have been complaints choirs in Hamburg, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, and Birmingham, England — with videos for the latter two available online.

Maybe a little less complaining this holiday season? At least it's good to know that it can all become funny if put to music and sung with gusto!

New Seesaw!!!

The new issue of Seesaw magazine is now online!

NYFA Source

To find grant opportunities (and lots of other useful info), go to NYFA Source. You can search by discipline and see what is really available, the requirements, deadlines, etc.

Anonymous Grants

So glad to see that Terry Evans received one of the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation's grants. The entire list of recipients is in yesterday's Artnet News.

From Terry's bio:
Terry Evans is a photographer whose work is primarily an inquiry into the nature of prairie from its native state to its use, abandonment, and care. She photographs from both ground and aerial perspectives and lately within the confines of natural history herbaria, and bird and mammal museum storage areas, where she has recently photographed 19th Century prairie specimens. Her intention is to tell the prairie's stories, past and present, through visible facts and layers of time and memory on the landscape.

Don't miss her Revealing Chicago project.

Statesmen at Smith

Now on exhibit through December 1 at the Oresmann Gallery at Smith College, Northampton, MA is the full set of fifty images from the Statesmen project. Installation views to come!

Also coming soon are new images from the City Seen project, which expanded this year to cities in China. Slowly working through the film, cutting and proofing, and hope to get to some workprints fairly soon. In San Francisco this week to visit my friend Carol Charney, out to shoot more city work today in downtown SF. Last year's work from this project that is now online is in desperate need of updating, but that will not happen in the near future. One of the really appealing things about shooting digitally is the immediate feedback from each day's work. But one of the equally appealing things about shooting film and working with a much longer timeframe is how I forget what I've done or what I'd hoped I'd done and when I do finally start going through the contact sheets weeks or even months later, they are full of surprises.

Fur

Fur, An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, opens Nov. 10. You can see a trailer on the website. I have to say that I have really mixed feelings--based on the trailer, Arbus comes across as a desperate housewife (and looks like one, too, thanks to the casting of Kidman in the lead). I wonder if the film shows her taking private lessons from Lisette Model as well as being led into a creative life by a fictitious creepy neighbor played by Robert Downey, Jr.? Or gives a true portrait of her unique family, or a sense of her distinct personality and mind, of her true and undeniable genius? The documentary video that came out years ago does give us this glimpse and a real sense of the time and place that helped form her sensibility. And Doon's hair in the documentary is amazing!

But like everything to do with her, we'll have to watch.

Midwest Photographers Project

Just posted today, a selection of my Statesmen project that is now part of the Midwest Photographers Project at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago.

Developers I Have Known and Loved

In 1978-79, while a student at Apeiron Workshops in Millerton, New York, someone gave me a film developer to use that was weird and amazing -- Harvey's Panthermic 777 (or so I recall the name). It came in a glass gallon jug, and the more you used it, the sludgey-er it got, and the better the film came out. (I wish I had an image to post from back then, but I don't.) The tonal scale was beautiful, though, and the grain was fine. I shot all 35mm then (as now), so getting that kind of tonality on the negative was a big deal!

In doing some research today for my photography 2 class (looking up info on Acufine, another of my favorite developers), I ran across this info on 777. Quite the nostalgic moment. Thanks, Harvey, wherever you are!