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2014 Sony World Photography Awards – shortlist reviews

Posted on February 16, 2014 by Douglas Barkey

There were over 140,000 entries to the 2014 Sony World Photography Awards, so it is a comprehensive world survey of what is going on in photography today and close to a miracle to make the shortlist for the competition! I’ve selected a variety of the shortlisted winners from the professional competition whose work is exceptional for review and analysis.

Hao Li, “Duplicate Mechanism” series. © Hao Li 2014

Hao Li’s “Duplicate Mechanism” series uses the multiple exposure capability of digital cameras to create layer on layer of slight momentary and location deviations. The spaces where the photographs are made are common public sites and the result is a unique portrait of frenzied contemporary life.

Above we are presented a vision of railways and trains passing from above with the camera just slightly moved between exposures and the subject itself is constantly moving. These images are of spatial surfaces layered as moments in time – each separated by fractions of a second or fractions of a viewpoint difference. In a previous exhibit at TIVAC 2013 the photographer described these images as being about the repetition of daily urban life, with each day being just slightly – a fraction – different than the previous day.

He also changes up the scale, so we are provided with the grand scale of trainway and a skyscraper…

contrasted with a child’s viewpoint at a supermarket….

These images are distressing, vibrating captures of what it can feel like to be bombarded with many different sources of visual stimuli. They simulate what a consumer might feel as they stroll down a supermarket aisle, but the the images also create a fascinating pattern of intersecting delicate lines and rectangles overlapped with amorphous human forms. The humans seem like a footnote in the frenetic environment they helped create.

Bride Temitope Caulker poses with her bridesmaids, who in typical Nigerian fashion, wear outfits that match the decor of the wedding hall. © Glenna Gordon 2014 Sony World Photography Awards

Wedding ceremonies are certainly a window into a culture’s values and customs and Glenna Gordon’s entry series “Nigeria Ever After” provides a unique insight into that country’s wedding traditions framed in contemporary practices and technology. Gordon (2014) says the the images are “about what it costs to get married in Nigeria: what money can and can’t buy and the quiet moments during frenzied ceremony.”

An opulent wedding for nearly a thousand guests was held at the banquet hall of a private housing estate in Lagos, Nigeria. Guests wear matching outfits and hats chosen by the bride’s family. © Glenna Gordon, 2014

Each family puts on as lavish a ceremony as possible, since the wedding itself is an indication of status (Gordon, 2014).

A bridesmaid collects money tossed at the couple as the dance. © Glenna Gordon, 2014

In addition to the traditions of the groom and groomsmen prostrating themselves on the ground in front of the bride’s parent, guests will “spray” the couple with cash as they dance through the night. Bridesmaids collect the cash quickly. Gordon’s images provided a behind-the-scenes view of a Nigerian wedding in which we see the guests and the couple interacting rather than posing. Consequently her work takes a stronger documentary direction, because her images are a study of the ceremony, rather than a series of images meant to be consumed by the couple. For example, if we compare her work with a Nigerian commercial wedding photographer, such as Akara Ogheneworo…

…we can see how this polished and highly controlled depiction of the bridal couple is a world apart from Gordon’s rather poignant portrait of the bride and groom greeting guests…

Glenna Gordon, Bride and Groom, 2013

Gordon captures a moment that is as much about that slice of reality as it is about relationships between male and female or gender roles. In this image the men are speaking – they are the featured personages discussing something of importance – while the women both look away, their thoughts elsewhere. Even though the moment is about the men, Gordon has framed the images so that the dominant presence is that of the bride – her white dress stands out and the symmetry of the background leads to her figure. Yet her expression is neither that of joy or preoccupation, but rather one of acceptance, that of playing the role that she was meant to play…and she does not seem too impressed! Gordon’s exposure and framing take what was in all likelihood a gaudily decorated affair and transforms it into a fantasy of sparkling lights and waves of lavender. It is the perfect image to match Gordon’s title for the series: Nigeria Ever After. To see more photographs by Glenna Gordon, visit her website at http://www.glennagordon.com/

The Golan heights seperates between Israel and Syria, this peacefull landscape has become like a monument for war and conflict with demolished houses, military bases and mindfields. © Roei Greenberg

The landscape tells a story. As photographers sometimes we choose to ignore the story and focus on the surface – choosing to only see the spectacle of “sublime nature“, but Roei Greenberg combines the two perspectives by creating images that use the accepted structure of the landscape photograph to portray the land as a witness to conflict. For example, the image of the Golan Heights, uses a conventional landscape photography technique – the tension between the visual pull of the foreground and background – to feature a pristine meadow broken by the rusted barbed wire fence posts. In the background, hazily, we can see the Syrian side of the land. Despite being an area of intense conflict in the past, this is a tranquil scene in which the barbed wire lazily loops across the flowered meadow and the Star of David hangs precariously off a reinforced post. The image seems to make the past irrelevant…the weeds have physically and metaphorically overgrown this political symbol.

