Connection

Photo by Kirk Jones

"Without a connection to your natural surroundings it is difficult to connect to feelings of being alive. We are fortunate to live not only in an area of amazing natural beauty, but in a country that (hopefully) will continue to pursue the protection and respect for nature. It’s a fight." --Kirk Jones

Read more about Kirk in the latest installment of Eye on PDX now up at Prison Photography.

Posthumous Post

Hippies on Corner, Louis Draper

The Louis Draper Project is just getting off the ground. There are a few images on the fledgling site but not enough to form a strong impression. Is this the next Vivian Maier? Gordon Stettinius and Candela would like to think so. But so far the jury's still out, although judging by what I've seen so far I tend to doubt it. Nevertheless I look forward to seeing what develops. I have a soft spot for these posthumous discovery stories. I think we all do.  

More Navel Gazing

Eugene is hosting this year's SPE NW Regional Conference, November 1st - 4th, 2012. It should be great fun. Photographers from all over the Northwest will be in town. Speakers include Arthur Tress, Lucas Foglia, Justyna Baydach, Dan Powell, and many more including myself.

Wait. What? Me? Yes that's right. I've been roped into public speaking, which is definitely not my forte. 

Fortunately I think my topic --Innie/Outie: A Photographic Profile--  may be stimulating just by virtue of the fact that it doesn't get discussed much. In fact after many months recently researching this topic I have found no evidence of previous study. So my talk on Saturday may be the only opportunity for photographers to inform themselves.

Classic Outie: Photographer best suited to direct recording
Photo: Barbie Plankenhorn

My basic hypothesis is that there is a strong connection between belly button morphology and photographic style. If we divide photographers into two camps --Innies and Outies-- those with Innies generally tend to shoot introspective scenes while the Outies tend to prefer direct recording. If you want to put this in terms of the classic Szarkowski study, Outies shoot windows while Innies shoot mirrors. 

If that sounds a bit crazy, consider for a moment that Paul Caponigro, Jerry Uelsmann, Danny Lyon, Ralph Gibson, Judy Dater, Nancy Rexroth, Robert Mapplethorpe and Robert Rauschenberg all had Innie belly buttons. What about Lewis Hine, Gary Winogrand, Henry Wessel, Tod Papageorge, Walker Evans (Reportedly a 3 cm deep belly button), Diane Arbus, Lee Freidlander, Robert Adams, Stephen Shore, William Eggleston, Edward Ruscha, and  Joel Meyerowitz? I probably don't need to tell you. Outies. All of them! Coincidence? The learned scientist knows that there are no coincidences.

Classic Innie: Photographer best suited to introspection 

Of course it's not a hard and fast rule. There is some overlap between the styles. But generally the relationship holds true far beyond what might be expected statistically. My studies demonstrate a clear cause and effect. 

The exciting thing is that my findings are not only descriptive but potentially prescriptive as well. Clients might use belly button shape to choose a wedding or portrait photographer, depending on their needs. Or photography programs might use the shape of a person's belly button to guide students to their best-suited areas of interest. Innies might be led to conceptual or sculptural photography, while Outies would take courses in straight documentary photography. I know what you're thinking, and don't freak out everyone! I'm just throwing out examples of how my study might be utilized. If you don't like it you're more than welcome to come up with your own belly button study, so long as it's supported by science.

This is just a brief summary. I will go into much more detail during the lecture about my exact research methods, belly button measuring tools, the potential for changing belly button morphology, and what this all means for photographers of the future.

My lecture is this Saturday, 11/3, at 3:30 PM. Location TBA. Come up and say hi after. I'm always available for belly button consultations, whether informally or by appointment.

Dreams Are Free

If you're a street fan and you have a few thousand extra dollars burning a hole in your pocket, eBay currently has several Winogrand prints for sale at discount prices. They're offered by photo dealer Katrina Doerner, from an edition of 80 portfolios printed under his supervision in 1981. Note that discount is a relative term here. The Buy-It-Now levels range from $1400 to $3200. That's still a lot of money, but it's actually not much for an original Winogrand. Assuming you're loaded.

from Women Are Beautiful, Garry Winogrand

The prints are all from Women Are Beautiful, which is probably the Winogrand series I'm least familiar with simply because the book has never been reprinted. Not only is it his least acclaimed book, it received quite a bit of flak when it was published (1975) for objectifying women. All of which drove the work into partial obscurity. We've seen glimpses here and there but they've always been overshadowed by his more famous images. Sadly the monograph which was timed to mark the pinnacle of his career has instead become a sort of dead zone for him.

