Light grid v. 2.  Where is it going?  Stay tuned.

This new work seems to be about mark making…b&w too, stay tuned.

They keep showing up and now I am looking and pushing to make more.  This at the Elwanger Garden on Mt. Hope in Rochester.  17×75 in.  These are a problem to show on the web; either they are too wide for the frame (particularly on a laptop) or to accomadate the width they are about an inch tall.  Onward.

I continue trying to figure out just what the appeal to the extended frame idea is.  17×42 in.

Some new landscapes that have been marinating recently.  This is Goodman & Highland.  17x 76 in.

We ate lunch in Coba, a Mayan ruin town, at a Mexican food factory with this marvelous arrangement hovering over our table.  How could lunch get better?

Opening February 1 in New Haven at Kehler Liddell Gallery the ten print Suite Niagara plus ten additional grids all from 2008.  I am pretty high on this work as it was the kind of work that presented itself and also told me when the idea was done.  I like that.

Using the holidays and having to prepare for an upcoming exhibition as an excuse for not posting for a while, and with guilt beginning to show up, I will try to get back on track.

The Niagara Falls residency work is printed and posted on the web side in the gallery Suite NIagara. Ten grids of the experience of being at the Falls. The prints are 24×32 in. printed on Museo Silver Rag and matted 30×40 in. I have a show being installed January 18 at Kehler Liddell Gallery in New Haven, CT.

In additon are another ten grids from 2008. I am very happy to show the work from this year as interesting progress and picture making has happened. The adage that the future is already in the work holds true, and as a result I am hanging on to the developments like a water skiier hold on to the ski rope. More soon.

Why grids? I have been mulling this over for some time now; partly to write a cogent statement about the work and partly to figure out why they are happening at all. I had a long email conversation with Neal Rantoul, a long time user of the grid, about what grids do and, to be sure, his insight helped.

Some historical context first. I began making extended pictures seriously in the early 80s (perhaps even late 70s) but my first extended piece was made in 1971. I still have it in my studio and I can say that beyond the historical context it provides, it is awful. I think that early piece was a result of the book/exhibition by Nathan: “Vision and Expression”. John Wood and my experience at VSW furthered my interest in seeing and thinking beyond the single frame. I think about how frames of film are attached theoretically as well as literally in/about time and this gave basis for my picture making. I also traveled often with Bart Parker whose pictures were extended images within single images by virtue of in-camera collage and then extending those with text and other images. He has always made my head spin around.

Cubist painting gave insight about multiple views. I am not involved with that kind of creation but being able to record views/elevations of front, right center, etc., and see them together was instructional. Much of my early work with extended images was somewhat random and heavy handed, and very literal. Later I learned about typologies (and topologies) to discuss, compare and contrast stuff and conditions.

It seems to me that often when I am attracted to some picture hovering, it is the idea that attracted me. My job as a photographer is to ferret out what that is and then construct/create a compelling visual understanding. The stuff I have been attracted to is interesting as surface or idea or irony but minimal in nature. My involvement with is rarely a single picture but rather 4-8 frames as I attempt to better understand why I stopped in the first place. We speak about bracketing our exposure, our focus, our camera angle. I found I was making a mess of exposures to find or focus on what attracted me in the first place. It is as a result of the contact sheet that the extended pieces evolved, when I would see on the sheet or light table a bunch of related images I could make connections within the connections. The connections reveal the idea of the extended image of the whole being much stronger than the parts.

Then it occurred to me that as the pictures are taken over a period of time, they represent time.  A contact sheet was about the passing of time in a roll of film all connected by the film.  The grids I am working on are about time in the way that film stills are about time.  Connected by the presentation format, and becasue of metadata I know the time that has passed, the interval, and the duration of each frame.  Another layer of meaning.  Additionally the graphic component of what the resultant amalgam of images (often unexpected but invited) and of course the typologic comparison and revealtion.

Each grid is 24×35 matted out to 30×40 in.  I want to see how these look mounted 12-15 in. apart on one wall, there may be a fouth (and possibly a fifth).

I am surprised so many Niagara pictures have emerged, and yet I think there are a few mor to investigate.  I remain hanging on.

3/3 from Niagara Falls

Part two of three parts of Niagara Falls.

22 Seconds: 450000 gallons

I remain amazed by the power and feeling of the falls. I may put this and the picture below side by each.

This was taken on the LX Tour.  

144 protraits in 25 minutes with a chorus of “Rawhide” playing in the background.  We had to do something because of the rain.  Thanks to everyone at dinner 8/27/08 at Penland.

What started as a lark ended up as a minor obsession; one friend thought there were 98 too many.  I give you “99 KJs“.  Position 4E is me and Keith Johnson in a Denver hotel bar each at different conferences.

Yuma Rocks is available at the PRC annual auction 10/25/08.  Given the tough economy please come to the auction and help the PRC, truly a worthy cause.

Good oysters, too.

450,000 Gallons in 22 sec.

Niagara Falls is an amazing site.  Visual, audible, tactile, and amazing all at the same time with 450,000 gallons of water right there…amazing.  Maid of the Mist was the intent.