A trail at Ein zeitim (olive spring) national park, the name is an arab name taken from the arab village that was located near by, the only remains are the bricks that had been put together to form this trail in the woods. © Roei Greenberg

In “Trail at Ein Zetim”, an overgrown trail is all the is left of the Arab village that once occupied the land. Greenberg’s approach is to contrast the convention of landscape – to present us with otherwise unremarkable images that might be postcards – with simple statements of fact that describe a partial history of the land. He combines the actual state of the land with a history that might extend 50 years back in time. This brings up an uncomfortable fact for photographers seeking to image a “pristine nature”, since the reality is that all of nature is in a constant state of transformation, it is not on the human timetable.

Birya Forest is now an Israeli national park in the north of Israel. Prior to 1948 this area was populated by Palestinian villages. © Roei Greenberg

I understand that the landscape as a medium needs to be treated carefully and with respect. I believe that it is filled and shaped by ideology. I seek to capture photographs that have double meanings where objects are symbols and places always have a history that charge them with more than the eye can see. (Greenberg, 2014)

Greenberg’s contextualization of the landscape with words creates a powerful viewpoint that gives the images another dimension that is political and human. They tell the story of the land, and although they are not visible in any of his images, the main protagonists in the story are the humans whose ideology, religion, and political values have had a transformative impact. To see more work by Roei Greenberg, visit his website at http://www.roeigreenbergphotography.com/

References

Gordon, Glenna. (2014). Nigeria Ever After. Retrieved 2/15/2014, 2014, from http://www.glennagordon.com/#/nigeria-ever-after

Greenberg, Roei. (2014). Biography. Roei Greenberg Photography. Retrieved 2/15/2014, 2014, from http://www.roeigreenbergphotography.com/

Kenneth Josephson exhibit

Posted on February 12, 2014 by Douglas Barkey

Kenneth Josephson, Robert Koch Gallery

Kenneth Josephson exhibit

Here’s a short synopsis by one of our photography professors on Kenneth Josephson’s conceptual photographs that everyone will enjoy!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged conceptual photography, photography | Leave a comment

From 40 plates to 6 billion files – the scale of photography in a digital age

Posted on February 9, 2014 by Douglas Barkey

John Dillwyn Llewelyn, “St. Catherine’s Island, Tenby”, 1854

In November, 2011, I wrote a short piece on Managing the Image – Sorting through the Catalog that explored some of the key differences for prolific digital photographers between managing an image archive of digital photographs and silver-based negatives. I was reminded of that essay when I read the New York Times article on how the “rediscovered” photographs of John Dillwin Llewelyn, inspired “The Photographer of Penllergare: A Life of John Dillwyn Llewelyn 1810-1882” (Goldberg, 2014). Forty ancient daguerreotypes unearthed in 1973 from a dusty box found in a garage in Wales, led Noel Chanan to research the life and photographs of Llewelyn, who turns out to have been married to the sister of Henry Fox Talbot, one of the co-inventors of photography, and who became a well-known photographer in his own right (Chanan, 2013). The book is a remarkable time capsule of the life of an elite family living in the 1800’s and is culled from thousands of photographs that Llewelyn made of family life, travels, and of nature.

John Dillwyn Llewelyn, “The Birch Bark Canoe”, 1856

There were two aspects of this article and book that struck me: the fragility of the digital image and the mind-boggling quantity of digital images that exist today and that grow exponentially with each capture made by millions of people across the globe.

Independent research indicates that at Fickr alone, 3.57 billion photographs had been uploaded by December, 2013 (Fickr claimed 6 billion had been uploaded by 2011), but this is only one of many locations where individuals publish their digital photographs (Michel, 2014). And these are only the published images, which we could reasonably assume are people’s best images from what is stored on their hard drive. Metadata would be the only way to make sense of this scale of images. Llewelyn was a prolific photographer who created thousands of images using the wet collodion process, which is just a little more labor intensive than connecting the cable from your camera to computer and clicking “Import”.

With wet collodion camera and dark tent, c 1854

Yet, even his images, made by a recognized photographer during the early days of photography when the total number of photographers on the planet numbered in the thousands, still dropped out of sight relatively quickly.

Llewelyn’s photographs take on meaning, because they survived time and are drawn from a fewer number to begin with. They are each well-composed and technically proficient for the day, especially given the challenges of the collodion process, but often their aesthetic content is not so much different than the family snapshots preserved on Iphones and Flickr worldwide.