I don't really know how these things work --maybe a large collection was liquidated or deaccessioned?-- but for whatever reason Women Are Beautiful seems to be having a resurgence. They've been exhibited here and here and here recently. I expect to see some of them turn up at the big Winogrand hullabaloo next Spring at SFMoMA, along with a lot of other long lost treasures.

I can't wait to see them in person. In the meantime I've had fun exploring them online. The eBay images are large and well-reproduced so one can get a pretty good sense of what's in them. Even though they're out of my price range a guy can still dream for free, right?

0 FT.

Nickelodeon Hotel, Orlando, FL

Total WTF? picture. It's probably my favorite of the year so far. First person to request it gets a fiber print. (Sorry, no longer available)

Eye On PDX: Douglas Lowell

Pete Brook began Eye On PDX last summer as an ongoing series to explore the rich photo scene of his new home, Portland, Oregon. Each profile featured a brief interview with a local photographer accompanied by a handful of photos. Until now all posts have been on Pete's Prison Photography blog. With my profile below of Portland photographer Douglas Lowell the series expands to B. From this point forward Pete and I will split duties, with each of us taking turns writing profiles and cross-posting on our two blogs. While we're still working out exact details, at this point it looks like Pete will handle all of the photographers who are imprisoned felons and I will handle the rest.

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Before becoming a photographer Douglas Lowell spent many years as a poet. He then developed a successful career in advertising, owning two firms before eventually leaving them to spend more time on writing and photography. He is a recent graduate of Hartford Art School's Limited Residency MFA Program.

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What motivated you to seek an MFA in photography?

I was sitting maybe 8 years ago in the café at the Museum of Modern Art with my two kids and my wife, after having looked at a lot of art, when it struck me that I wanted to spend the last third of my life as an artist. I’d been a poet before giving up writing to immerse myself in a career in advertising. I did this to support my family and see what it felt like to pay all my bills. I realized I had postponed what I believed was the reason I was on earth, which is to create. I had been creating for the sake of commerce, and now it was time to return to creating on my own terms—on art’s terms.

I had returned to photography by then to keep myself sane, and at that moment I decided to fully commit to becoming the best photographer I could be. The fastest path to doing so was to enter an MFA program and study under the best photographers I could find. I knew that otherwise it would take me years and years to get there, and I couldn’t afford that time.

About five years ago, I discovered the brand-new limited residency photography MFA program at Hartford. With the people involved, and its focus on the photobook (which is the heart of my interest), and with the ability it gave me to keep working, I knew it was perfect for me. I didn’t apply to any other programs. It was just lucky that I got in.

from Airplane, 2011

Has a photograph ever made you cry?

I believe the closest I came is the profound feelings of beauty and sadness that overwhelmed me when looking at Masahisa Fukase’s Ravens (also titled The Solitude of Ravens). This was amplified when I learned that Fukase today lies in a coma from falling down the stairs several years ago.

Ravens was made when Fukase’s marriage had just failed, and that sense of devastation is so present in his book. And yet, so too is a sense of the beauty of this life. Perhaps the single most moving photo is actually a pair of photographs in sequence, where we se an incredibly sad-looking and very large prostitute naked on a bed, and then turn the page and see this incredible mirroring image of the face of a fish. The sequence is extremely emotional for me.

from Seated, 2009

In your photos, how important is place? 

Ostensibly, not at all. I don’t consider myself a photographer of place. On the other hand, I have such a long and deep relationship with the places of Oregon that I find myself engaged in that relationship anyway. I love mixing in photographs that come from wherever I might have photographed, so that Paris or London might intermingle with Tygh Valley or the Oregon coast. Mostly I’m looking for images that fit into the work, and not concerned in the slightest with a continuity of place or time. My work isn’t fed so much by place as by ideas.

How do poems act like photos? How are they different? 

