It's been a bit hit and miss with blog posts these days. I feel like it's not just me though. Perhaps the blog hysteria hit a breaking point. Perhaps not. Perhaps it's just the beginnings of Summer and people want to be outdoors.

At any rate.. I have some news that I would like to share. As some of you know I had my first solo exhibition at Yancey Richardson back in October of 2008. Being in group shows, being published or having a solo show is a funny thing. It seems that while some shows lead to sales, others lead to little other than an addition on your CV and others lead to the opportunity to show more work down the road.

In my case, Wallflower at Yancey Richardson Gallery landed me in my first museum exhibition in Vienna, Austria due to Austrian curator and collector Peter Weiermair stopping in to see the show. If you take a peek at the list of artists involved you will surely understand my absolute and utter excitement and nervousness to have 5 pieces hanging in such company! I am flying to Europe in several days. I am so excited.. not only to be involved in the show, but to travel to Europe for the first time. I'll be in Zurich, Vienna and Berlin. If you have any tips or recommendations for galleries to visit, places to eat, visit, etc... please do pass it on to me. I'm pretty much going into this blind.

PRESS RELEASE INFO:

The Portrait. Photography as a Stage
From Robert Mapplethorpe to Nan Goldin


© Nan Goldin, Shiobhan in my Mirror, Berlin, 1992

OPENING:KUNSTHALLE wien, hall 2,
July 02nd, 2009 19:00

Press conference: July 2nd at 10am
Private Preview: July 2nd at 5:30pm
Official opening: July 2nd at 7pm
----

I am visible,
I am image.
-Jean Baudrillard

When the history of photography began to unfold with portraiture in the nineteenth
century, one’s own image was cause for astonishment and rapture. Since its discovery,
the photographic medium has satisfied people’s desire for their likeness and largely
replaced the more demanding and costly painting. Considering the new technologies
available today, with which it has become possible to manipulate any image easily,
inexpensively, and quickly and to change and improve the appearance of the human body
as desired, the role of the portrait as a mirror of the subject’s personality and as a medium
of identification has to be aesthetically questioned and recontextualized.

Starting with Robert Mapplethorpe’s formalist studio photography, Peter Hujar’s intimate
psychological pictures, and Nan Goldin’s visual diary, the exhibition explores the
changes of portrait photography since 1980. Searching for beauty, authenticity, and a
personal visual language, artists have since then developed an unconventional art of
portraiture encompassing glamour and mise-en-scène, radical realism, snapshot, irony,
and documentary objectivity. The selected works combine to form a panorama of today’s
image of man, where icons of society appear next to anonymous individuals.

Artists:
Roger Ballen, Tina Barney, Valérie Belin, Dirk Braeckman, Clegg & Guttmann, Andrea
Cometta, Anton Corbijn, Rineke Dijkstra, Amy Elkins, JH Engström, Bernhard Fuchs,
Alberto Garcia-Alix, Luigi Gariglio, Anthony Gayton, Nan Goldin, Greg Gorman, Katy Grannan, Jitka Hanzlová, Peter Hujar, Jean-Baptiste Huynh, Leo Kandl, Barbara Klemm,
Gerhard Klocker, Andreas Mader, Sally Mann, Robert Mapplethorpe, Hellen van Meene,
Judith Joy Ross, Thomas Ruff, Stefano Scheda, Beat Streuli, Wolfgang Tillmans

Curator: Peter Weiermair

Artists present at opening:
Valérie Belin, Andrea Cometta, Amy Elkins, Luigi Gariglio, Anthony Gayton, Greg Gorman, Leo Kandl, Gerhard Klocker, Andreas Mader, Stefano Scheda

More info HERE

AND BY ALL MEANS... if you are in Vienna or nearby COME SEE IT!

Testing the waters with an M7 on my last trip to CA. Felt far more free to move about than with the RZ, though moved a tad slower with the rangefinder focus learning curve. Give a little, take a little. I shot far more than I normally would have just because I could use it so much more spontaneously.
(pardon the work scans... they are from digi contact sheets)



Brynn in Early Morning, Ventura, CA. 2009



Willow and the TV, Oxnard, CA. 2009



Matthew after the River, Ojai, CA. 2009

Cara and I (wipnyc) are pleased to announce the recipient of the WIP-Lightside Individual Project Grant in the amount of $3,000 is Erika Larsen for her project Sami, The People. Her solo show on wipnyc.org will launch June 16th with images from the project. More information about her project and Erika will be presented at that time, for now here's a sneak peek.