John Dillwyn Llewelyn, “Young Lions Age 3 Weeks”, 1854

In the 1850’s photography was reserved for the aristocratic class, as it took a healthy investment of time and material to create a photograph (Goldberg 2014). In “Young Lions Age 3 Weeks” we see a young boy with some rather exotic pets, but other than this distinction, this image and others are indistinguishable from millions of images captured today by adoring parents. So, a few hundred years down the road and trillions of images later, how will our descendants pick out the significant images from our time? Will the images even survive or will the opposite happen – where the “cloud” we share is eternally populated with the digital likenesses of one indistinguishable individual after another? Will the significant and meaningful images of our time become camouflaged inside the massive output of billions of image files?

Photographs today exist in two basic forms: the print and the digital file. There are far fewer prints than files, since it costs time and money to transfer a digital image to paper, whereas the cost of storing thousands of family images in digital format is free or almost free. The growing pervasiveness of tablets and smartphones is changing the way we share our images and making it easier and more convenient to avoid printing, and instead, hand over a piece of luminescent digital glass to share. Given the past twenty years of technological change in which recording formats, devices, and media have all come and gone many times, it might be that the hard drive or Ipad discovered in someone’s future garage will not be worth much more than the raw materials they contain. For a digital photograph to survive it will have to be printed archivally or it’s digital file upgraded and transferred by a caretaker.

At the end of her article, Goldberg (2014) asks “A century from now, will someone be able to retrieve tens of thousands of tweets, texts and emails from communication companies and obsolete platforms (and, who knows, even the National Security Agency) to fashion so panoramic a tale?” For the 2014 Sony World Photography contest, several hundred finalists where selected from over 140,000 entries. Is it possible to even make valid distinctions about the value of individual images in relation to each other at this scale? It seems that heavy curation lies in our future and in our future perception of our history.

Comments are welcome.

—–

References

Chanan, Noel. (2013). The Photographer of Penllergare: A Life of John Dillwyn Llewelyn 1810-1882. London: Impress.

Goldberg, Vick. (2014). From a forgotten box, a ray of light; Daguerreotypes spur book on John Dillwyn Llewelyn, The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/arts/design/daguerreotypes-spur-book-on-john-dillwyn-llewelyn.html?ref=arts

Michel, Franck. (2013). How many photos are uploaded to Fickr every day, month, year. 2014, from http://www.flickr.com/photos/franckmichel/6855169886/

Posted in Digital Photography, Photographic Technology, Uncategorized | Tagged digital photography, Douglas Barkey, John Dillwyn Llewelyn, Noel Chanan | Leave a comment

Larry Cook and Annette Isham at The Hamiltonian Gallery, Washington D.C.

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Douglas Barkey

Larry Cook, “Regalia 2”, Archival ink jet print, 40 x 30 in, 2014

: Annette Isham, from Woman and Landscape series

Although “Woman and Landscape” and “From an Eighth to a Key” occupy the same exhibit space at The Hamiltonian Gallery, each artist addresses different themes with distinct approaches and media – these are separate exhibits installed apart in the same space. Nevertheless, the exhibits both address cultural perceptions and assumptions by wrapping the human figure in places and a wardrobe that undermine, or at least, question assumptions about identity.

Larry Cook presents a series of portraits of men and alters the context in which we might expect to see the archetype that each group of males represents: several individual twenty-something African-American men are presented garbed in doctoral regalia, while in an adjacent group of individual portraits we are shown white men, decidedly over-40, standing in a variety of poses in front of “urban party” backgrounds (Jirón-Murphy, 2014). All the photographs are 30 x 40 inch archival inkjet prints; the African-American men are depicted from just below the waist and against a white background, while the white men stand full figure in front of vibrant DIY murals you might find at start-up dance clubs. Both sets of men are lit with two equidistant lights, but the white men are lit from underneath so that their shadow looms behind them and the doctoral graduates are lit at eye-level – a background light flares out any shadows from appearing on the white background.

Cook’s choice of regalia to represent the unexpected is borne out by the research. The 2009-10 U.S. Department of Education statistics on race / ethnicity segments of doctorates achieved indicates that 7.4% of doctoral degrees were awarded to the black population compared to 74.3% awarded to the white population; of the 7.4% earned doctorates, only 35% went to African-American men . That statistic is a pretty dramatic indictment of the ability of our higher education system to reach out to, and support, other races / ethnicities beyond the white majority. There are still over 3,500 African-American men that receive a doctorate every year, so do Cook’s portraits really bring the photographic language to bear on issues of race, identity, and education? Has this grouping of switched context portraits questioned our expectations of each archetype?

Cook departs from a simple premise – lets see what happens to perceptions of racial identity if we switch place and wardrobe. Doctoral regalia indicates achievement – expertise and the contribution to knowledge. The murals represent the party scene – urban, late night, local…perhaps even a little seedy…probably not the place you would find any of the archetypal white men that modeled for the images. So, the images are easy to “get” in one sense, we see the unexpected and it makes us ponder the differences between black and white cultural identity. But Cook throws in some other variables that seems to undermine his intent.