The poetry I’m interested in is focused on creating books of poetry, not just individual poems. For instance, Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan, Michael Palmer, Edmond Jàbes, Norma Cole--even going back to William Blake--all wrote books intentionally. Meaning that the book was the poem, so to speak. And the interrelationships between the poems within the book created a whole and were not separable. William Carlos Williams did the same thing with Spring and All and with Kora in Hell. It’s all about creating a much more connected and complex work than just collecting a handful of separate poems. I feel the same way about photography, and, given the renaissance of the photobook, I’m not alone.

The worst kinds of poems are the ones that are a meditation on a subject matter, or, as the cliché goes, things “Often thought but ne’er so well expressed.” Good Lord. That Robert Frost New Yorker Iowa Writing Program workshop poetry crap. It’s such a contained, limited mode of operating.

The poem, or book of poems, can be just as rich and uncertain and infinite as the paintings of DeKooning or the music of John Cage. I feel the same about the photobook. The best of these show the mind of the photographer at work and play in the world, like Ron Jude’s Lick Creek Line or Alec Soth’s Broken Manual. Such photography becomes a semiotic engine that keeps generating meaning every time you go back to it.

Just like poetry, photography involves rhythm, rhyme, melody, harmony, recurring motifs and multiple meanings. To study one, in a way, is to study the other. There’s nothing one can do that the other can’t. They just use different languages. Robert Duncan used to say, “The poem is that which cannot be said in any other way.” So, too, with a complex body of photographs.

from The Brothers Grimm, 2009

That reminds me of Robert Frost's reply when asked to explain his poems, "You want me to say it worse?" I think photos operate in the same way sometimes. When people ask me what my photos mean the best answer is often just to point to the picture. It's all there.

I'm so glad you mention the Frost quote, because I think it illustrates the difference I'm talking about perfectly. On the one hand, Frost implies that his poem could be restated, but only if said "worse." This points to a reducible message or idea that is spoken through the poem. Whereas Duncan is saying that it is impossible to restate the poem. That the poem is made up of so many elements that are open to so many interpretations and meanings in combination with each other that it is absolutely impossible to imagine any other statement, worse or otherwise, of the poem. The poem is not the container of meaning, it is the engine of meaning itself.

This might seem like a small difference, but the two views are worlds apart. It's the difference between Norman Rockwell and Robert Rauschenberg. I imagine this is why Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens got into a fist fight in Florida. Two opposing views of the poem.

You're right to point to the picture. Because, while we can talk about art, and I love doing so, we cannot reduce it to an explanation.

Two page spread from Orion, 2012

What music would best accompany your book Orion?

Hmmm. While I was making Orion, I sometimes had in my head “Search and Destroy” by the Stooges. Iggy sings “I am the world’s forgotten boy.” That’s Orion, in so many ways.

Your company ID Branding set up the Photobooth at Powell's. What are your thoughts on photobooths? Do you have any strong memories or personal experiences in them? 

Funny you should ask. When I first met Colleen, my soon-to-be wife, we started going into photobooths together. That was in Albuquerque. And then, when we moved to Newburyport, Mass, we found this amazing photobooth at Salisbury Beach that had the most extraordinary black and white tones and qualities. I totally wanted to buy that photobooth. It was awesome. Our wedding invitation ended up being a grid that included 17 photobooth pictures. My poor mother-in-law. It was not what she was hoping for.

If I were stupidly rich I would put black and white photobooths in every city in America. It was so lovely that Powell’s liked our photobooth idea, and I understand they brought it back this past summer.

Wedding Invite, 1980

Name one favorite photographer. 

Oh, God. One? That’s like naming a favorite finger. OK, Michael Schmidt. The range of his mind and vision, from Waffenruhe to Ein-Heit, is an inspiration.

Your favorite photo book.

That would have to be Masahisa Fukase’s Ravens.

One favorite poet. 

Impossible task. Right now I’m reading William Blake. I’ve never read him deeply, and his work is the underlying literary text of my current project. So I guess I would say he’s my current favorite.

One favorite painter.

Forced to choose I’d say Gerhard Richter. The fact that he can simultaneously pursue both his abstract work and his so-called photorealistic work is a testament to the possibility of an artist embracing completely different forms of vision at the same time.

One favorite musician.

Bob Dylan. His evolution over the decades is unmatched, and I constantly return to him.

from Reading Sandy Boulevard, 2009

One location in Portland that you most closely identify with the city.

