Caleb Cole

Lenscratch is on vacation and a number of photographer friends have stepped in to fill the void. I am thrilled to have a post by Caleb Cole, a photographer whose work I discovered while juroring Critical Mass last year, and have followed his upward climb ever since. I thought it would be interesting to get his perspective as an emerging photographer on the rise. His unique and humorous work was featured on Lenscratch last October.

Images by Caleb Cole


Aline has asked me to write a little bit about entering Photolucida's Critical Mass and my life since being selected a 2009 Critical Mass Top 50 finalist, but the modest success I've enjoyed began a little earlier than that, so I'll start there.

I graduated from New England School of Photography in 2008, unsure of what to do next to begin my artistic career. I started a blog with my friend Steph Plourde-Simard called Existing Light about our journey as emerging photographers, about our struggles and discoveries as we tried to figure out our way. To motivate ourselves to get over our fears and to get our work out into the world, Steph and I created a contest to see who would be the first to submit our work to 50 calls for entry. The winner would have bragging rights and the loser would take the winner out for drinks.

I made myself an Excel spreadsheet of where I wanted to enter, then where I had entered, what I had sent, and how much I had spent. I submitted to most of what I could find and to everything that was free. At first, I wasn't selected for a lot of things. In fact, I wasn't selected for most things. Calls where I thought I would be a fantastic fit never wrote me back. Then after dozens of resized jpegs and reformatted artist statements, I was finally selected for one show, and then another. Both Steph and I were among the 15 finalists for the 2009 Boston Artadia awards (out of nearly 600 entries), and I was selected to receive one of the 7 finalist grants. I entered because it was free, and because I wanted one more submission in my quest to beat Steph. I honestly never thought I would win considering the impressive pool of applicants (artists of all disciplines with decades and decades of experience), but I did and it was amazingly affirming to have such a wonderful organization put their faith in an artist who was just starting out.

First of Fifty


Then I was rejected for a different grant that I applied for, but the foundation offered me a solo show instead. Every rejection began to feel like a future possibility, or a necessary step to get to the next success. Eventually, I was so busy making prints and framing and doing other work related to successful entries that I hardly had time to submit to more calls. I decided that if I were going to submit my work somewhere that it would need to be to a call where the payoff was huge--- enter Critical Mass. With the possibility to have my work seen by over 200 influential people in the industry, I made sure to enter. I honestly had no idea what the jury would think of me. I worried that my work somehow looked too commercial or too digital or was too strange. I saw the color photo work on all my favorite photo blogs and none of it looked quite like mine--- where did my work fit? I had to tell myself that it was worth it to submit if only to have such well-respected people see my work, no matter what the end result. I ended up being selected as a part of the Top 50 and had the opportunity to exhibit in a show of all the Top 50 at Photo Center Northwest.



My experience with Critical Mass has been overwhelmingly positive. I've received great feedback (not all positive but all useful) and made wonderful connections with not just gallery owners and curators, but also other artists. It definitely increased my sense that I was part of a larger artistic community rather than a lone artist in my small corner of the world. Critical Mass allowed my work to be seen by so many people, and some who liked it shared it with other people or put it on their blogs (Thanks, Aline!)--- now I have opportunities come my way and at first I won't know how they found out about me, but it usually comes back to Critical Mass.



Even though I've had a lot of success, I still have a lot of rejections. Calls that seem like great fits still yield no response. I can't let my previous wins affect the attitude with which I approach calls to entry (expecting to be selected) and I always remind myself that each entry is a fresh start, another step on the path of my artistic career no matter what the outcome. I get to spend time with my work, hone my edit, rework my artist statement, and get my work and my name in front of some fantastic people. It isn't always about the win; it's about the process.



Since Critical Mass, I've been busy in the best of ways. I've been making a lot of new work, both for my series Other People's Clothes that I submitted to Critical Mass and work involving other people and other artistic mediums. I'm now represented by Gallery Kayafas in Boston and I have a solo show there opening in a few weeks on September 10th (receptions on September 10th and October 1st). I'll also have work in a group show at Southern New Hampshire University called Traversing Gender opening September 20th (reception on September 22nd). If you're in the New England area, I'd love to meet and chat with you at an opening!