Larry Cook, 2013

Neither set of portraits are lit in a manner that would reinforce the concept of the series and in the case of the white men, who are lit in an unflattering manner from below, there seems to be a clear intent by the photographer to disparage their physical presence. A more appropriate lighting approach might have been something more suited to the aesthetics of that place – the place where they were asked to pose. Why not use dance lighting and gels as light sources, perhaps balanced with the harshness of an on-camera flash that is so typical of photographs made in this environment? The men in regalia are not lit with a much better technique, but wouldn’t a 4-light executive portrait set-up be more in keeping with the purpose and artifice of these portraits? It seems to me that in both cases the photographer has not gone far enough with using the vocabulary of lighting to fully express his concept.

Larry Cook, 2013

Then there is the issue of the pose. Many of the models from both races seem to be in on the secret. The African-American men look like they are wearing a costume, they pose in a pietistic manner, hands clasped and taking themselves ever so seriously – playing the graduate. The white men vary in pose, one looking down his nose at the camera while straightening his tie – playing the suit identity to the hilt.

Larry Cook, 2013

An interesting little corollary in this photographic project is how each actor seems to play the role that they think the photographer wants them to play. This is an interesting twist on Roland Barthes’ take on portraiture, who wrote “In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art” (Barthes, 1981). The last two attributes seem to be the ones most put into practice in this series, but it seems like the validity of addressing how achievement and racial identity intersect could be treated with more depth and nuance. More information on Larry Cook’s photographs can be found at LarryCook.com.

Video Installation, Annette Isham, 2013

Annette Isham’s work is a cross between performance art, video, and photographic media. The videos depict her navigating her way across wilderness landscapes meant to be otherworldly, spectacular, and surreal, but with self-imposed limitations, such as wearing stilts or 13 inch platform shoes. The videos are visually engaging and thought-provoking, but in some cases display a lack of regard for technical proficiency that is distracting to the concept. For example, the 5 video displays face a series of forgettable still images of composited landscapes printed on translucent backing and backlit – they are intended to display an idealized and sublime nature, but the beginner’s level of montage technique undermines this exactly.

Annette Isham, 2013

The videos are much more sophisticated, and although they suffer from the same issue of awkward compositing, the impact of the woman as she travels across the screen overlaid on dramatic wilderness images akin to a Sierra Club calendar is visceral. In some ways, the structure of this performance – the self-imposed discipline of trying to walk on 13 inch platform shoes with their reference to fashion, remind me of religious pilgrimages, such as those made to the Virgen de Guadalupe where the faithful might crawl on their knees traversing a difficult terrain in a very painful manner. The woman in these videos exhibits a related struggle trying to balance her way across a green screen, which has been replaced by the wilderness scene. The best of the videos taking this green screen approach is actually the one where two women grapple and wrestle, one of them quite vulnerable in her 13 inch platforms. There is no attempt here to tie in the women to the landscape – their actions do not attempt to engage the physical nature of the background at all, so the viewer is confronted with a simpler presentation of two seemingly giant humans wrestling before a facade of natural grandeur.

In some ways, Isham’s work seems to refer to an individual bring suffering upon themselves whether for the cause of fashion or religion. Isham’s use of the wilderness is, for me, a reference to a solitary spiritual journey where artificial restraints are imposed in order to concentrate the mind and spirit. I don’t see these images as really being about landscape photography or our perceptions of the sublime in landscape, but more about human ecology.

Annette Isham, 2013

The most effective and stark presentation is the video in which the artist is at the actual wilderness location and walks with stilts and canes from left to right across the screen and across the landscape. The presentation is effective, because the struggle is actual – the engagement with the landscape is physical, not merely aesthetic. The artifice of the other videos can be somewhat distracting, because we know that the struggle for balance is in a staged environment, but when Isham must manipulate her stilts and canes across a rocky mountainside or desert sands, we can more instinctively sense the emotional, mental, and spiritual concentration that her effort is taking. Isham’s clumsy journey across a spectacular and wild natural landscape lit by the quiet evening light creates a contradiction between our perceptions of sublime nature and the limitations of basic human capability. More information on Annette Isham’s work can be found at annettewashburneisham.com.

The Hamiltonian Gallery, 2014

The exhibit is of high quality, very nicely curated and presented – definitely worth a trip to D.C. to view. For more information about our The Hamiltonian, artists and events, please contact:

Amanda Jirón-Murphy, Gallery Director
amanda@hamiltoniangallery.com

Angie Goerner, Development Director
angie@hamiltonianartists.org

1353 U Street NW Suite 101; Washington, DC 20009

t: 202.332.1116 | f: 202.332.0569
e: info@hamiltonianartists.org

References

Barthes, Roland. (1981). Camera Lucida. New York: Hill and Wang

Jirón-Murphy, Amanda. (2014). Exhibition >> Woman and landscape + From an eight to a key. Retrieved 2/2/2014, 2014, from http://www.hamiltoniangallery.com/exhibitions/woman-and-landscape-from-an-eighth-to-a-key/

NCES. (2012). Degrees conferred by sex and race. In N. C. f. E. Statistics (Ed.), The condition of education 2012. Fast Facts: US Department of Education.