© Erika Larsen | Nils Peder from the project Sami, The People

Erika's website is here, though doesn't host the new project just yet. The day after we awarded her the grant she flew across the globe to shoot more work. We're all excited to see what she comes back with!

Save the date: June 9th.

Doug DuBois is having a book signing for his first monograph Doug DuBois: All the Days and Nights (Aperture). His work is wonderful. He will also be doing an artist talk about the work, starting at 6:30pm.

Tuesday, June 9, 6:30 pm

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th floor
(between 10th and 11th Avenue)
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555


© Doug DuBois

Last minute post!

Work was insanely busy today... but I wanted to post a last minute plug.. and show my support for the lovely Brian Ulrich in his second show at Julie Saul Gallery in NYC. Brian is seriously one of the sweetest and most generous of the blog / photo community that I have come across. And his work is superb. Perhaps I'll see you there!

Info about this show from Julie Saul Gallery's website: Thrift and Dark Stores is a continuation of his larger project, Copia, a long-term photographic examination of the complexities of the consumer-dominated culture in which we live. His prescient insight into post 9-11 consumerism boom has awarded him a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship.

The exhibition will feature a series of nine 30 x 40" color prints from the Thrift series, a combination of portraits and interiors. The Dark Stores will be represented with a sequence of small prints hung tightly as a nod to Ruscha's storefronts and other similar projects and one large scale store front-a defunct Circuit City.


© Brian Ulrich | Target, 2008

Opens TODAY May 28 | 6 - 8pm
May 28 - July 3, 2009
Julie Saul Gallery
535 West 22 Street
New York, NY 10011

Sweet..

Last weekend "Domesticated: Men and the Domestic Interior" opened up at Transformer Gallery in DC. It was reviewed in this weeks Washington Post. Below is the excerpt about my work. It was such a sweet surprise to wake up to Friday.

"One artist here -- the most compelling of the lot -- offers androgyny as an alternative to gender codes. Brooklyn-based Amy Elkins photographs two shirtless young men in half-length portraits that mimic historical modes of female portraiture. As we look at these men, we're reminded of a long tradition of Venuses as well as the Greeks' love of a luscious boy. The subject of "Kyle" proves an especially rich muse, his arm crossed over his chest in a gesture suggesting both protection and flirtation.

What works about Elkins's pictures is their lack of clear-cut agenda. Yes, they participate in the preconceived -- and sexist -- modes of art history. But they never, ever replicate them." - Jessica Dawson for the Washington Post. May 22.


From the artist talk at Transformer on May 16th

Half way through May

Past the swine flu onwards to... NYPH 09, Hiroh Kikai, the WIP Grant call for entries closing, Men and the Domestic Interior opening in DC and all sorts of other jazz.


© Hiroh Kikai

Time is truly flying right now and I'm having a hard time keeping up! It's only going to get busier. Last week I went to go see Richard Renadli and Doug Dubois speak about portraiture, intimacy and family at the Affordable Arts Fair. I'm a bit late on writing about it, but it was really impressive to see the two of them up there speaking back and forth about one anothers work and sharing their ideas of photographing intimate moments with strangers and family alike. The work paired up really nicely and I am glad I made time in my afternoon to catch it... especially considering my work is primarily intimate encounters with wallflowers and family, etc.

As for this week... well there are a million amazing things to do and once more my health has sort of collapsed and prevented me from taking the plunge. NYPH opened last night and I had to skip out due to having severe allergies / some sort of sinus issue. It's still lingering which makes me quite blue, as I really wanted to make it to Yancey Richardson Gallery tonight for the opening of Hiroh Kikai and August Sander. I absolutely love both of these photographers and can only imaging how amazing the show must look. I'll have to swing by next week to have a look.

Tomorrow at NYPH my WIPNYC partner Cara Phillips will be speaking on a panel with Joerg Colberg, Laurel Ptak, Brian Ulrich and Andrew Hethrington on blogging and building community at 11:00am. If you are in the area, check it out.



