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new one i wrote for LPV magazine
a blog post about art and social media, looking at work dealing with art and social media, now disseminated through an artist’s social media
includes work by Brad Troemel, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Louis Doulas, Dan Abbe, Ben Vickers, Anthony Antonellis, and Chris Dorley-Brown
…
- “The artist’s online brand tends to function as a kind of live-action role playing artist statement… a vehicle for creating an authorial context that viewers may use to better understand the vantage point an artist’s ‘actual’ work is coming from (i.e. what they’d exhibit in a gallery or show on their portfolio website).”
I’ve seen/heard numerous creatives say as much about their own approach to social media, and I wonder if it’s not a potentially useful development. Gaining a sense of an artist’s work via status updates and blog posts is, admittedly, a less direct, less coherent process than simply reading an artist statement. But so what? For those users willing to pay attention and connect their own dots, the “live-action artist statement” model provides a great deal of functional context for an artist’s work – and, as an audience member, sounds to me like a far more engaging and liberating prospect than trudging through an obligatory written text. (Which isn’t to say that we’d benefit from the outright abandonment of artist statements – it’s important that creatives be capable of developing and presenting articulate accounts of what they’re doing – but I do think the authors present a pretty interesting idea here.) …
(via christopherschreck)
"Mr. Larson, a photographer who teaches photography at the Maryland Institute College of Art, has been working with Marni Shindelman, a Rochester-based photographer, for more than two years on a project using location coordinates to combine Twitter messages with photos from the places where the posts originated. Mr. Larson calls the pairings, many of which have a melancholic feel, “anonymous tributes to anonymous people."
(via photographsonthebrain)
"I welcome the eager, the ambitious, the hungry, those delirious and desirous to forage into the unknown. Young, old, naive, established, I want to hear from you. I want to hear about your crazy ideas. I want to be bored by your stupid ideas. I want to engage in philosophical conversations with you about memory, history, technology and the nature of photography. I want something new. I want to be challenged. I want your energy to frighten me. I want to sit down with you in a pub, in your town, on your time, on my dime. We’ll make things right, we’ll make things happen."
(via photographsonthebrain)
Went to this photobook meetup on friday, organized by Bryan Formhals, Joerg Colberg, and Noah Kalina. I brought the Gabriel Orozco book. Here’s a photo of my presenting it, an odd mid-sentence expression on my face.
Can’t wait ‘till the next photobook event!
Here’s a partial list of the books that were presented (next time we’ll make sure to get a full list.)
Rockaway, NY – Roe Ethridge
Edges – Dolores Marat
A – Greg Halpern
Portraits of Native America Life – Edward Curtis
Sightwalk – Gueorgui Pinkhassov
A Road Divided – Todd Hido
One Thousand – Phillip Lorca diCorcia
Redheaded Peckerwood – Christian Patterson
Liberia Retold – Tim Hetherington
The Printed Picture – Richard Benson
It’s all good – Boogie
Photographs – Gabriel Orozco
Moll 31 – Wiebke Loeper
White Sea Black Sea – Jens Olof Lasthein
Earth From Above – Yann Arthus-Bertrand
While looking for something completely different, I stumbled upon my copy of Twenge and Campbell’s The Narcissism Epidemic (which, oddly, was sandwiched between copies of Strassler’s The Landmark Herodotus[unread so far] and Vollmann’s magnificent Europe Central), and I came across the following
“Self-promotion and individuality are seen as essential to getting into the right school or hired by the right employer. This type of flagrant self-promotion is actually difficult for many people […] There are books […] that tell you how to promote yourself just the right amount. This type of self-promotion may grow even more accepted if unemployment rises and more people are fighting to get jobs.
“The irony is that all of this self-promotion doesn’t work very well at a societal level. The exact same number of students gets into elite universities, the same number of people get plum jobs, and the same number of faculty get tenure. All the self-promotion results in absolutely zero increase in overall success. The only difference is that everyone self-promotes - the standard rises for everyone.” (p. 273, stress in the original)
It’s easy to adapt this passage to an art-world context, fill in “getting into the right gallery” here and “gets gallery representation” there etc. Given I’m getting ready for a trip I don’t have time to write more about this.
But I can’t help but think that the very last sentence I quoted (“everyone self-promotes - the standard rises for everyone”) really is something to think about: Given that the opportunities a growing number of photographers are competing for (gallery representation, commercial/editorial jobs, etc.) are either constant (or even declining) is an ever-increasing amount of self-promotion a good idea? I’ll have to get back to this later.
(via photographsonthebrain)
"The most interesting bloggers and editors write about the projects and work they’re featuring. They tell us why it’s important, why they appreciate it or an idea it evokes. As a photographer telling the stories behind the photos, adding context, narrative and generally presenting your audience with something new and original about the work will be more engaging, and more creatively rewarding for yourself I believe. That’s what I’d like to see more of from photographers and publishers and I don’t think I’m alone. We should strive to not only showcase the work, but to provide new insights and stories about it."
“The photography-integrated-into-life method is decidedly unfashionable. The huge majority of photographers I saw at Photolucida were more project oriented. The prevailing model is to develop a concept of something that has photographic potential —often of personal interest but not always— and then methodically take photographs of that project until a body of work is created, with the ultimate goal of showing the work at Photolucida or similar venue.
……
I think photographs should come first. Arrange them in projects later if you must or else leave them as is in a big loose stack. Either way, photography that is integral to life seems to me to be the strongest because it comes from purest motivation: the very simple need to translate the world into photographs. Of course I am biased because this how I approach my own work, but it’s what I like to see in others too.” - Blake Andrews
"Photographers get too caught up in their routines and mental patterns. Everything becomes planned, almost scientific. Chance, luck, fate, messing with it all. You’ve got to do it. You’ve got to mess with your reality, mess with your own brain to really make something unique."
(via bloodoftheyoung)
"Photographers get too caught up in their routines and mental patterns. Everything becomes planned, almost scientific. Chance, luck, fate, messing with it all. You’ve got to do it. You’ve got to mess with your reality, mess with your own brain to really make something unique."
(via photographsonthebrain)
By now it’s rather common for photographers to share work from projects in progress. In fact, it’s so common that I think we’ve taken for granted how big a change this is from the past. You’ll often hear photographers from an older generation say things like “only show your very best work” or “never show your contact sheets,” advice many photographers still heed, but I think amongst younger photographers we’re seeing a tendency to show more photographs from projects, many of which will likely end up on the cutting room floor.
Not only are photographers showing more work but they’re also openly discussing their projects on blogs and other social media channels. This provides other photographers and fans with an opportunity to glean insights about the project as well as follow the travails that accompany working on a long term project.
I think photographers who are transparent with their process and share openly make a stronger connection with their fans and other photographers. Emphas.is is a perfect example how this might work on a larger scale. We’re already seeing evidence of how fans and followers can become apart of the process which offers some exciting possibilities for collaborative projects in the future.
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