Posted in Creativity and Photography, Fine Art Photography, Photo Criticism, Photographic Technology, Photography, Uncategorized | Tagged Annette Isham, Douglas Barkey, fine art photography, human ecology, identity, landscape, Larry Cook, montage, photography, photography and culture, photography criticism, Race, The Hamiltonian Gallery, video art, Virginia, Washington DC | Leave a comment

Louis Draper: Retrospective at Candela Books + Gallery

Posted on January 26, 2014 by Douglas Barkey

Louis Draper, Hughie Lee Smith, Gelatin Silver Print, 6.5 x 9

The Louis Draper retrospective at Candela Books + Gallery is a quiet and persistent telling of another side to mid-20th century life in the United States that stands in stark contrast to the clean-cut and oversimplified suburban lifestyle that is often depicted to represent this era. Draper’s sensitive and probing portraits provide a distinctive view into the the reality of African American culture and people living in a parallel universe to nuclear standoffs and clean-shaven “Mad Men” advertising executives shaping a culture of brand consumption.

Louis Draper, Woman with earring, Gelatin Silver Print

Louis Draper, Billy, Gelatin Silver Print

John Edwin Mason has already written a detailed account and review of Louis Draper’s life and work at the NY Time Lens Blog, so this review is is a more narrow analysis of Draper’s use of design, composition and light to express the dignity of his subject and a nuanced view of the life and times of the 1950’s and 60’s in the U.S.

Draper’s portraits are all tightly framed, but some present the person, whether child or adult, as a counterpoint to a complex abstraction of graffiti textured walls and doorways.

Louis Draper, Boy with lace curtain, Gelatin Silver Print

Louis Draper, Boy with paint splatter, Gelatin Silver Print

In “Boy with lace curtain” and “Boy with paint splatter” Draper builds the frame around a dynamic arrangement of fragmented architectural forms and gritty textures that set the context for the portrait of the child. While occupying a very small portion of the frame, the child’s face and expression, whether resolute or disarming, dominate the image composition; Draper creates a conversation between foreground and background, the present and the past, a life and it’s conditional existence. In both cases the young boys break out of the visual pattern yet are intricately woven into the fabric of the composition and visual dynamic of their environment. This a recurring theme and compositional approach that Draper seems to apply even to the point of leaving the human presence indicated by just a faint shadow of a figure.

Louis Draper, Graffiti silhouette, Gelatin Silver Print

In other portraits, Draper conveys the silent dignity and fortitude of his subject with dramatic, yet soft, shadows with his subject framed in front of a simple and plain wall. In “Young man in beret” a straightforward expression is split by the face half in silhouette. Stability and the strength of character is conveyed by the width of the body filling the bottom portion of the frame and the nearly symmetrical arrangement of the elements of the composition.

Louis Draper, Young man in beret, Gelatin Silver Print

The exhibit presents a series of these profound and striking portraits through which a viewer feels like they are getting an intimate glimpse into the soul and reality of these individuals in their time and place.

Louis Draper, Mississippi Sharecroppers, 1971, Gelatin Silver Print

“Mississippi Sharecroppers” is an incredibly dynamic composition that is conceptually shocking, yet elegant in presence. It is shocking to see the date of the image combined with the depiction of manual labor that seems more appropriate to an earlier century – an extended family, including a child, toil away hoeing a seemingly infinite stretch of crops. Draper establishes the basic structure of the composition with the symmetrical rows of crops reaching into the horizon line established around 3/5ths of the frame high; a plain sky simplifies the tonal contrasts. The workers, all in light clothing, contrast with the geometrical lines of the rows and the organic shapes and textures of the plants.

Pay attention to the way your eye tracks through this image to get a sense of the sophistication of Draper’s use of space and frame. The strong and detailed foreground draws in our eye first and then the rows pull your attention to the far couple, smallest in the frame, but the gestures of the two men on the left side of the group pull our eyes back and finally over to the young man whose gaze redirects our focus to the woman in the foreground….and then our attention is pulled back through again.

Each figure is a strong vertical column rising out of the diagonal movement of the rows of crops – these are forceful representations of stability and endurance in the face of hardship. Despite the conditions documented, the content and design of this image reminds of the enduring human spirit and our connection to the land. The image is the definition of Cartier Bresson’s “decisive moment” as it captures a perfect slice of time when each aspect of the photograph works seamlessly together to convey the meaning of that moment and place.