Sarah Hadley on Al Davalle

Los Angeles photographer by way of Chicago, Sarah Hadley, shares work by Al Davalle on Lenscratch today. Sarah is an accomplished photographer in her own right, and this year, also took on the task of spearheading a new photo festival in Chicago, the 2010 Filter Photo Festival. Her work was featured on Lenscratch in 2009.

By Sarah Hadley
I first came across the work of Al Davalle on the Lenswork website. His ghostly, abstract black-and white images caught my eye because they were like nothing I had ever seen before, and when I found out that they are images of wood dust frozen by strobe lights, I was intrigued. It turns out Al has been working with wood for over 25 years and he loves wood and loves trees and so was prodded to do a photo project about this passion by his friend, the amazing photographer and teacher Jeff Curto.

Over several months, Al said he shot hundreds of images of wood - of the furniture he was making, his woodworking tools, wood varnishes, and even the trees in the woods behind his house. None of these photographs stuck with him. But one day, while sitting in his wood shop, he saw the light hitting the wood dust floating through the air and he realized how beautiful it was and thought
he'd try to capture it.

The results, a project he has named A Universe Within, are mesmerizing.

Images from A Universe Within

Ann Mitchell on The Still Life

This week I am on vacation and a variety of photographers from around the country are contributing to Lenscratch. Los Angeles photographer, educator, and good friend, Ann Mitchell, wanted to reflect on her appreciation of still life imagery. Much of Ann's own exquisite imagery is captured with a large format camera, and surely the slowed-down nature of working this way makes her appreciate the time it takes to create the perfect composition.

By Ann Mitchell

I've always had a real love for still-life photography - it's this incredibly difficult and lonely thing - creating an entire world out of the nothingness of a studio is not for the faint of heart. Just like large format, it requires mad photo skills. You've got to master lighting, working with props and composition, and it's all got to be in service to a concept.

For the most part, even early 20th Century masters such as Paul Outerbridge worked as commercial photographers long before their work was discovered by the art world. I first saw his work in the early 1980's at the G. Ray Hawkins Gallery. Hawkins had recently purchased a large portion of the Outerbridge estate and had started to promote the work. Outerbridge brought his love of Modernism to advertising photography and was an early adopter of color photography - back when you had to create your own color.

Jo Ann Callis was deeply influenced by the work of Outerbridge early in her career at Cal Arts. She loved "his interest in images that appear to be beautiful and mildly seductive, before you realize something is not quite right." I could say much the same about her work - Cheap Thrills manages to be tempting and slightly unnerving at the same time. Callis also chose to work in color and integrate performance into many of her images.

In the late 90's American Icons, by Carrie Mae Weems, explored domestic still lives by using stereotypical racist figurines such as Uncle Tom and Aunt Jemima to "endeavor to intertwine themes as I have found them in life - racial, sexual and cultural identity and history - and present them with overtones of humor and sadness, loss and redemption." Her use of b&w imagery also brought a nostalgic quality to this series.

Irving Penn, who died last year, was the "holy grail" for editorial photography still-life. Unafraid to bring art into all aspects of his imagery, his exploration of still-life elevated his editorial work for Vogue and in many ways his work was ahead of its time. In After Dinner Games he moves the eye throughout the image while incorporating his use of the neutral but still textural backdrop know as a "Penn Drop."

Laura Letinsky's work combines a contemporary minimalist approach with a luscious use of lighting. Starting in 1997, this series, Hardly More Than Ever, creates "observations of forgotten detail, remnants of daily subsistence and pleasure." I love how she allows the space to be such a strong element of the composition - like an actor who's not afraid to be silent.

I want to thank Aline for this opportunity. It gave me a chance to think about an area of photography that I loved for many years, but haven’t practiced since the 90’s. Still-life is part production design, part social anthropology, by it’s very nature it allows the artist an opportunity to comment on their world and what’s important to them.

