Happy Anniversary!

Today is the second anniversary of this blog. My first post here was April 30, 2007.

I started this blog mainly to document a sabbatical I took during Fall semester, 2007. My school requires a fairly detailed post-sabbatical report, and I figured that a blog would serve that purpose well (which it did. My post report consisted mainly of a printout of the entire blog, which is why my personnel file in the Human Resources office fills two thick file folders).

After returning to work, I kept the blog running, mainly as a way to show new work as I made it, to share work in progress, and discuss art in general. I've done that, but have posted less frequently in recent months. There's a couple of reasons for that. One, I usually spend much less time in the studio during the school year than I do over the summer. Two, while I have a lot of ideas in my head, I haven't been making too much of them. School lets out soon, and I'm hoping to jump right into the studio (and yard work, riding my bike, cleaning the house, and all the other things that get ignored when I'm teaching).

I've also kind of forgotten about posting work by other artists that I like here. I really want to pick that up again (artists and art lovers: Send me links!).

So there we have it. I like the blog, and plan on keeping it running. If I get ambitious, I'll actually post here more than once a month. While waiting for posts here, you can always check out A Photo A Day, my other blog (which had it's one-year anniversary yesterday). There, you'll find a new photo nearly every day, along with a few comments about it.

One last thing: The image at the top of this post was something I found stapled to a telephone pole in Ann Arbor, MI, sometime in the late '80's. I've always thought it funny. I have no idea why it was there, or what the original source was.

Expiration Notice

I just had a piece published in Expiration Notice, a new photo blog for photographers over the age of 35 who are making good work but aren't famous.

Unfortunately, it looks like the blog will be going away for a while. They are taking the summer off, while looking for some sort of sponsorship. They say they will publish again in the fall. I hope they do, I like the idea a lot. I have nothing against younger artists, but it can be frustrating seeing so many opportunities that limit the age of who is eligible.

From The Archives III

I’m nearing the end of spring break, which has been quite productive. I’ve worked a great deal in my studio this past week, and have a lot of work in progress (and a lot of thinking to do). I don’t have anything ready to post here, however, so it’s a good time for the third installment of From the Archives, wherein I post an old piece of work and write some comments about how it was made and what I was thinking about (you can read the first installment here, and the second installment here).

Doppler #1 was made in the summer of 1997, after finishing my first year of graduate school. Nearly all of the work I made my first year at Cranbrook reflected an interest in scientific structure and notation. After school let out, I was determined to continue the momentum in my studio practice and work throughout the summer (which was the first time since 1981 when I didn’t have a job over the summer). Carrying the ideas of structure and notation into the work I made over that summer, Doppler #1 was an attempt to visually recreate and diagram Doppler effect (changes in pitch of a moving object's sound). In this piece, the photographic fragments, the objects in the photographs, and the spaces between the strips of photographs get wider as they move from left to right across the composition. References to motion and sound occur throughout the photographs used to create this piece. Here’s a close-up (excuse the fuzziness, it’s a scan of an old slide, and I couldn’t get it to turn out well).


I shot the photos on a warm summer evening. I had my partner Kevin put on dress clothes, and I shot him playing his violin near a freeway overpass in a semi-wooded area close to where we were living in Ann Arbor. I waited until large trucks or other vehicles were on the overpass, as I wanted to emphasize motion and feature things that produced sound in the photos.

After processing the film, I scanned the negatives, and manipulated them in Photoshop by stretching and squashing the images. These manipulated images were taken to a digital imaging lab, where they were printed onto pieces of photographic film. I used this film to make the prints. There are three 20” X 24” photographs in this piece, all printed in a traditional wet darkroom on photographic paper. These prints were cut into strips and reassembled onto a large sheet of heavy paper (approx. 36” X 80”).

Doppler #1, along with a second doppler piece (with the unimaginative title Doppler #2), are the culmination of my lengthy exploration of scientific structure and notation. Upon finishing the two doppler pieces, I felt I that this direction for my work had run it’s course. I returned to school in the fall of 1997 determined to work in a different direction. Which I did, after a couple of false starts. I don’t think I did much with these pieces. I’ve never exhibited them anywhere, and I don’t remember ever critiquing them a Cranbrook. I liked them at the time, but they were lost in the shuffle of wanting to do something different with my work. Now, they’re in a closet in my studio.

