Alejandro Cartagena

I revisited this work as a reviewer for Critical Mass and enjoyed the opportunity to learn about what is happening south of the border.

Alejando Cartangena has a new series, Fragmented Cities: Surburbia Mexicana, that gives us a fascinating look at suburban growth in Mexico, where economic profit has over shadowed significant suburban planning.

This is a representation of the current Mexican suburban sprawl with a focus on the Metropolitan area of Monterrey. The implemented economic strategies dependent on urban development made by the Mexican government since 2001 has pushed urban growth out of the regulation of metropolitan city plans, creating contradicting policies that have allowed construction firms to build more than 300,000 new houses around the 9 cities of the MAM. Consequently, this speculative demand is granting a green light for developers to urbanize in ways where efficient roadways, recreational parks and proper public transport systems stand far from becoming a reality. Different from other urban renewal plans of economically stronger countries, like China's, where the government uses its power to displace people out of their homes in central urban areas, developers here only seek to find the cheapest land (wherever this may be) in order to generate bigger profit.

What I strive for with the whole Suburbia Mexicana project is to point out and open relationships between issues created by an economy-driven State and how our society resides in the dilemma of living as capitalists but wishing for a fairer World.

Inspired Brilliance

Earlier this October, the Berlier Festspiele presented an open-air spectacle in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Little Giantess and the Big Giant, created by the legendary French street theatre company Royal de Luxe, amazed and astonished Berlin’s people and visitors and resurrected this moment in world history and the overwhelming emotions of 1989.

Royal de Luxe - LE RENDEZ-VOUS DE BERLIN, DAS WIEDERSEHEN VON BERLIN from Nina. on Vimeo.

Click on photos to get a better sense of scale....

Carl Bower

This week I am featuring a selection of Critical Mass portfolios that were stand-outs in my very subjective opinion. There are numerous others that have already been featured on Lenscratch.

Something about Carl Bower's series, Chasing Cinderella: Beauty, Denial and Defiance in Colombian Pageants, sucked me in. I'm not the only one, as Carol received the Blue Earth Alliance's Prize for Best Project Photography with this work. Carl lives in Washington, DC and has a compassionate and insightful perspective on women and children. His compelling series, Diane's Story, about a woman's struggle with breast cancer, received a Clarion Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography.

The pageants of Colombia are a petri dish for examining the nature of beauty and how we cope with adversity. Set against a backdrop of poverty, crime and the hemisphere's longest running civil war, nowhere are the contests more ubiquitous and revered. In these carefully scripted shows of fantasy, beauty as a concept, commodity and singular goal is stripped to its raw elements. There is no ambiguity or pretense that anything else matters. Icons of a rigidly defined ideal, the contestants highlight the conflated relationship between beauty and attraction. Many stir recollections of the same perfect features seen elsewhere, with the same flirtatious laughter, mock surprise and relentless optimism. In their quest for adoration many erase all traces of individuality. While the contests often provoke outrage and ridicule elsewhere, in the Colombian context the issue is more complicated. The pageants' popularity ebbs and flows with the level of violence in the country. Millions follow the contests in a vicarious relationship with the queens, clinging to the Cinderella fantasy of magically transcending poverty. The contests project an image of normalcy, a refusal to be defined by the violence or to live as if besieged. They are a form of denial and defiance, an escape, wholly frivolous and possibly essential.

Simone Lueck

This week I am featuring a selection of Critical Mass portfolios that were stand-outs in my very subjective opinion. There are numerous others that have already been featured on Lenscratch.

Los Angeles photographer, Simone Lueck's, new series, The Once and Future Queens, answers the question of how long we will wait for our 15 minutes of fame. Simone has explored the quest for the spotlight in other series, but this one shines the light on women who still believe that Hollywood might come calling. The fact that these are collaborations with strangers makes them even more interesting.

I live in LA and I like it here. I like that the palm trees were all planted at the same time. I like that Gloria Swanson played herself in Sunset Boulevard. I like that she had it, and then she lost it, and she didn’t know the difference. I like that she buried her dead chimp in a satin lined casket. Making pictures in LA is good. It’s like sifting through an old trunk filled with worn out fan letters and a bright blonde lock of hair from 1953. I am fascinated with the performance that exists and is played out in the ceremonies and rituals practiced every day. In 2009, I have been making pictures of people posing as glamorous movie stars. The series, The Once and Future Queens, includes pictures of individuals who answered an internet advertisement soliciting older woman to pose as glamorous movie stars. The pictures are collaborations: Each participant is asked to provide her own makeup, hair and wardrobe and to select a desired location for the shoot. The project came from my fascination with glamour, a remnant of Old Hollywood.

I know Where the Wild Things Are

Max Records as Max


If you are in need of Wild Things, and unless you consider Supernanny a source, how about checking Shawn Records' backyard! Shawn, the wonderful blogger, organizer, and photographer who has made Critical Mass such a success, has a few things going on in his own world. His amazing son Max, was the star of Spike Jonze's movie, Where the Wild things Are, based on the book by Maurice Sendak. I happened to catch him on Conan and he's a pretty special young man. Shawn traveled with Max for the filming and has created a book of on-set images, titled Owner of This World. It can be purchased through Publication Studio. Big congrats to the Records' family....

Max by Shawn Records

Kerry Kolenut

This week I am featuring a selection of Critical Mass portfolios that were stand-outs in my very subjective opinion. There are numerous others that have already been featured on Lenscratch.

Kerry Kolenut, a recent MFA graduate of the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, is a story teller and an observer. The series she submitted to Critical Mass follows the personal and geographic journey of Mike and Colleen through the various places they have called home. Exploring her work further, she has several series that are fascinating windows into contemporary suburbia. Fair Lawn, is a typology of brick houses, and Televison and Activities explore what happens in those houses. Her work is included in two current exhibitions, Family Ties:The First Wave at the Fox Art Gallery at UPenn, and Experiencing America, at the Gormley Gallery at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland in Baltimore.

Communities are part of our everyday lives, in some way or another we are involved in multiple communities that all function differently. For the last few years I have been exploring how community functions in neighborhoods. One way of examining this is through an individual’s housing from a social as well as geographical point of view. Taking two individuals, Mike and Colleen, and photographing their structural history, I am interested in how people often make assumptions about an individual based on location of their home. Starting with the homes that they occupied as children, and continuing through to the architectural structure they currently live in, every property has been documented in its current state. By tracing their geographic history, I am investigating how their identity has been shaped through their relationship with the dwelling and the surrounding community. In presenting these images along with personal text from Mike and Colleen, it examines both the public and private elements of an individual within a community. Impressions and judgments often change once familiarity is established, by telling personal stories about the structure, events that took place, and people related to the property, the viewer becomes acquainted with the individual and can follow them throughout their life. This allows an idea of who these people are to be formed. Following two particular people, it interesting to see what influenced them in their lives and lead them to their current home. An important question that this raises is how do people arrive in the present and what values, attitudes, and mindsets follow them throughout their lives?