James Friedman on Gratitude

This week Lenscratch is on vacation and I have asked a variety of photographers from across the country to fill in for me. James Friedman shares several wonderful posts from his blog, about his early days as a photographer. Jim has a new website, and it's worth spending time with his wide variety of image making. Two of his projects, Pleasures and Terrors of Kissing, and Interior Design were featured on Lenscratch in June.

by James Friedman
Gratitude Part 1 August 6, 2010

Recently, I was thinking how fortunate I was to have studied with Minor White at MIT, one of five students in the experimental graduate program he developed, Toward A Whole Photography. After reviewing my application and a portfolio of 35mm copy transparencies of my photographs, Minor requested I travel to Cambridge for an interview and to see my original prints. It was in April 1972 that I first met Minor, in his office in the Creative Photography Program’s facility; it was housed above DuPont Gymnasium, where later I would spend considerable time playing basketball before and after classes (no, Minor never played basketball with us, though we invited him). When I walked into Minor’s office for my interview, I discovered him on the floor napping. I didn’t want to disturb him, so I said his name softly and he quickly rose from the floor, smiling. His long white hair began to glow as it interrupted the sunlight flooding in on that spring afternoon.

The interview lasted two and a half hours as we discussed the program, my portfolio and contemporary photography. He told me to expect a letter inviting me to participate in the program, scheduled to begin in September. As I was leaving, Minor asked what my astrological sign was. Only later did I learn that astrology would be central to my graduate studies at MIT. Still, it seems odd that an institution like MIT would include as part of the curriculum individual meetings with Minor’s astrologer. The “reading” of our astrological charts was to provide useful insights into our creative process. My session lasted more than three hours—and to this day, when I’m in need of creative inspiration, I refer to the notes I took during that meeting.

from Minor White, January 31, 1975


As a teacher, Minor dealt with each student in radically different ways. In providing feedback about photographs, he was kind and supportive with some students while he responded to others with highly negative and incisive criticism. Sensing that each student required a unique response, he was able to assess his or her needs swiftly and, for the most part, with accuracy. For me, it was helpful though, at times, dispiriting, for him destroy some of my photographs and throw them in the trashcan next to his desk. Intuitively, he knew I needed someone to challenge me in provocative ways. His strategies forced me to make decisions about how I wanted my photographs to affect an audience.

I think about Minor every day. I left Toward A Whole Photography radically changed and certain I would devote my life to being a photographer.


Gratitude Part 2 August 15, 2010

Because Minor White’s Toward A Whole Photography at MIT was a one-year graduate program that offered no degree, at its conclusion I decided to pursue a master’s degree. In the autumn of 1973, I was admitted to the graduate program in photography at San Francisco State University. During a seminar in my first semester there, the idea of inviting some of the Bay Area’s prominent photographers to our class came up. Our first choice was Imogen Cunningham, then 90 years old, who was enjoying long over due recognition and still active as a photographer. I was chosen to call and ask her to participate in our seminar, but in speaking with her, Imogen declined, explaining that her assistant had just quit and she was overwhelmed with work. Without much thought, I blurted, “I’ll be your assistant.” She said she’d think about it. After sharing the bad news with my classmates that she had declined our invitation, I forgot about my conversation with Imogen. Several weeks later and much to my surprise, I got a phone call from Imogen. She asked when I could begin working for her; “Immediately,” I replied. Apparently, she had checked me out by speaking with her longtime colleagues and good friends Minor White and Jack Welpott; Jack was chair of San Francisco State’s photography program and one of my professors.

from Imogen Cunningham, November 6, 1975


Sunday, October 28, 1973 entry from my journal:

Friday (10/26), I began working for Imogen. When I arrived at her house, she greeted me with, “I want you to put my past in order. I have to get ready to die…my father was 98 [when he died] and my mother was 88. How old was your father [when he died?].” I replied, “He was 48.” (Even now, I have no idea how she knew my father had died.) “Oh, he was young. Well, you haven’t got long, have you? It all depends on your father. We’d better get started.”

“Do you know Brett Weston? No? Well, don’t bother…Edward Weston was unlike what you’ve read about him—he was arrogant—he wrote me a letter, saying he was going to be great! The person who taught him to see was Margarethe Mather. Nobody knows that but she taught him to see. I knew his wife and five mistresses. Margarethe was the best. She and his first wife saw him off to Mexico together, when he went to be with another mistress, Tina Modotti.”

From 1907-1909, Imogen had been one of Edward Curtis’ assistants in Seattle. On the floor near the entrance to her workroom, she had a beautiful, unframed photograph of an American Indian in a canoe Curtis had signed in pen. There was also a portrait of her shown in profile with her hand under her chin, done by Curtis. She said that Curtis had given her the original negative and when she was reprocessing it last year (1972), she immersed it in water and the emulsion separated from the glass plate and floated away.