Update

I found this today and thought it fit well with my last post. It's a time lapse video of tourists on Abbey Road in London posing like the cover of the Beatles album.

Original Ideas?

I shot this photo in London in 2003 (you can read the details here). This sort of shot isn’t unusual, and it isn’t difficult. It’s done quite often. As ideas go, it’s not the most original one, even if it is fun.

The other day, I found this photo on a blog I read:


I like this quite a bit. Instead of shooting someone holding up the Tower of Pisa, the photographer (who wasn’t credited on the blog) shot people posing for other photographers who were taking the ‘holding up the tower’ shot. The first time I looked at this, I thought it funny and original. The second tilme I looked at it, I thought it looked a lot like the work of Martin Parr. It looked so much like Parr’s work that I did a Google image search for ‘Martin Parr Pisa’. What I found is that the photo isn’t Martin Parr’s. He did do a photo very similar to that, however. You can see it here, along with a short discussion on his work.

Of course, that same Google image search turned up several other examples of people ‘doing a Martin Parr’, and shooting people in a similar manner as in Parr’s photo (you can see several interesting ones by the same photographer here). Parr has, in fact, done an entire book of photos of this sort, titled Small World. I haven’t seen it, but it’s probably great. Most of his work is.

Turns out, I’ve done this type of shot as well. This was shot in 1999, in Rocky Mountain National Park:


Above the treeline in the Rockies, the grasses and mosses grow at an extremely slow rate. Walking on them can cause irreparable damage. Signs are posted everywhere warning people to stay on the paths and to avoid any wildlife. These tourists selfishly ignoring those signs and trodding on the delicate grasses while chasing after the wildlife made an interesting, if annoying photo.

Looking at and thinking about these photos raises a question. When a subversion of a typical tourist photo itself becomes typical, do we accept the seeming scarcity of originality, or merely chalk it up to independently occurring ideas? Or, do we look for the next way to be subversive, even though we know that someone else is probably thinking the same thing?

New Polaroid Pieces

I returned to teaching this week after a semester break that was shorter than usual (and felt like it). While on break, I kept busy by making some Polaroid lifts and transfers. I tried something different with these. I took clippings from various magazines and comic books, stuck them in a slide mount, and used these as the slides I made my Polaroid prints from. I must admit that’s not my original idea. An independent study student of mine was doing the same thing last year while learning how to do Polaroid processes. I will say, however, that I’ve done a pretty similar thing for years. When I’m between projects, I take old magazines and comics, throw them on a light table, and photograph what I see. Here’s a page from a magazine I shot back in 2005.


While making these manipulated Polaroid prints, I tried doing both lifts and transfers with the same images. Here’s a Polaroid lift:

and here’s the same image done as a Polaroid transfer:


I expected the differences in the surface between the two pieces. What I wasn’t anticipating was the difference in color between them.

Here’s another lift:


and the same image done as a transfer:


Again, there’s a big difference in color between the two.
I think I know why this occurs. Polaroid lifts start with a fully developed Polaroid print. The photographic emulsion is removed from it’s original backing, and placed onto a new surface. Because the print is fully developed, the color is pretty accurate (for a Polaroid, that is. Polaroid prints aren’t known for having good color).

Polaroid transfers, on the other hand, are made from the negative half of a peel apart Polaroid print. The negative is peeled before the print fully develops. Because the color layers of the film transfer one at a time, depending on how long you wait before pulling the negative off, some of the color layers may have transferred to the print surface, and therefore won’t show up in the transfer.

Here’s one more set of prints. The Polaroid lift is first, followed by the transfer.




While this was fun and kept me busy for a few days, I’m a little ambivalent about the results. I like them, but I’m not sure how much I like them. I made about fifteen prints total, and I’m not sure if I’ll be doing any more like this. My favorite is the Polaroid lift you see above of the face with text on it. I’m considering trying a gum bichromate print of that image. If that turns out, I might make more of these (provided I can get Polaroid film, which just stopped being manufactured).

Words Of Advice

I was surfing the web just now and found this, purportedly a quote by filmmaker Jim Jarmusch. I liked the message, and given what it says, it seemed appropriate to take it and post it here.
Click on the image to see a larger version.