The images in this post are but a facsimile of the original gelatin silver prints on display at Candela Books + Gallery – it is well worth the visit to see the originals! As usual Candela Gallery has curated a significant exhibit of exceptional quality.

Louis Draper’s sister, Nell Draper-Winston partnered with Candela Books + Gallery for “Louis Draper: Retrospective,” Jan. 10 to Feb. 22. The first-of-its-kind exhibition is part of “Race, Place and Identity,” a series of Richmond events highlighting civil rights and social justice

Posted in Design of Photography, Fine Art Photography, Photography, Uncategorized | Tagged Candela Books and Gallery, documentary photography, Douglas Barkey, Louis Draper, Place and Identity, politics, Race, Richmond, Virginia | 2 Comments

Summer announces itself in Richmond with Unbound 2! at Candela Books + Gallery

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Douglas Barkey

Cesar Rodriguez Beccera, “Venado Rojo,” 2013. Archival pigment print.

It is hard to tell if summer will ever arrive in Richmond, Virginia this year, but a good omen is the announcement of the opening of Unbound2!, the annual summer invitational exhibition at Candela Books + Gallery running July 5 through August 3, 2013.

The exhibition will open to the public Friday, July 5th, with a First Friday Art Walk reception from 5 to 9 pm.

Christa Blackwood, “Santa Elena,” 2013. Photogravure.

The preview images of the show display a pretty eclectic group of images, which is right in keeping with the ever expanding reach of Candela Gallery’s exhibits. Documentary, postmodernism, digital surrealism, alternative processing,and studio photography will all be on display – something for everyone no matter your photography style.

S. Gayle Stevens & Judy F. Sherrod, “Nocturnes 13,” 2012. Wet plate collodion mammoth plate pinhole tintype.

2013’s UnBound2! will include notable and emerging photographers, including Vivian Maier, Jeff Bridges, Jessie Mann & Len Prince, Courtney Johnson, Galina Kurlat, Kurt Simonson, Thomas Alleman, Cynthia Henebry, Rachel Phillips, Kristin Skees and Phil Nesmith.

Christine Osinski, “Girl Looking Sideways,” 1983-84, printed 2013. Gelatin silver print.

UnBound2! generates opportunities and exposure for participating artists far beyond traditional group or juried show opportunities by raising funds to purchase select works from the exhibition. Purchased works are added to the Candela Collection with the mission of supporting photographers through collection of their original photographic work and actively pursuing future opportunities to donate that work to notable art institutions.

Nadine Boughton, “Peril,” 2010. Digital collage, archival pigment print.

Candela will close the exhibition by bringing back some legendary hoopla! The UnBound2! gala event on Saturday, August 3rd, 7-11pm will include beer & wine, sangria, adult sno-cones, back alley chicken and other southern fare, live music from the Photosynthesizers, RAWFL’s lady arm wrestlers, laser cake via Big Secret, comedy from Coalition Theater, door prizes, raffle, and who knows what else. Event tickets and raffle tickets will be sold in advance and at the door; and will generate the funds toward purchase of artwork for the aforementioned Candela Collection.

See you there! Check back here in July for a review of the exhibit!

Posted in Creativity and Photography, Design of Photography, Digital Photography, Fine Art Photography, Landscape Photography, Uncategorized | Tagged Candela Books + Gallery, Douglas Barkey, exhibition, photography, Richmond | Leave a comment

Aaron Siskind at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Douglas Barkey

New York, 1951 (detail), Aaron Siskind, 1951

In a narrow hallway adjacent to the Amuse restaurant you will find a small treasure of photographs by Aaron Siskin, Harry Callahan, Minor White and Gina Lenz. that revolutionized photography in their time. Curated by Dr. Sarah Eckhardt, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, these representatives of abstract expressionist photography are on display at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts until June 16, 2013.

Although Siskind’s photographs are of recognizable artifacts, they are considered abstract because the images are not narrative in nature, rather they are about formal elements and the meaning of the content within the social-cultural context of the time. Abstract-expressionism was a driving force in the art world when Siskind made these images and his work asserted that photography had a role to play in this art movement.

Siskind chose to photograph objects of no value; many of the objects are the discarded remnants of industrial society: rust, peeling paint, patches of broadsides, gloves, and erased posters, among many others. These are not the majestic landscapes of Ansel Adams or the refined nude studies of Edward Weston – these are gritty and sordid selections from the backside of industry.

For photographers, Siskind established that anything and everything was game – that anything could be aestheticized. You didn’t need to travel across the world, find a beautiful model, or wait for the perfect moment. You just had to stop and look down at your feet, look at the wall you just walked by, or the corner you just turned. This is the stuff of banal daily existence, but Siskind has used design, light, and framing to create visually dynamic and culturally rich images.From his perspective, the photographer is a visionary, selecting material and putting it on display in a new context.

