4/19/10 Artist Post: Steve Shaw

Steve Shaw’s portrait photographs are sexy, strong, beautiful and timeless. Shaw is famously known for his easy-going manner when working with him and for bringing out the sensual side of his subjects. The fitting and easy-going style of his photographs (disregarding his high fashion photographs) is something that I am trying to imitate in my own manner. Also his use of shadows really intrigues me. As a photographer I know that we are supposed to be hyper aware of shadows that are playing within our frame. He seems to utilize shadows a lot throughout his images and it definitely helps to make them stronger. The first thing I am working on is the necessity to be able to shoot a good portrait straight-up without worrying about the frills. Then will come the time where I get to mess around with the smaller details that can be used within a photograph.

The best moment for Shaw is when he knows he has gotten the shot, regardless of whoever is sitting/standing/leaning in front of the lens. “It’s when you just know you’ve gotten something, and that makes me happy. I can see it in someone’s face, and I don’t need to take another shot. I know I’ve got it-that one picture.” This seems to be the same thing that every photographer says about taking portraits.

Website:
http://www.steveshawphotography.com/

Interview:
N/A as it appears Shaw is very secretive.

Gallery:
http://www.redbalcony.com/?gid=327

Video of shoot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXj82noo7Qc

4/12/10 Artist Post: Andrew Eccles

Andrew Eccles has been a freelance photographer based out of New York City since 1987. Prior to becoming an independent photographer, Andrew assisted a number of outstanding photographers including Robert Mapplethorpe, Steven Meisel and Annie Leibovitz.
Eccles classically composed, technically flawless style, complemented by his easy-going demeanor has made him the preferred photographer of such celebrities as John Travolta, Kevin Bacon and Brooke Shields. He is able to ease his subjects through the awkward and often uncomfortable experience of being photographed. “It’s scary out there in front of the camera, and your subject should never be alone.”

Although Eccles' images did eventually draw me in it was originally a quote that I ran across that connected me to him. “Back in art college I gravitated more toward still life and landscape photography.” He was afraid to take pictures of people. My first semester at VCU a fine professor made us right a statement about what scared up about out photography. Mine was about how I have a hard time going up to people that I don’t know and asking them to photograph them. He then forced us to confront out fears and from then on portraits of other people is where my photography tends to lay. This is something that both Eccles and I have in common.

Now he absolutely loves portraiture. “It’s probably as intimate a relationship as you can have without touching someone, and it can still be quite terrifying at times in the ‘first date’ kind of way. But there are moments, the rare epiphany when everything comes together for a fraction of a second, when the subject, the light, the composition are all better then you could have imagined. It can happen accidently, but it’s almost more rewarding when the attempt was intentional.. It’s the feeling when you’ve taken a picture so beautiful, powerful, clever or funny that someone is genuinely moved to feel something that they weren’t feeling until they say the picture. Or simply when you can frame a picture, hang it on a wall, stand back and say ‘yup that’s a good one.’ “

Website:
http://www.andreweccles.com/

Interview:
http://photosecrets.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/round-up-from-call-with-photographer-andrew-eccles/

Gallery:
http://www.artnet.com/Galleries/Artists_detail.asp?G=&gid=79931&which=&aid=425884147&ViewArtistBy=online&rta=http://www.artnet.com

4/5/10 Artist Post:William Claxton

William Claxton was most noted for his photography of jazz musicians and he also photographed celebrities and models. He has photographed the famous as well as his family and friends. “Above all, my work is about friendship.” I realize that the photography world is heavily based in who you do and do not know. This statement helps summarize it all very simply. When he photographs people he is often photographing his friends, and his subjects often become his friends. This is something that I defiantly need to work on to keep connections throughout the art world.

His portraits are a demonstration of the beauty he sees in people. “I hate ugly pictures of anybody. I am dedicated to beauty. I know there is a beauty in all kinds of human beings. So, the act of finding and capturing that beauty is relatively easy for me. I am happiest when I can create a beautiful and poignant image of a subject.” I always try to find the beauty within somebody. I do not believe that somebody has to be physically appealing to hold that something special that the world wants to gaze upon. His style of portraiture is fairly simple and highly dependant on natural light, something that I want to perfect because I feel as if natural light brings out the subjects natural beauty.

As a young boy Claxton began with a Brownie box camera and a fascination with music gained from his father’s collection of big-band records. Before long, he was haunting jazz clubs in Los Angeles, wearing one of his father’s suits to avoid being asked for his ID, and always carrying a camera.Because Claxton started off so heavily based in the jazz world, he notes that is photography hadn’t caught his eye at such a young age he would have become a happy musician. Claxton says that “photography is jazz for the eyes. All I ask you to do is listen with your eyes.”

