Loenard Nimoy Solo Exhibit at Mass MOCA

For all you trekky photo hybrids out there, you may appreciate Leanoard Nimoy's solo show at Mass MOCA titled "Secret Selves". The show consists of large, some even life size portraits of people portraying various lifestyles in front of a white background. I love Star Trek, and I love Spok, but I'm sorry, I can't get into these portraits. They seem to defeat the purpose of a photographic portrait. When I look at a portrait, I want to appreciate the ability that the camera has to draw out the natural essence of a person. Or if not the natural essence, at least give the viewer some room to speculate about what's going on the the picture. Instead, they seem to be models posing as characters that Nimoy had envisioned long before he even met the people. For instance, one photo contains a man shot with an Avedonian (made up word) simplicity, but covered in mud, holding a sledge hammer, though there was no dirt or any sort of contextual references around him. One person that showed up to be photographed commented, “He wanted me to pose like a tree and I was like: ‘A tree? I’m supposed to be like the earth itself.’ ”. Case in point. Anyway, congrats for a solo show at Mass MOCA, but please give us portraits of the people themselves, not just an awkward costume party. However, as the reader, you are entitled to decide for yourself, so here is one of the portraits and a link to more from Nimoy's series, "Secret Selves".

Leonard Nimoy

To check out more of this work go to this place. Nimoy did another project that received some recognition called "The Full Body Project", in which he photographed plus sized nude women. I liked some of those portraits, and wish that Nimoy would take that approach to his newer stuff.

Photo of the Day (8) and some other rich content

For those of you who don't watch Comedy Central from 11:30 to 12:00 am (you won't understand why I made that distinction unless you watch it), check out the great new premium denim line that Gap has made for 1-5 year olds, specifically the skinny jeans that you see modeled on the left! I'm far less interested in seeing the toddlers try to pull off that look than I am in seeing the parents who actually want their 1-5 year olds rocking premium skinny jeans. Now there's a picture!

As for my photo of the day, I thought that today I would post a photo by Brian Ulrich. Ulrich, in addition to receiving a Guggenheim grant for his photos, has been a huge inspiration of mine with his Dark Stores series. Yesterday, he wrote on his blog about how his daughter was born just two days ago, so it will be interesting to see how his work changes with his life. Here's one of his photos as well as a picture that I was inspired to make based on his work.

© Brian Ulrich

Photos of the Day (7)

A couple night photos taken in Worcester tonight

Picture of the Day (4,5,6)

I was away for the weekend, and without internet, so I'm posting three photos tonight. The first photo I took on Cape Cod over the weekend, and the next two I will talk more about below.

The next two photos that I'm going to post were made by photographer Liz Kuball. Liz is relatively new to the photo world, getting serious about her work in 2006, but she has quickly become recognized for her images of Southern California in her series "California Vernacular". Liz was invited to be an artist of 20x200, and is currently showing work at the Jen Bekman Gallery in NYC with some huge names. Joel Meyerowitz, Todd Hido and Alec Soth are just a few of the artists contributing to this show. I really appreciate how Liz's work keeps your interest and provokes some thought without being as equivocal as some other popular work out right now. Here are two of her images from the series "California Vernacular".

Picture of the Day (3)

Jake

Picture of the Day (2)

Not exactly following the concept I talked about yesterday, but similar shooting style. I took this while I visited my mom a couple days after her birthday.

Picture(s) of the Day

So I am finally committing to making one picture a day for the next year. It will keep the blog active as well as my mind, so that's good. Anyway, for day one, I have three pictures. I've been playing around with an idea for a portrait series that goes like this in my head: Clark University students in the thick of the community that surrounds Clark. The portraits would be trying to demonstrate the gap between the life that we've lived on campus and the reality off campus. Aside from he fact that it seems incredibly cliche and hasn't turned into a usable idea, it sounds great and I'm going with it. Regardless, I've been shooting people's portraits in order to try to get a better sense of what I want to be shooting. Here's some of the first attempts (with my roommate, who's been on this blog more than anyone else) .

Day #1

New Look

So I've been toying with the idea of changing my blog platform over to wordpress because wordpress will actually notify other bloggers if you reference them in a post. Seems pretty useful... Unfortunately, wordpress's platform is anything but intuitive, so I'm sticking with Blogger for right now. Either way, I thought that I'd change the look of the blog just to make myself feel better. And to the "abundance" of loyal viewers, try to hold back from leaving too many appreciative comments about this new design. I know it's pretty steezy.

Photos on Newsprint

© Will Steacy

So by now people should be starting to notice the newsprint trend that seems to be emerging as a legitimate mode to publish photos. Alec Soth first published his "Last Days of W" series on newsprint, and now Will Steacy has published "Down These Mean Streets" in the same way. I'm in the process of trying to get my hands on one, but I'm still curious about what this method of printing does to the "mission" of the photo. Photographs seem to save a moment in time, but newsprint will fade and lose the image pretty quickly, compared to an art print or a real book. Either way, this may soon be seriously en vogue, so prepare to see a few more of these. Even if you don't really care about this new way to present work, I would absolutely recommend checking out Will Steacy's work. His well known series "Down These Mean Streets" offers a pretty gritty look at some run down areas of the United States. It doesn't sound original, but a snapshotty style comes through in a lot of the pictures and makes for some pretty interesting images. I'm a fan.

© Will Steacy

Griffin Museum 16th Annual Juried Exhibition

© me

On Thursday I went to the Griffin Museum's opening of their 16th Annual Juried Exhibition. I attended mostly because the show was judged by Jörg M Colberg, who, in addition to being a well respected art photographer, also maintains the prolific photo blog Conscientious. Colberg was a no-show, and to be honest, I was surprised by the variety of work that was selected. There has been and continues to be a trend of "dead" portraits of people in their "natural" environment staring expressionless into the camera, leaving you with few questions regarding the circumstances of the photograph. This work seems to be "so hot right now" and inspired by work from prolific photographers such as Alec Soth and Todd Hido. I love both of these guys as well as Jörg M Colberg , but I'm hoping to see a different approach come into vogue soon. The two photographers that received awards for their work were Natalia Engelhardt and Keliy Anderson-Staley. I really liked Keliy Anderson-Staley's work, especially from her series "Off the Grid", which documents 30 families living in Maine without running water or electricity.

© Keliy Anderson-Staley