Aaron Siskind said, “When I make a photograph I want it to be an altogether new object, complete and self-contained, whose basic condition is order — unlike the world of events and actions, whose permanent condition is change and disorder.” (Siskind) In image after image we can see this purpose as the essential thread linking all his images – taking the chaotic remnants of mass manufacturing with the urban environment it requires and imposing visual and conceptual order.

We are in a technology environment that results in more nuanced social and environmental impacts. The shopping malls have clean walls and large corporations have campuses that rival a private college. In this sanitized environment it is a relief to experience the authenticity of Siskind’s tattered posters and layers of decomposing paint.

More information on the work and legacy of Aaron Siskind can be found at the Aaron Siskind Foundation.

Posted in Fine Art Photography, Photo Criticism, Uncategorized | Tagged Aaron Siskind, abstract expressionism, abstract photography, Douglas Barkey, photography, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts | Leave a comment

At Candela Books + Gallery – Louviere + Vanessa: Counterfeit

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Douglas Barkey

Louviere + Vanessa
“In the Land of the New Mother,” 2010
Injet on Kozo paper, gold leaf, paint and resin on dibond, 38.5″ x 55″

Counterfeit is the perfect title for an exhibition layered in irony and built with large-scale images of microscopic digital scans of global currency pressed with gold leaf and embedded in resin. Each image is extravagantly framed with unique carved wood stock creating a precious artifact out of the most common form of exchange in a capitalist society. The artwork is infused with golden light transmitted through multiple coats of translucent resin, but there is more than layers of gloss to examine.

Candela Gallery’s selected exhibitions often seem to ask the audience to reconsider how photography is defined and this show is no exception. These artifacts contain layers of photographic reality beginning with the original process to print the currency, which was then photographed at a high magnification with a scanner, converted to large scale using digital photography software, and finally printed in photographic quality on a fine art archival fiber paper. Throughout the process the artists have integrated gold leaf, paint, and resin into the light and shadow of the photographic imaging process. The result is a highly tactile and textured object that is far removed from the unified and bland surface of a photographic digital print.

Louviere + Vanessa
“A Snowflake Cracked the Stone with a Smile,” 2010
Inkjet on Kozo paper, gold leaf, paint and resin on dibond, 38.5 x 55

Louviere + Vanessa are a creative team whose previous works include the “cinegraph”, which is a physical montage of thousands of Super 8mm filmstrip frames shot and assembled in such as way as to create a still image composite. If one watched the film as film was intended to be viewed, over time, then it we would see a meaningless stream of blurred images, but presented in a grid fashion after David Hockney’s photo assemblages, a new and comprehensible still image is visible.

In Counterfeit, Lourviere + Vanessa take the most common form of human exchange – currency – and aestheticize it. They have dug out of these complex colorful bills, embedded images that represent a republic’s identity and then re-contextualized the symbols as unique artifacts, now coated with gold leaf and resin, and carrying an existential significance. The titles, such as “A Circus Never Forgets its First Hurricane” are absurd or nonsensical, and pick up on a visual similarity to build a fragmented meaning. (Note the series of rings in the image below.)

Louviere + Vanessa
“A Circus Never Forgets its First Hurricane,” 2010
Inket on Kozo paper, gold leaf, paint and resin on dibond, 38.5″ x 55″

In some ways these images are very much what is expected of a photograph. We expect for the photographer to act as an observer to extract moments and spaces of the real world for us to view. Aaron Siskind made abstract photographs about peeling paint and crushed gloves – he observed and used his craft to beautify what many ignored. These images are based on the slips of paper we carry around in our billfolds – which magically have value – and exchange for a cup of coffee or a work of art. Despite their mundanity, these bills have been carefully illustrated and designed by artists to exacting specifications and approved by a government somewhere to represent wealth. The figures and symbols in our currency contain our nation’s fundamental values. Louviere + Vanessa have carefully scrutinized these currency prints and selected small fragments to show us. By scanning a miniscule proportion of the currency and blowing it up, Louviere + Vanessa remove it’s monetary value, then enormously increase it’s value by reassembling it into an artwork literally covered in gold, which of course, is what currency substitutes for in the first place. In doing so, they bring these hidden elements and meanings out into the light for us to examine. If you have forgotten about commonly held beliefs of nationalism, patriotism, national mascots, and sacrifice for country and honor…well, here it all is unfolded for you in a golden splender stained with ink blots, smears and polyurethane.

What is more real than money? What is more fictional than money? Currency exists in both realms. We all share a mass belief (or mass delusion) in the value of money to purchase and currency is the physical manifestation of that belief. As a society we use currency less and less and simply accept the concept of money as a value in our checking and credit accounts that may be transmitted through a smart phone, click of a virtual button, or swipe of a card. Soon there may not be the opportunity to create counterfeit currency and and a historical archive of those notes will join their image shadows in Louviere + Vanessa’s art work in a museum somewhere. Most likely… the shadow will hold it’s value far longer than the original.

