Mothe Nature is sure entertaining.  Ain’t she great?

Friday, September 18, 2009

Fraction Issue 9

Fraction Issue 9 is up and running. Stop by and take a look.

featuring work by
Alexis Pike
David Ondrik
Jennifer Ray
Keith Johnson
Bethany Souza

New book reviews from Corey Dzenko and a look at Robert Frank’s “Looking In” by Jonathan Blaustein.

A new/old picture made yesterday but shot a couple of years ago at the Addison Museum at Andover, MA.  Taken at the Southworth & Hawes exhibition curated by Grant Rohmer from GEH.  He contributed the title.

Keith Johnson: Finding the Social Landscape

Center for Photography at Woodstock

Sat-Sun, June 13-14

Upstate New York is full of both natural and man-made wonders. From the Hudson River to the Catskill Mountains, from wildlife to industry and from the local residents to the visiting tourists; this workshop will investigate how the natural landscape and the social landscape collide to offer up grand photographic possibilities.

Walking in the footprints of some of history’s greatest artists, we will investigate our surrounding area and all the wonders that encompass it. This workshop will encourage you to find a personal way of seeing and interpreting a multi-layered environment. We will seek out the social landscape that surrounds us and begin to create stories and observations about it. Students will share their individual opinions about what photographing the landscape means within their work. There will be lectures, critiques and shooting trips in the surrounding area and beyond in search of the photographic holy grail. This is a workshop for fine art photographers, professional photographers and experienced amateurs who want to explore the photographic possibilities that are just outside the door.

Come spend the weekend in Woodstock photographing a wonderful array of landscapes, towns and history.

Please bring: a portfolio of 10-20 images, your favorite camera and lots of film/memory cards.
Class limit: 15 / Tuition: $325 / CPW members: $295

I have heard a bunch of terrific guitarists but boy can Elliot Fisk play.  We saw him last night at Yale at their annual Guitar Extravaganza.  He is Segovia’s last student and played baroque to contemprorary with three ovations in two hours.  That boy sure can play.  Do not miss him if he comes around again.  He is a world traveler extraordinaire.

8 days of 80* sunny weather, only to return to New England and 7* temps and snow.  62 days until Spring.

After seeing the three grids together it is clear to me that I need more space and probably a mat around them as well.  Maybe two to three feet between possibly even four.

Flies over Niagara, 2008

The beginning of new work shot while AIR at CEPA in Buffalo.  

Three days of graduate students and critiques was an exhausting blast.

Do Not Open is available at the CPW auction 10/11/08.

On Friday I head to Woodstock, NY to give the fifth workshop of the summer (technically the last workshop on the last days of summer) Photographing the Social Landscape.  Sunday I am in Rochester to conduct a seminar with graduate students at Visual Studies Workshop, then on to Buffalo for my residency at CEPA.  Good news arrived yesterday that MAC Group (Leaf USA) has shipped the Aptus 75 for my work in Buffalo and Niagara Falls.

I thought that the digital age was going to make decisions easier, quicker and better.  I shot a bunch of stuff digitally while at Penland and two things have happened: I left my charger there so I cannot get into my (now dead) computer to see what I did, plus my external HD is formatted for PC and the Mac will not recognize it.  Thus I sit with pictures in two devices with no means to access until the charger arrives.  Additionally the film shot is on my desk waiting to go to the lab which is now 30 miles away (the last local lab closed July 15).  Ugh.

Rain.

Day three of the workshop hostage crisis.  36 hours of rain and more promised today, the woodworkers are making biblical references in their measurements, and while NC needs the rain desperately, there are eight photographers aching to to get outside to make Landscape Photographs.  With any luck we may get to Spruce Pine (or Spice Prune as it is known to many) to take in the sights.  More later (with pix)

Penland Schoolof Crafts is about one hour north and west of Ashville, NC in the blue Ridge Mountains near Spruce Pine.  An idyllic place with green and more green and small mountains and trees that won’t quick.  The nights are dark and noisy with screech owls and aktydids.  Searching for landscapes means finding places where the horizon is more than a hundred yards away; not a usual occurance.  The school attracts world class craftspeople in the traditional crafts (in an effort to preserve them) and photography.  I am teaching a digital color workshop without computers at a traditional craft school…go figure.  More later.

Yuma Rocks along with nearly 200 others will be auctioned off to support the PRC Boston’s best photographic concern.  Link to the PRC to see the catalog published soon.  Great work is available, have a look.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/fashion/17photo.html?ref=fashion

Here is a marveous sign of our times and culture, in today’s NY Times Style section.  You don’t like who is in your (family) pictures?  Have them deleted.  You didn’t make that historical event?  Add your image.  It is a marvelous time.

I received an email that desrves wider distribution.  Stephen Dybas, former student and now colleague from VSW, has taken over the reigns of th In-Sight Photography Program in Brattleboro, VT.  His first task as director is to roll out the 2008 auction, a worthy cause and one with its heart in exactly the right place.

Have a look at what John Willis started and Stephen has assumed.

Best to you Stephen.