The corner of Broadway and Yamhill. You’ve got old Portland, with Jackson Tower, which used to be the Oregon Journal’s offices. And modern Portland, represented by Nordstrom, which committed to Neil Goldschmidt to stay downtown, which kept the city itself lively and vital. And current Portland, represented by Pioneer Place, where all kinds of strange things happen. For me, that corner is the heart of Portland.

How do you define the Portland photography scene?

I really don’t know how to define it. I would not pretend to know enough to do so. I just finished grad school in August and I’ve had my head down doing my own work. But I’ve depended on Blue Sky, Newspace, Charles Hartman Gallery and Ampersand to feed me, as I imagine our photographic community has. From what I can tell, I’d define the scene as emerging. I was sad to see Raymond Meeks leave, but I’m hoping there’s a momentum of enrichment of our photographic community that’s somewhat parallel to the enrichment this city has gotten from all the young and vital immigrants we’ve been attracting.

Scutaro's Moment

Marco Scutaro: Journeyman / MVP
Photo: Peter G. Aiken, USA Today

I love guys like Marco Scutaro. Look up journeyman in the dictionary and there's a picture of him. I'm serious. He even appeared in a feature film about guys on the fringe of the majors. The guy's been bouncing around the big leagues forever, including a stint with my team the A's during their playoff years in the early 2000s. I remember him as a utility guy. He'd pinch hit here and there. Or fill in the rotation when Crosby or Ellis or Tejada was injured or needed a day off. Eventually the A's let him go and no one thought much about him...until now.

Utility infielder. There are hundreds like him in the majors. They're not All-Stars. They're rarely in the headlines. But they're solid, and in some ways indispensable. They're the glue that binds teams together. But they're not stars. If Scutaro was a city he would not be New York. He would be Eugene. If he was a photographer he would not be Andreas Gursky. He'd be Bill Dane. Or Don Hudson. Or Phil Bergerson. Those are the guys I root for, the unsung glue.

So he gets picked up by the Giants as an afterthought in a midseason deal, works his way into the starting lineup, and next thing you know he's batting .362 for the year. But he's only getting started. Then he gets hot. During the Giants playoff run he's been smoking hot, probably the surest contact hitter on the planet. All of the sudden he is the headline. GMs around the country are looking him up in the database. Who is this guy? Why didn't we pick him? And the best part of all is that he can't be denied. Because baseball is a pure meritocracy.

Baseball is funny. It's streaky, sort of like photography. Sometimes it seems there are photos everywhere. Other times you can't see anything. We all know the dry stretches, and the rich veins.

I'm not a major league hitter but I think trying to hit a baseball has some of the same character. Sometimes it seems impossible. Other times --for Scutaro right now-- each pitch looks like a lazy softball. I know Scutaro's run can't last forever. At some point he will fall back to earth as all baseball players do. But hopefully he can keep flying for one more week. I'll be rooting for him and the Giants, and for photos everywhere.

6 month gap

I've now fallen exactly 6 months behind in my workflow, meaning I'm currently printing from film I exposed in April. The 6 month gap is amazing! It's like opposite day. I look outside today and leaves are turning yellow, but in my photos spring is just blooming. Baseball playoffs are wrapping up, but in my photos we're just coming out of spring training. In a few months I'll be inside during a snowstorm printing photos of swimming pools.

I've written before about creating separation between shooting and printing. (The ideal would be to induce total amnesia or have someone else take your photos for you, but those solutions create other problems) But until now my gap has been inexact. Inadvertently through backlog and chance I've discovered the 6 month window and I think it's quite powerful. 18 months or 30 months would probably work just as well, and I will probably hit those gaps in another decade or so. For now I'm printing as fast as I can to keep the 6 month gap from widening.

Here are 31 from last April:

James Maher: What Was He Thinking?

James Maher is a photographer based in New York City.

Athens Economic Protest from Hotel Grande Bretagne, Greece

This was taken on my honeymoon last year in Athens, which coincided with many of the economic protests.  As a gift, my wife’s grandmother put us up in the Hotel Grande Bretagne, the nicest hotel in Athens, and one that she had fond memories with her late husband in.

The difference between seeing the daily life on the streets of Athens and within the hotel was startling.  The streets were crowded and packed with people and cars and so many businesses were shut down, yet when you walked into the hotel, which was located on the main Syntagma Square, it felt like an empty, grand sanctuary.  There were some businessmen and tourists of course, but it was eerily empty.