Saturday I hop on megabus and head down to DC for the opening of Domesticated: Men and the Domestic Interior, curated by Al Miner and including the works of Yolanda del Amo, Dru Donovan, Jamil Hellu and yours truly. If you are in the DC area info is as follows:

OPENING:
May 16, 2009
Curator and Artist Talk, 4pm
Reception 5 – 8pm

Transformer Gallery
1404 P Street,
NW Washington, DC 20005
202-483-1102

I'm sure the insanity will keep rolling. It's all good insanity though so I'll be posting again soon.

This is Your Warning..



Had a brief and fun encounter out in Philly that included Zoe Strauss' I-95 event. Walked away with this amazing image. Zoe's night time text pieces are fantastic!

And away we went...

I think this is my favorite photo from the upstate trip I just got back from. I need to get out of the city more often. Especially when it's 90º!! Thanks to all that came. The trip was a wonderful time.

© Peter van Agtmael

I found this photo from Peter van Agtmael's project on Uganda quite lovely. Love that the figure is engulfed by the landscape and perhaps am feeling my own desire to go trek around outside and feel small in the midst of more natural surroundings.

I'm about to hit a new birthday decade next week and am taking the weekend to escape from the city and enjoy the last bits of my 20's in a cabin in the Catskills with friends. Hoping it will hit the reset button.. both my own and on this rainy soggy weather I'm growing weary of.

© Laura Letinsky

It's friday and the weather is finally shaping up!

With that comes a write up about the $3,000 WIP grant and about how WIP has formed a lovely presence in the photo/art world was posted on Livebooks blog today by the lovely Miki Johnson.

Have a look! And don't forget to submit to the grant here!!
Don't forget it's a 3 part submission and all 3 parts are needed to be awarded the grant.
Application, Images and Payment. Good luck to all!!

(Eligible to all women working in photography, including artists selected and featured on the site, open as well to those completing their degree in the class of 2009**).

**You must be completing all classes required for your degree in April and May of 2009 / ie: do not need any more classes to graduate. Not eligible to those enrolled in summer school or those continuing classes in the Fall.

Images posted are selected from our WIP solo show submissions, not grant submissions. I am just thrilled to be working with so many talented women and wanted to share some of the wealth.


© Zoe Strauss




© Abby Robinson



© Michele Abeles

I LOVE THESE GUYS!
And they are lecturing tonight for free. Details below:


© Oliver Chanarin and Adam Broomberg


Visual Arts Theater
333 West 23rd Street
TONIGHT, April 13, 2009
7:00pm - 8:00pm

The BFA Photography Department at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) and Dear Dave, magazine present photographers Oliver Chanarin and Adam Broomberg in conversation with curator and writer Susan Bright. This is the second in a series of monthly conversations exploring contemporary photography among noted artists, critics, curators and editors.

Oliver Chanarin and Adam Broomberg have worked as a collaborative photographic team for over a decade. Based in London, their work seeks to examine the language of documentary photography, and fuses conceptual practice with social activism. They have produced six books together including, Ghetto (Trolley, 2003), which won Photo District News’s Best Book of the Year Award, and The Red House (Steidl Editions, 2007). Their work has been shown at The Hasselblad Center, Sweeden; The Photographer’s Gallery, UK; National Portrait Gallery, UK; Victoria & Albert Museum, UK, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, John Hansard Gallery, Southhampton; and Brancolinigrimaldi, Italy. They are represented in New York by Bill Charles.

Susan Bright is an independent curator and writer. She is the author of the bestselling book Art Photography Now (Thames & Hudson, 2005) and curator of the 2007 exhibition Face of Fashion, at the Royal Portrait Gallery in London. She also serves on the photography faculty at SVA in New York.

This event is free and open to the public.


© Oliver Chanarin and Adam Broomberg

Gray



I finally got around to getting new work on my site.
Added a Wallflower or two and a handful of images to my Gray project. Enjoy.

Rewind

Been back in the darkroom a lot again lately. Slipping in and out of blogging and following blogs of others. Honestly I'm never quite sure how many follow this, as it doesn't follow quite the academic or informative nature of most blogs. In fact when I started this blog back in 2005 it was primarily to host the project, Beyond This Place: 269 Intervals, a project of extreme personal nature that chronicled the 269 remaining days of my fathers incarceration at a Federal prison in CA. That project morphed into Half Way There, following the days my father spent in a Re-Entry House, otherwise known as a Half Way House in Culver City, CA.