Imogen’s house, really a cottage, shows a life devoted to photography—at this point about 75 years. There are photos everywhere—original Edward Weston works and there is a 4” x 5”, exquisite print of Imogen’s “Triangles” in the bathroom. On her bookshelves are many out-of-print books such as Edward and Charis Weston’s The Cats of Wildcat Hill—Imogen said her portrait of Edward Weston with all of the cats was taken when he had Parkinson’s Disease—“you could tell by his hands.”

Edward Weston, Photographer, with His Cats, 1945 by Imogen Cunningham


Imogen’s idea of my putting her “past in order” was to have me organize her correspondence, which she intended to donate to the Smithsonian Institution. I spent many hours in the cellar under her house in a room adjacent to the darkroom, reading her letters and personal notes. The darkroom was a rustic redwood room that had a homemade sink, ancient Leitz and Ellwood enlargers and, among many other chemicals, a bottle of Rodinal film developer at least thirty years old that she still used.

Most of Imogen’s letters, starting in the 1920s, had been typed with carbon copies. As I organized the correspondence, I read letters exchanged between her and photographers such as Ansel Adams and Minor White. In several letters Minor discussed his growing interest in eastern philosophy and Zen studies, and her responses to them seemed to be teasing him or somewhat skeptical.

Eventually, because of the growing interest in exhibiting, publishing and purchasing Imogen’s photographs, my duties turned away from organizing her correspondence to spotting (retouching) prints and mounting and preparing work for shipping. I took her grocery shopping and ran errands with her, as well as taking in the occasional photography exhibit.

Imogen was charming, generous, funny, unassuming and self-deprecating. But she was also highly opinionated and spoke at times with disappointment and bitterness that it took so long for her to achieve the prominence she deserved. I remember her saying, “They think I’m so great now…where were they years ago?” Since her death—on the very same day as Minor White’s passing, June 24, 1976—Imogen’s eminence as one of modernist photography’s most celebrated and influential practitioners has grown explosively. It has been a wonderful postscript to her remarkable life.

Imogen was an important link to artists like Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Weston, and Ansel Adams. She was able to thrive in a medium dominated by men. She was a model for how to live an enduring, productive life. Imogen was indefatigable: she was 87 when she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and photographed until the end (her work from 1976 has been published), dying at 93. After working for Imogen, my commitment to photography was complete.

Tom Leininger on Gilbert Plantinga

This week Lenscratch is on vacation and I have asked a variety of photographers from across the country to contribute. Texas photographer, Tom Leininger, recently attended Review Santa Fe (congrats!) and discovered the work of Gilbert Plantinga. Tom has a host of great projects on his own site, and I featured work from his series, Kinderlife, on Fraction Magazine last year.

By Tom Leininger
I met Gilbert Plantinga this past June when we both participated in Review Santa Fe. We chatted in the lobby briefly and that night I looked up his work on Center’s website. His Route 28 work resonated with me due to familiarity. I grew up in upstate New York, and even though it has been some time since I have been back, it was landscape I understrood. His work reminds me of the work of the New Topographics photographers. It is the man made and man abandoned landscape that he is dealing with. I live in North Texas now and I find the Yankee landscape a bit claustrophobic. This reaction is specific to me. I am used to seeing a lot of sky and open space when I take in my current landscape. This feeling comes to me when looking at this work. It is not a critique of the photographs, but a feeling that comes to me hand in hand with nostalgia.

Returning to Plantinga’s images I was struck by the series Work in Search of a Body. There is a randomness to the series that tells me this was the starting point for his other work. The idea of early work fascinates me, because it is raw and not fully formed. I emailed him and asked how this work fits with his other series and what it is that stops him when searching for pictures. This is a part of his answer:

The first few pictures were some of the first I made when I started working in large format. I was just getting familiar with how the camera worked. The Route 28 project grew out of this work as a way of delimiting the problem of what to photograph. Though the idea is not original, I think of picture making as a struggle between content and form, or in more pragmatic terms what to photograph and how to photograph it. In this work the content part was simple: I was interested in architecture, just any old architecture in fact. After years of photographing people in the street, I needed to photograph buildings because they didn't move. Light often had a lot to do with it....And there were some themes that ran through the work: I was interested in how people spent their leisure time and how that might have changed. So I photographed Parksville, which had been a Borscht Belt resort town and the Red Apple Rest, which was the "are we there yet" stop on the way to the Borscht Belt. I photographed gas stations, hunting camps and ice cream stands. And churches, artists have been drawing, painting and photographing churches forever. Sometimes there is a back story, though I don't always know it until after the fact.