Louviere + Vanessa : Counterfeit is at Candela Books + Gallery through June 22, 2013. Another success for a regional leader in photographic exhibitions and publications.

Posted in Design of Photography, Fine Art Photography, Photo Criticism, Uncategorized | Tagged Candela Gallery, currency, digital photography, Douglas Barkey, fine art photography, Louviere + Vanessa, money, photography, Richmond, Virginia | Leave a comment

Lets take the digital out of photography

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Douglas Barkey

Ever since the first sensor was mass produced we have been considering and analyzing the differences between the use of film to darken silver grains compared to the use of a CCD to record light. In 2011 I wrote a series of articles on some of the differences between digital and analogue photography, including how we conceive an image, how we go about photographing in the digital format in a different way, how knowing what we can do in post-production influences our creative process, and finally how managing the organization of our photographs has revolutionized how we view our photographic archive and consequently our perception of our images.

Now I’ve realized that there are several generations of photographers for whom the analogy to analogue is meaningless and digital technology has penetrated our medium so profoundly at this point that even photographers shooting film end up scanning their work for digital post-production.

It is time we stopped calling our medium digital photography and just called it photography.

The question is, what is photography then – what is and isn’t a photograph? Cameras come standard with the capability of recording images over time in high definition with sound; video cameras have come with ability to record still images for some time. Some photographers even combine both the still and a moving image by integrating an isolated element of video within what looks like a still image. The box that we use to record light has changed over time, but ultimately it still maintains the same function of capturing light as it reflects off of objects. Whether film or digital, it is still a mechanical recording where the hand of the artist is restricted to specific controls unique to photography, such as range of focus, amount of exposure, optics, framing, angle of view, and movement (stopped or in motion). These elements are the language of photography and have only been enhanced by the addition of digital capture over time.

In “Photography as a medium of reflection”, German photography critic Bernd Stiegler (2008), describes photography as a means of constructing and disseminating reality. He says:

Photographs continue to be visual reflections of reality; they are realism mediated by the medium and concentrated in images–even if this reality is a radically constructed one, at times consisting of nothing more than visual material generated and manipulated by a computer. (Stiegler, 2008, p. 194)

He further defines photography as a “reflective medium”. The more I thought about this I realized how the dichotomy between digital and film-based photography is false. There are many aspects of digital capture, post-production, and printing that have changed the creative process and workflow for photographers, but in essence no matter what you do, the mechanics of the process mean that any image is a reflection of a reality of some kind.

Whether you focus the lens, stop movement, blur movement, move in close, photograph a white wall or a magazine image using a camera phone, a pinhole camera, or a $35,000 medium format digital camera…in all cases you are capturing reflected light based on the light itself. There is no translation from one medium to another (observation to pigment) and as much as an artist might want to intervene in that record, any image at all on the sensor or on the film is the result of the impact of light. Even when we take the image into post-production and manipulate it by squishing pixels together, layering exposures to create an surreal range of tones, or montage images seamlessly, all in all, it comes down to an image originating and being constructed by light.

Stiegler goes on to point out that we will never be able to sever the link between reality and photography. While we dont’ believe in the objectivity of photography, and while the perception of the photographer and their audience are clearly in play, “we do still regard photographs as, in some way or other, our reality” (Stiegler, 2008, pg. 197). So, it seems to make logical sense that now is the time to ask ourselves if we really need the term digital anymore; if we really need to distinguish between silver and pixels. Photography is photography and it can encompass all new technologies.

-Douglas Barkey

——-

Stiegler, Bernd. (2008). Photography as a medium of reflection (E. Kieffer & M. Christian, Trans.). In R. E. Kelsey & B. Stimson (Eds.), The meaning of photography (pp. xxxi, 211 p.). Williamstown, Mass. New Haven: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute ; Distributed by Yale University Press.

Posted in Creativity and Photography, Digital Photography, Photo Criticism, Photographic Technology, Uncategorized | Tagged creative process, digital photography, photography, photography criticism | Leave a comment

Resurrection, Easter 2013

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Douglas Barkey

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Fotonotes

2014 Sony World Photography Awards – shortlist reviews

Kenneth Josephson exhibit

From 40 plates to 6 billion files – the scale of photography in a digital age

Larry Cook and Annette Isham at The Hamiltonian Gallery, Washington D.C.

Louis Draper: Retrospective at Candela Books + Gallery

Summer announces itself in Richmond with Unbound 2! at Candela Books + Gallery

Aaron Siskind at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

At Candela Books + Gallery – Louviere + Vanessa: Counterfeit

Lets take the digital out of photography

Resurrection, Easter 2013

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