On our last night before we left, there was a large student protest and transit strike.  We walked through the protest for a bit but I was on my honeymoon so I did not want to take many photos.  People were packed everywhere and it was getting dark, so we decided to go in.  This restaurant was on the main level of the hotel right by the entrance and the juxtaposition of the crowded square outside and the completely empty, opulent dining room made me feel strange.

There was a blue police light blaring through the window and framing silhouettes of the protestors.  It was a perfect juxtaposition. It felt like one of those puppet theatre boxes.  I felt nervous and safe at the same time, like I could close the curtains if I needed to.  I imagine the feeling is similar to how some of the more well off might feel during these economic protests - simultaneously safe, hidden, and protected, yet only a curtain away from trouble. I took a lot of shots to get this one because people were moving pretty quickly and I wanted to be able to make out the profile of a face.  I like how it looks like they’re whispering secretly to each other, behind the curtains.

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Shades of Red

New York has this way of making people feel overly self-conscious and neurotic.  I hate it.  Between the intrusive advertising, the daily competition, and all of the alphas who live here, it gets mentally exhausting.  The competition can be particularly hard on women since they outnumber men by about 5%.  This shot hit me because it’s the antithesis of all of that self-consciousness; it’s this women with such abnormal looks who is embracing those looks in such a self celebrating way, with the color of her bold clothing and accessories, and how the swirl in the flowers in her shirt matches the swirl in her hair.  Seeing someone celebrate herself like this makes me feel a lot more confident in myself.

I think of this shot as a beautiful landscape of the self-confident, unique woman.  Technically, it was an easy shot to take, but I had to get extremely close with a 35mm lens and wait long enough to get the focus right.  She didn’t notice, but my real worry was all the other people surrounding me at the stoplight. I just acted like I knew what I was doing and moved on.

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Gowanus Fire Hydrant

I’ve always been fascinated by the nature of cities and the people that live within them.  It’s one of the reasons why I do this.  My wife’s also an urban planner so we have that in the family.  When I’m out I’m often searching for simple city moments that mimic the overall simple rules and philosophies of city life.

Then, a couple of years ago, I read this fascinating NY Times article titled, “A Physicist Solves The City,” about a theoretical Physicist named Geoffrey West, who found many mathematical rules that governed the growth and nature of cities.  You’ll have to read the article for specifics, but he compares the city to a ‘sprawling organism,’ and found a set of mathematical laws that govern the nature of every city. 

I’ve had this article in the back of my mind for two years, but always thought any attempt to capture an image that referenced this idea would be futile.  But when I came across this moment in Gowanus it hit me immediately - this looked like the city below a starry sky.  There was this simple visual connection between the upward growth of these plants, fighting through concrete, and the upward organic growth of cities.  What put this image over the edge was a period of a couple of minutes where the sun peaked from behind the rear building and backlit a few of the plants, but not all of them, making this feel like when the lights first turn on in the city just after sunset.

In retrospect, after taking the time to write all of this about the image, “Gowanus Fire Hydrant” seems like the crappiest title ever.  Oh, and the building shown here is about to be turned into a 700 unit luxury apartment building.

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Human Zoo, Occupy Wall Street, Zuccotti Park

I had spent a couple of days doing interviews and portraits with the protestors for a news article on what daily life was like in the park during the protests.  Half the camp was made up of kids who just wanted to have a fun adventure and didn’t care much about the protests, while the other half were dedicated and passionate people who worked hard to keep the camp going.  But pretty much everyone told me they were sick of the coverage, the photographers and interviewers in their faces, the tourists asking them questions, and that they felt like zoo animals.  Many people used the term zoo animal to describe how they were being treated.

They thought of it as a problem, but when it came down to it that’s what their advantage was; that people were actually watching intently and paying attention to them.  I wanted to try and capture this feeling, this dynamic, and this relationship between the protestor and the onlooker, so I went back the next morning while the protestors were still sleeping and things were still quiet.  My original aim was to get the onlookers in the frame with the sleeping people, but then the early morning sun broke through and created these gorgeous long shadows from the figures of the onlookers.  I was very fortunate that this recipe was there right in front of me.  In addition to the shadowy figures being a metaphor for the shadowy figures watching behind the scenes, the sleeping bags also eerily remind me of body bags.