So as I said, the Route 28 project grew out of this work, or more precisely these pictures were excluded from my portfolio after Route 28 became a unifying theme for the work in search of a body. But having spent over two years photographing along Route 28 I began to learn why I was interested in architecture as cultural landscape. It turns out that people believe the craziest things, things which aren't necessarily true, but form the emotional basis of their cultural values. Before the '08 election I read an essay by Jonathan Haidt, What makes people vote Republican? Haidt is a social psychologist whose work is in the field of moral psychology, and he argues that the answer to his question is emotional, that by extension it lies in the non-verbal, non-rational limbic system in the brain. Having found that it might not be wise to try to discuss politics while photographing some-one's house from the (public right-of-way) roadside, it occurred to me that perhaps the way to reach down into that limbic brain would be through the non-verbal communication of pictures. But I doubt they'll see it that way either.

So now I'm out there making pictures that are specifically about people's cultural beliefs and orientations, the more bizarre the better. There is the world's largest Uncle Sam - 38 feet. And he hangs out with Santa.

During one of the breaks we had at the review I was out walking in downtown Santa Fe. It was getting toward the later warm light New Mexico is known for. Gilbert was out with his camera making images and taking advantage of the light. That said more to me about what kind of photographer he is more than these brief words can describe.

Kirsten Hoving on A Photographic Life

Today's post is by Kirsten Hoving: mother, wife, photographer, gallerist, enthusiast of all thing photographic. I've had the pleasure of working with Kirsten as a juror for a couple of shows at the Vermont Photo Place Gallery, and I thought it would be interesting to have her discuss what it's like to be a photographer and own a gallery. Thank you, Kirsten, for a wonderful essay.



by Kirsten Hoving
As I put the finishing touches on my first significant solo show of my photographic career, it seems like a good time to consider the journey that has led to this signpost in my life. In two weeks I’ll begin my twenty-eighth year of teaching art history at Middlebury College, where I teach modern art and history of photography. For many years, I was content to teach my art history students, do research, and write books and articles about topics in my field. However, when the younger of my two children left for college five years ago, I was suddenly, inexorably compelled to make art. Photography became my medium.

One of my heroines in the history of photography is Julia Margaret Cameron. As an art historian, I have studied and written about her work and life in some detail. Cameron turned to photography after her last of eleven children (some her own, some adopted), left home for university studies. At the age of forty-eight, faced with an empty nest and accompanying depression, she found solace in mastering wet-plate collodion photography. Along the way, she forged her style: a dreamy, soft-focus look that suited her literary subjects. Facing criticism that her work lacked sharpness, she countered by demonstrating that focus could be a tool for poetic expression, as well as factual description. Her willingness to take risks with her process has a remarkable legacy today, in the work of many wonderful photographers who use unconventional methods to produce compelling images.

But what I love most about Cameron is the leap she took at that stage in her life. I think I’ve shared something of the excitement she must have experienced when, in my mid-fifties, I suddenly found a new creative life opening up to me. Soon I was experimenting with all kinds of subjects, including personal narratives about my children leaving home. I began showing my work in juried group exhibitions and in local galleries. And, I discovered that the creative process is so exciting that it’s hard to imagine anything even coming close. When Cameron produced her first successful photograph, the story goes, she ran around the house looking for gifts to shower upon the little girl, Annie, who sat for her. I understand that impulse—sometimes you get an image that makes your heart race, and you just want to thank someone.

