Watershed is for sale as a book right now through Blurb. So, if you just can’t wait to see the book published through a regular publisher (which I’m pursuing right now) click below and see what the Blurb version looks like…
I just saw Bill Callahan (the artist formerly known as Smog) at They Grey Eagle in Asheville, NC last night. Out of the 5 shows I’ve seen of his, this one was his best. For those of you that know him here is the set list, those of you that don’t just think of these songs as a great starting point:
Honeymoon Child, Diamond Dancer, Say Valley Maker, Mother of the World, River Guard, Day, Rock Bottom Riser, Cold Blooded Old Times, Let Me See the Colts, Prince Alone in the Studio and the encore was Bathysphere
The finale of “Prince Alone in the Studio” had Bill on the Piano, and it was amazing!
Click on the images below for larger versions…
So, as a photographer I completely understand the lure of photographing the Salton Sea. Many photographers have documented the Sea, the most notable being Richard Misrach, and the subject of the Sea seems to verging on cliche these days.
However Kim Stringfellow has a book that really adds something to the library…
Greetings from the Salton Sea: Folly and Intervention in the Southern California Landscape 1905-2005
© Kim Stringfellow
I really liked the book and all the historical information that was included about the sea itself. I really wish the publisher hadn’t printed the images across the gutter though (imagine the above image split across two pages). However the book provides a thorough history of the sea. The countless mistakes that led to its creation, it’s heyday as a recreational destination, and its demise into an ecological disaster.
I have some work from the Floodplain project in a group show with several other landscape photographers at The Visual Arts Center at Tidewater Community College. It will up through the end of this month.
I’ve just started reading Lucy Lippard’s The Lure of the Local, and it is blowing my mind. The book brings together everything I’ve ever found interesting in Photography and Art and relates it under our sense of place (as Americans.)
The connections it reveals are really enlightening. So far, it has discussed issues such as regional art versus a more international art like what comes from New York. Regional Artists such as Dan Higgins who has documented the struggling city of Winooski, Vermont for the past three decades, through his Onion portraits:
© Dan Higgins
© Dan Higgins
The top image is of local residents in Winooski in the 70’s and the bottom is of Iraqi refugees in the 90’s. These multiple portraits of struggle and individuality in this small town remind me of Mitch Epstein’s Family Business, which documented another struggling town Holyoke, Massachussetts through the frame of his father’s failing furniture business.
© Mitch Epstein
These two projects seem like a really good introduction to this sort of documentary photography. But more importantly for me, provide a contrast to a trend in contemporary art and films, something Alec Soth discusses in a recent post “Art + Borat” on his blog. I’ll let you read his post and won’t try to synopsize it, but the most important line for me was:
“While I laughed along with everyone else at Borat, the movie left me sick to my stomach. The fans at the rodeo are a part of America, but they aren’t America. Same with Prince’s biker-chicks. As much as I respond to the work, I hesitate to give myself over to it. Pamela can have Richard Prince (and Kid Rock and Tommy Lee). I’ll take my wife, please.”
After I read this I came upon this quote by Louise Erdrich in Lippard’s Book:
“We are part of a social ebb and flow, people washing in and out of suburbs and cities. Like hunter-gatherers, we must go where we will be fed, where the jobs are listed…Whether we like it or not, we are bound together by that which may be the cheapest and ugliest in our culture—[brand names and Golden Arches and celebrity recognition]. These symbols and heros may annoys us, or comfort us…at the very least they give us context.”
This idea that these celebrities represent our culture is a sickening one. The work of these “local” documentarians has something infinitely more interesting: a sense of the place.
Well, this blog has really just turned in to a “bi-annual news on my website” blog. But as soon as I find some free time I will add some interesting posts.
Anyway, I’ve been up to North Carolina countless times since my last post and there are a bunch of new photos to prove it. Take a look at the Watershed project
Brad and Amanda Walker, The French Broad River, Marshall, North Carolina
I just returned from shooting in North Carolina for the Flood Plain project.
Watch the Watershed page over the next few weeks for new work.
Just in time for Christmas!!! I am selling my photographs at rock-bottom prices to clear off my shelves!
As some of you know Blair and I have moved to Savannah.
Which is good, but our place is about half the size of our Asheville apartment and we need space!!!
Most of the prints are from my “Fringe” and “Easy Answers” series.
The sizes range anywhere from 12×12″ to 16×16″ However I am now also selling the framed prints…
Prints are priced at $45.00!
Framed Prints are priced at $85.00!
The work can be seen at my website: http://www.jeffreyrich.com
This could have been me! And some other people I know…
Take a look at the above link to see Todd Deutsch’s Gamer’s series, which is really amazing…
© Todd Deutsch
I just re-watched one of my favorite movies, After Life by Hirokazo Kore-eda.
A good introduction to the film can be found here.
This may be redundant if you’ve already read Alec Soth’s blog…
But, I thought I would put all the links referenced in his discussion of online slideshows here in one place…
Or at least the ones I found interesting…
Pedro Meyer’s I Photograph To Remember here.
Christopher Anderson’s Bolivian Elections. This is a great slideshow, with an interesting use of consecutive images to create a real sense of the environment.
Tim Hetherington at foto8. Also, the other artists on this site are really interesting.
And the rest mentioned in the comments:
http://www.blueeyesmagazine.com/
http://www.mediastorm.org
http://www.magwerk.com/
www.documentography.com
Iraqi Kurdistan
