“The camera is an excuse to be someplace you otherwise don’t belong. It gives me both a point of connection and a point of separation.” Susan Meiselas Today we had the pleasure of having Elizabeth Kingston Young as a guest speaker. Her work "Stills" is being featured at the Girdner Gallery. Elizabeth traced her involvement in photography to her formative years on Cape Cod. After college and a 10 year stint in her family business, she made the decision to pursue photography as a full time career. She also made the decision to settle in the Pasadena area. Her photography evolution has been from street photography to landscapes (Cape Cod in the east and Joshua Tree locally) finally transitioning to portraiture. More recently she has been hired to be a still photographer on several movie projects. That is the genesis of the current exhibit at Girdner. The pictures on display were shot behind th scenes of the production at the Salton Sea. Elizabeth describes her aesthetic evolving with each photography genre she shoots. Unfortunately, I do not have shots from the exhibit at the time of writing this blog post as we are leaving on holiday at 3am...several hours from now. But I do have some examples of her work hijacked from her website... www.kingstonyoung.com For those not there today, take a moment and visit the Gallery. . The exhibit ends August 27th. We finished, or started, our discussion commenting on the picture of the "Aleppo Boy" published in the NYT yesterday. Below is the cropped picture and a link to a video you should look at after you evaluate this picture below Click on the link below for the video
How Omran Daqneesh became a symbol of Aleppo’s suffering and yet another icon of the damage it does to those least protected http://nyti.ms/2bAFeT0 To me the picture reminds me of the Vietnam Napalm Girl. Both represent the visual anti-war statement so many of our conflict photographers bring to the world...thank god they do. Howard sent another op-ed piece that headlined..."can a picture stop a war"...not likely
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We were logistically challenged last week at Jones...displaced from our usual place. However we did manage to hijack our old round table and discuss and see some photography stuff. Our guests, Carlos and Ivan, gave us a flavor of their work verbally and will be rescheduled sometime in September.. Scott showed several iterations of a print that was edited...I think the final version is below. So much for last week. This week we were back in our Jones room. After our usual political comments this week Angelo guided us through the various definitions of dusk-dawn...twilight. For those not there, here are his definitions. Here are several websites relating to the twilight discussion.... Cambridge in Color / Natural Light Photography http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/natural-light-photography.htm Finally, here are some pictures that were sent to Angelo...from Bill, Charley, Jim, Scott, Joe, John, Mark, Rene and Richard. Unfortunately, I can only show some of those presented.
“If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it’s as though I’ve neglected something essential to my existence…” “I never liked photography. Not for the sake of photography. I like the object. I like the photographs when you hold them in your hand.” “To make pictures big is to make them more powerful.” Robert Mapplethorpe No written comments from those that attended the meeting and/or went to the Getty & LACMA...except from John. As a result just comments/reflections from me...the editor....on Robert Mapplethorpe. At the meeting we discussed or at least touched on some important contributions Mapplethorpe made to the art of photography and some notable societal mores he influenced. Mapplethorpe learned his art by perfecting visually the Creative Form of flowers...although he was trained as an artist and photographer Ultimately he made his visual way with the Idealization of the Male Form In publishing and showing his homoerotic works he spawned the Censorship debate in the galleries, museums and ultimately in the courts The end result was forwarding Artistic freedom of all artists and breaking barrier after barrier in museums and galleries His work was personal as well as Performance We discussed his Persona & relationship with Patti Smith who after his death from AIDS wrote several award winning books ..."Just Kids" and "M Train" both of which won National Book Awards We talked about his photographic tools and his transition from Polaroid the camera he learned his craft on….to Hasselblad ...gift from Sam Wagstaff Sam Wagstaff was his longtime companion and muse and also a compulsive collector of photography. Some of us made the trip first to the Getty then to LACMA to see the scope of his work that was enlightening from the standpoint that his homoerotic works were only a small part of his creative output. He was a genius and perfectionist in shooting and producing his work. It is said that Mapplethorpe started as a"photographist" and evolved as a "photographer"
Also at the Getty was photography collected by Wagstaff...or at least part of a vast collection he amassed in his life. All in all a great day seeing lots of great photography by a master and enjoying the company of f8. |
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