Flak Photo and Review Santa Fe

As I'm about to pack my bags for Review Santa Fe, Andy Adams will be packing Flak Photo with a Review Santa Fe feature running weekdays from May 27 - July 28, 2009. If you don't want to miss a day, subscribe to daily email delivery of Today's Flak Photo or find Flak Photo on Twitter + Facebook! It's good for you.

Gloria Baker Feinstein

The incredible Gloria Baker Feinstein has been working hard to support the children at the St. Mary Kevin Orphanage Motherhood in Kajjansi, Uganda since 2006. After a visit to Africa as a participant in an NGO workshop, she found herself spending most of her time photographing at AIDS orphanages and "what she saw and experienced there pretty much turned her life around."

Gloria started Change the Truth which is responsible for sending nineteen children to secondary school and has underwritten equipment and supplies for a brick-making project, along with providing food and services to the orphanage.

Gloria has combined her beautiful photography with drawings by the children at the orphanage into a book titled, Kutuuka (To Reach). The proceeds from the sale of this book go directly to providing much needed assistance to AIDS and war orphans living at St. Mary Kevin Orphanage Motherhood. To order a book or make a donation, go here.

Sabine Wild

I have been working on a couple of series over the last several years and as I looked at the recent images, the work seemed stronger and more complex, which made me realize the importance of developing and exploring an idea or a subject over a period of time.

Italian born, German photographer, Sabine Wild has done just that. Using digital methods to achieve the effects of abstract painting, she explores the world in a unique way. It's interesting to see the progression of the images over the years, arriving at vastly more deconstructed subject matter that her earlier work. "Sabine Wild is on her way to creating a new art form, one that is closely tied to photography and is yet loaded with the strengths of painting."

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Katie Shapiro

The old adage is that good things come in pairs, and Katie Shapiro has seized upon this idea with a passion. Katie is part of the From Here to There Collective in Los Angeles, has a terrific blog titled Only Diptychs, and has created a new body of work celebrating twos titled, A(part) Together.

A BFA graduate from Cal Arts in 2007, Katie has work in two shows this summer. One currently on display at the City Art Gallery in Van Nuys, CA, and at the end of June, her work will appear in the Works of Man show, juried by Chris Jordan, at Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, CO.

Chan-Hyo Bae

When I attended Fotofest in Houston last year, Chan-Hyo Bae's work was much discussed by the reviewers. Recently exhibited at the Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle, this South Korean born photographer explores his dual life as a Korean living in England.

"In the series, Existing in Costume, Chan-Hyo Bae has chosen the iconography of queenliness to express his feelings as an Asian immigrant. He dresses in period costumes and photographs himself as unidentified members of English aristocracy from the 13th to 19th centuries (all the works are untitled). His self-portraits mimic women monarchs only and are an examination of gender, power, race, and class. Living and working in London since 2004, Bae’s large format color prints reflect feelings of cultural estrangement and reveal a fantasized character that would be accepted and honored."

Nealy Blau

The first time I came across Nealy Blau's photographs of natural settings I was totally charmed, and quite amazed that she had found such painterly landscapes to capture. Upon further investigation, I discovered that I was not far off the mark.

"Seattle artist Nealy Blau's photographs examine the representation of the natural world within a constructed environment. Blau takes photographs of faux natural settings in natural history museums. Unable to distinguish scale, her photographs question reality. Nealy states, "Viewing dioramas inside natural history museums can be a deliriously disorienting, slightly eerie, and discordant visual experience. Yet photographing them, I often feel or sense a presence in them that parallels my experiences in nature in fascinating and subversive ways…"

Whitney Hubbs

If you are in Los Angeles Thursday evening, please attend this month's Four Evenings with Fine Art Photographers lecture series that I am hosting through the Julia Dean Photo Workshops. This month features Whitney Hubbs. Whitney is about to receive her MFA from UCLA and has already created a presence in the fine art world winning the Santa Fe Center's Project Competition Juror's Choice Award in 2007, being part of the Humble Arts Foundation Editioned Print Program, helping create the successful Art for Obama program in 2008, and by having a full roster of exhibitions under her belt. It should prove to be an interesting evening.

Images from A Hand over the Window






Images from Nothing Happens in June