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Guess in Red

This is one of those photographs that explains me a little bit.  I grew up with a very bad case of Attention Deficit Disorder, which luckily has subsided somewhat as I have gotten older.  I wasn’t one of those terror kids; I was one of those kids who sat quietly and pretended I was listening even though that was usually the furthest from what I was actually doing.  The trick was, if I was looking at you, I probably wasn’t listening.  If I was looking away, there was a good chance I was listening.

I also grew up in New York, which is one of the great meccas of external stimulation, especially on the streets, with the flashing signs, lights, advertisements, the loud sounds, and interesting people to break my attention every few minutes.  Over the years, I’ve become interested in the power that advertising has on influencing people and intruding on their lives.  It intrudes on mine.  When I passed this storefront window it made me think about all of this, especially with the powerful red, attention grabbing figures and faces.  Something about the red faces made me think about my attention issues.

I stood here for 30 minutes looking for something to complement the windows, but even I couldn’t have imagined something so exact.  Maybe even I underestimated the power of influence.  This can’t be a coincidence - can it?

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The Cigarette

This is one of those photos that has helped me realize more about how I shoot from looking at it after the fact.  Technically, it was the end of a long day and beginning to get dark.  I was a block away from home and the last thing I was thinking about was taking a photo, but fortunately my camera was on my wrist, the settings were set for the dusk, pre-focused to a normal depth, and it ready to go.  It was pretty instinctual, I turned my head as I was passing and saw her face and just got close, framed quickly, and shot.

As I’ve gotten to understand myself a little better, I’ve become more interested in this photo.  When I shoot without thinking I often frame like this and I always wondered why.  But I think I figured it out.  I can get hyper focused on expressions. The photo may be crooked, but if you notice, the face is perfectly horizontal.  The photo’s actually not crooked at all.  The cigarette is almost acting as a level for the expression.

Aesthetically, this shot happened to turn out beautifully, with the flowers, the two locks, the ornate grating and post, the cigarette, and even the framed eye in the background, but what I have realized over time is that all of that stuff is just a beautiful frame for that face.  This shot is all about that face; the self-reflective face of an exhausted, depressed hairdresser in a city that is not kind to workers in this sort of low-paid position.  I see this same, imprisoned face many times each day.

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Untitled Film Still #21 by Cindy Sherman

This is obviously not my image – although I wish it was.  It’s a Cindy Sherman self-portrait and one of her most famous works.  Even though this is not a street photograph it’s had a lot of influence on my street work.

This is one of the first photos I can remember from when I first learned about photography.  The reasons why I was drawn to it at first were superficial: the low angle elevating the stature of the person and the tight, beautiful and proper city moment, contrasted with the glance that alludes to so much more beyond the simple frame.  I thought, why can’t I just find these moments out in the wild.

Over time though I became more interested in the self-portrait aspect, as well as the meaning of the photograph and its relationship to candid photography.  I’ve given up wondering about whether or not photographs tell the truth – we go out there trying to document life, but who knows if we’re actually capturing people accurately.  There’s what we see and believe and there’s so much more beyond each frame.  However, what we are capturing accurately is ourselves and our perceptions of these moments, which somehow seems even more telling and honest. You can learn a lot about yourself by what you capture.

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Mona

This was taken in the crazy holiday crowds on 5^th Avenue.  It was almost too much for photography and I was getting bumped around and I’d see things but then would get cut off by so many people who would ruin the moments.  I had to just pre-focus and hip shoot cause there was not time for anything else.  For this shot I wasn’t thinking anything, except the face just hit me - this young girl’s confident, calm, ever-so-knowing smile within this sea of chaos.  Also, it seemed so familiar but I couldn’t figure out why. Then a couple months after taking this, I realized the face held an uncanny resemblance to the Mona Lisa.

I wanted to speak about this image because I love photographing kids, but it’s much harder these days.  I don’t know if it was the internet or Law and Order, but now everyone with a camera is a pervert.  It doesn’t stop me but I’m careful.  I wonder if it’s ever possible to turn the tides back in our favor.  There’s just something so magical when you are able to capture these innate qualities in young children who haven’t yet had much life experience, but you can get a feeling for what they’re going to turn out like when they grow up, just from a simple glance into their eyes.