A little over a year ago, my husband Rick Clark and I embarked on a project that is a form of thanks for photography. We founded the Vermont Photography Workplace and opened a gallery in our town of Middlebury. PhotoPlace Gallery, as it is called, hosts juried photography exhibitions on a variety of themes. We operate on a shoestring, but it’s worth it to be able to share the amazing work being done all around the country (and world) with the visitors to our gallery and website. We try to publish a Blurb Book of each exhibition to have a lasting record. Along the way, we have met many remarkable photographers, made a number of cyber-friends, and found inspiration in the work we’ve been privileged to exhibit. When we are utterly exhausted after hanging a show, I think of Cameron and her seemingly boundless energy. She worked long nights, meals were missed, and her house filled with prints in the service of her love of photography.

I like to imagine Cameron visiting our gallery. She sweeps through the door in her black taffeta dress, swoops down on a photo that catches her eye, and swoons with delight at one of my own modest efforts. She fills the space with the force of her personality, delights us with a long discussion of her own aesthetics of photography, and then, as I curtsey to her, she’s gone. As I turn, I see that she’s left one of her cartes-de-visite on the counter, the one with her photograph of Ophelia that is my favorite.

A sampling of Kirsten's work....
Absent Child


Cygnuns


Empty Nest


Eternal Umbilical


Water Wing

Aaron Hobson: The Cinemascapist

This week Lenscratch is on vacation and thought it would be interesting to ask a variety of photographers to fill in for me, providing some cross pollinating of ideas. I've been a long time fan of Aaron Hobson (The Cinemascapist), his work, and his fresh perspective in the photo world and thought he'd make a wonderful contributor. Aaron was about to attend the Canteen Awards, an event hosted by a magazine we are both fans of, and he wanted to share his exprience.



CANTEEN COMP + AWARDS
by le cinémasagiste

Last Thursday evening I left the fresh air and safety of my home in the Adirondacks to make a 24 hour visit to the City. I needed to talk to my gallery owner/dealer/curator ladyfriend about what the hell I would be doing for my exhibit this February. This task was simple, involving a sweaty walk and talk session after visiting the NYC Icy stand in the East Village (I recommend the cherry pistachio nut or the thai iced tea) in a 90° humid stench. Things went well with desert so we decided to eat dinner following that. I said goodbye and finished the first task of my brief visit. It was on to Brooklyn for part II.



2 or more months ago I decided to enter the first ever Canteen Magazine Photography Competition. I typically have two approaches to competitions. One major decision is the Jurors. I look at what they've curated, published, reviewed, exhibited, etc...to see if I even stand a chance of getting their attention to take more than a glance at my work. Same thing all artists should consider before attempting to contact a gallery, making sure your work suits the tastes of the director and it's current lineup. Second thing I consider is the award/reward. Cash is always the best award I can hope to find. Things I stay away from are solo exhibits to the winner if it conflicts with any of the cities I am already represented in. That's a no-no.

Canteen's competition had several motivating factors for me to consider... an interesting group of judges... a party (with open bar and group show)... and the "Naked Judging" concept. Many of the judges were from the staff at Canteen, a magazine I personally enjoy with many components I am fond of...clean design, exquisitely printed, and narratives matched with imagery. The party was a no-brainer and the group show was not a conflict. The Naked Judging was also enticing. To see the juror's comments would be a bonus (win or lose). I love reading bad press as much as reading good press. I ended up reading mostly bad comments (you can read a blurb on my blog here), but my ego got stroked by being awarded the entrants choice winner.



All in all, I was satisfied Canteen's first Photo competition. The timing of the results was quick and didn't last months. The comments were a great read. The party was a delight. And if I remember correctly, the price of entry to it was modest. If I were to make a suggestion for Canteen (if they repeat this again next year), it would be to include category winners or an overall theme. It seems as though it would be harder to judge or to get a cohesive tally of an overall winner if it's simply judging on personal preference. Even the comment on my work suggested that the jurors "...treated staged photography pejoratively" (meaning to disparage or belittle for those that needed to look that up like I did).

When I accepted Aline's request to contribute to the blog, I immediately decided to cover this event and even take photos at the awards party. Something I never ever do. I don't even take a camera on family trips. I don't like cameras if it involves documenting things that a real and/or live. So the entire night I was photographing discretely from my hip with the camera going completely auto, sans flash. I didn't want to bring attention to myself (I do that enough as it is) and also so that I could keep drinking (thanks to Bulldog Gin) with my other hand at all times. Luckily at the end of the night (rather next morning), I had enough blurry images to put this post together.

Cheers. Aaron.