At this point those personal projects, due to the scroll-like nature of the blog, have long been buried. They don't exist anywhere but here, deep in the archives. At some point along the way I expanded what I blogged about: hosting more thoughts, works of others, small reviews and links.. but my heart still embraces the personal workings of my creative nature and I default to intimate/particular ramblings and the like. Nothing much has changed, I reckon. And yes, I still do photograph myself daily, I've just stopped posting them here, and started posting them here instead. With the three chapters of this daily regimen (Beyond This Place, Half Way There and Everybody Knows This is Nowhere) you are brought from Friday, January 27, 2006 to Wednesday, March 25, 2009: 1154 days from the start date to the end date, or 3 years, 1 month and 27 days and counting. Whew. I got nothing on Noah Kalina, who I met due to our parallel obsessive projects.. but we're both not backing down any time soon. It is quite interesting to literally make an image every day for years on end. I feel at times I might as well be flossing or checking the mail, it's so very, very routine.

On with the ramble. I've been falling in and out of pouring thoughts over photography and pulling away from photo all together. Being an active artist/photographer has such unpredictable ebbs and flows. In order to put 100% in, it seems you sometimes have to pull 100% back to stop and look at where you are. Perhaps this is all babble that others don't relate to, but lately I've just really felt the strain of wanting to produce new work beyond the capacity I'm able to. In shooting lulls I've found such importance in looking back at work and reconsidering it. I've been revisiting negatives in the darkroom, reworking my site, my commercial book, rewriting statements, rethinking projects, making brainstorm trees and sketches. I've been reading, writing, watching for inspiration. It becomes so easy to want to shoot, shoot, shoot. I think often all these steps before and after get neglected due to time restraints. Curious what others do when the lull hits. It's been a long winter after all. I find the light is just now shifting to what I desire. That long stretching warm light is so much nicer than the cyan cast of cold weather.

With the shift in weather comes a new season. Things coming up on the horizon:

- WIPNYC-Lightside Grant call for entries beginning April 1st, 2009. The link to apply online and sumissions guidelines will be posted then at wipnyc.org.

- Nymphoto Collective is working on it's fourth group show and first call for entries to be exhibited at Sasha Wolf Gallery. See link for submission info.

- I like the idea of this quite a bit. 6x6x2009 the Second and Final year. Call for works. The goal- to gather as many pieces of original 6" x 6" works of art. Each person may submit up to 10 artworks and there is no submission fee. Artworks due: May 10, 2009 at 5pm / Opening June 6th and running through July 16th 2009.

______


In addition I am involved in some really fantastic events in the not too distant future that I will be sure to remind folks of as the dates get nearer. For now:

- I am pleased to be included in the four person show Domesticated: Men and the Domestic Interior, curated by Al Miner. Tranformer Gallery, Washington DC: May 16- June 20, 2009

- And beyond excited to be included in The Portrait. Photography as a Stage From Robert Mapplethorpe to Nan Goldin -Curated by Peter Weiermair. It will be held a the KUNSTHALLE wien museum in Vienna Austria from July 03 - October 18, 2009.

"The Portrait” sketches the development of the photographic portrait from the 1980s until today, examining the numerous forms of relationship between the photographer and the photographed and concentrating both on the self-presentation of the subject in front of the camera and the mise-en-scène by the person behind it. Thematic nodes such as glamour and self-portrait, snapshot and presentation, anonymity and intimacy, stardom and society reveal stylistic and iconographic strands springing from different approaches to capturing the image of man. The subject’s value in terms of representability and the photographer’s gaze at his carefully selected or incidentally found “object” intertwine in the pictures of a portrait gallery encompassing icons of society besides unknown individuals. The camera lens both masks and unmasks what if focuses on.

Artists included: Tina Barney, Valérie Belin, Dirk Braeckman, Clegg & Guttmannn, Anton Corbijn, Andrea Cometta, Rineke Dijkstra, Amy Elkins, JH Engström, Bernhard Fuchs, Alberto Garcia-Alix, Luigi Gariglio, Anthony Gayton, Nan Goldin, Greg Gorman, Katy Grannan, Jitka Hanzlova, Peter Hujar, Jean-Baptiste Hyunh, Gerhard Klocker, Andreas Mader, Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton, Judith Joy Ross, Thomas Ruff, Stefano Scheda, Beat Streuli, Jürgen Teller, Wolfgang Tillmans, Helen van Meene.

Whew! That was quite a post.