"I thought I was taking pictures of things I hated. But there was something about those pictures. They were unexpectedly, disconcertingly glorious.” Robert Adams Today we had multiple visual contributors but the discussion centered on landscape photography esp an aesthetic that emerged several decades ago from a group of photographers called the "New Topographers"...an example of which is above showing our natural environmental landscape modified by the built or human additions. The term "new topographics" was coined by William Jenkins for an exhibit at the Tate Modern in 1975. That exhibit was reproduced at the Eastman House, NY MOMA, Austin and SF MOMA....below is the description from the SF MOMA exhibit. Described as "banal" by many critics and curators, it does introduce a new interpretation aesthetic of what we think about as landscape photography. Below are several examples of the aesthetic...and following those are two examples from Jim & Bill our f8 new topographers. Also note Jim's image gracing our home page of our blog site Finally, we turned away from landscapes to images by three f8'ers....Joe, Cyndi and John. "A collection of street photography images taken in Shanghai and Xiamen China was presented today by Joe Loudermilk. The photos were taken between 2014 and 2018. Many of the photos captured scenes of local people at small street front stores and street food shops. Unlike most of Joe’s previous work, these images were all in color. The images have been worked using blur, darkening backgrounds, and vignette to create a soft, dark context around a sharper, more colorful main focal subject." Next the magic of John Holmes with his iPhone Last but not least Cyndi Bemel...emulating John in one image (on Right) and mist on lettuce at a Korean Market (on Left) Lastly, Bill tried to show images from a NYT Magazine article on Richard Prum, an evolutionary ornithologist. The macro images of bird feathers in the article and below are by Kenji Aoki Too much good stuff...
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"The passing of every old man or woman means the passing of some tradition, some knowledge of sacred rites possessed by no other...consequently the information that is to be gathered, for the benefit of future generations, respecting the mode of life of one of the great races of mankind, must be collected at once or the opportunity will be lost for all time." Edward S Curtis The last two f8 sessions were filled with a tour de force lecture by Carel Struycken about the life and work of Edward Curtis, an early legendary photographer of the Indian Nations. Below are pictures of both Curtis and Carel... There is absolutely no way I can summarize the three hour talk by Carel on this blog post. Carel was kind enough to provide links to works by Curtis and for those not present to check out some of the links. (Note:you may need to copy and paste the links into your browser) Complete 20 volume Edward Curtis collection digitized: http://curtis.library.northwestern.edu/index.html Recordings: http://curtis.site.seattleartmuseum.org/ Description of printing techniques used by Curtis: https://edwardcurtis.com/christopher-cardozo/collecting-curtis/ zoomable photos: https://www.si.edu/spotlight/edward-sheriff-curtis Biography by Timothy Egan: “Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher” “1491: New revalations of the Americas before Columbus” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_ Columbus Photogravure technique: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogravure Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI By David Grann Below is a small gallery of Curtis pictures...all the images can be found in the digitized volumes with link above Thank you Carel for the effort you put in to bring Curtis' work and life to us.
We are starting the new year out of Debrah's studio and very temporarily meeting at Compass Realty offices in Pasadena thanks to Jordan Nedeff a friend and supporter of the arts. Because of our new digs, we talked today mostly of future logistics of our meeting. Bill did take note of "The Soul of the Camera" a new book by the prolific author and educator David DuChemin..."the book is the best photography book I've ever read...and does not focus on the technical but rather the art and aesthetics." Check out the table of contents on Amazon...it looks like most of what we talk about at f8 each week.
We all look forward to resuming our normal discussions next week |
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