Website:
http://www.williamclaxton.com/noflash.html

Interview:
http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0103/claxton_intro.htm

Gallery:
http://www.afterimagegallery.com/claxton.htm

3/29/10 Artist Post: Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson was deeply influenced by the contemporary movement known as surrealism, which encouraged artists and writers to explore the meaning that lay hidden below the surface of everyday life. In the hands of the surrealists, photography became a way to reveal significance that would otherwise be invisible or lost. When captured in a photograph, a simple gesture, chance meeting, or mundane setting could convey great beauty or tragedy or humor.
Despite the spontaneous nature of his subjects, Henri Cartier-Bresson never abandoned his formal training as an artist. Each image is a complete composition within a single frame of film, and it cannot be cropped or altered without destroying the whole. This whole image can take many different forms. In the hands of Cartier-Bresson, a photographic portrait seems transparent, as if no photographer has intervened between the subject and the viewer. “We might be eavesdropping on Coco Chanel as she laughs with delight, we might have surprised Carson McCullers and her companion, George Davis, stretched out on the lawn, or have strolled unannounced into William Faulkner's backyard.” We feel that we know them, because Cartier-Bresson captures what seems to be the essence of their being, the way they look when they are most themselves. These images convey a palpable physical relationship between the viewer and the subject.

“Photography is an instantaneous operation, both sensory and intellectual—an expression of the world in visual terms and also a perpetual quest and interrogation. It is at one and the same the recognition of a fact in a fraction of a second and the rigorous arrangement of the forms visually perceived which give to that fact expression and significance.”

I hope that I am able to capture the same type of side of people that Henri Cartier-Bresson does. All of his portraiture holds a little something extra in them, in the look of his subjects and how they are so comfortable even though there is a photographer right in front of them.

Website:
http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/cb/index-int2.htm

Interview:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1318621
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1995/mar/02/the-moment-that-counts-an-interview-with-henri-car/

Gallery:
http://www.artnet.com/artist/3702/henri-cartier-bresson.html

3/22/10 Artist Post: Martin Parr

“You have to be obsessive to find your passion and make photography work.”

Martin Parr wanted to become a photographer from the age of 14 and cites his grandfather, an amateur photographer, as an early influence. From the age of 16, there was never any serious pursuit of any other type of occupation. From 1970 to 1973 he studied photography at the Manchester Polytechnic (now Manchester Metropolitan University). In 2008 he was made an Honorary Doctor of Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University in recognition for his ongoing contribution to photography and to Manchester Metropolitan University’s School of Art.
Parr's approach to documentary photography is intimate, anthropological and satirical. Macro lenses, ring flash, high-saturation color film, and since it became an easier format to work in, digital photography, all allow him to put his subjects "under the microscope" in their own environment, giving them space to expose their lives and values in ways that often involve inadvertent humor. I find his best work to be that in which it is both fascinating and disgusting: like a social and cultural train wreck that you just can't look away from. The way that he is able to capture people as his leisure, without even necessarily disturbing them at all in the way that they act, is something that I am extremely jealous of. I am always scared that I will get in trouble somehow for photographing somebody that I do not have permission to do beforehand. Maybe this should be the next fear that I conquer…

Although his photographs always include people he only considers being a portrait photographer only 5% of his work. “A portrait is something you set up. Otherwise it is just a documentary picture, including people. Sometimes I ask permission because I photograph very close up. Sometimes I don’t.” I can picture him walking around, carrying his camera and just clicking away without ever putting his eye to the lens to see what the outcome might look like.

“You can see I’m not torn apart by guilt,” he says dryly, and he does indeed seem remarkably relaxed. “It amuses me that I have made a living from making a critique of a society that I am benefiting from.” The irony and humour, he says, are very English traits. “I regard myself as a quintessentially English photographer. Before you ask. Which most people do.”

Website:
http://www.martinparr.com/index1.html

Interview:
http://allphotographers.wordpress.com/2007/05/02/a-discussion-with-martin-parr/
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/cda08fb4-bbf5-11db-9cbc-0000779e2340.html

Gallery:
http://www.stephendaitergallery.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=39

3/15/10 Artist Post:Art Streiber

Art Streiber is a freelance photographer that specializes in photojournalism, travel and entertainment-portrait photography. He has explored many facets of photography within his career. “My work varies. I do reportage, interiors, lifestyles, travel and portrait photography. I pursued portraiture because I love the challenge of visually ‘defining’ my subjects.”

His images are clean, elegant, subtle and unpretentious. He tends to have a very creative approach to his portraiture. “I am able, quite quickly, to size up a subject’s environment, and compose a portrait with a few layers of meaning. I’m capable of putting my subjects at ease, and helping them understand that the process does not have to resemble dentistry!” He jokes and plays around with his clients, it is his way of getting them to relax. That is usually the approach that I take towards the subjects of my photographs as well.

“I love a subject who ‘gives’ something to the camera, who participates in the photo shoot.” Without the outgoing participation of your model it is difficult to create an image that is welcoming to the viewer. I feel that if the subject won’t let you break the barrier as the photographer then the viewer will have an even more difficult time.

“Portrait photography has taken me to incredible places, and has allowed me to meet and talk to fascinating people.” My favorite thing about photography is how, when hidden behind my camera, I am able to now talk to many different types of people.

Website:
http://artstreiber.com/

Interview:
http://www.smashboxstudios.com/yello/?p=4820#more-4820

Gallery:
http://www.paulbettany.net/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=226
http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/art-streiber

3/8/10 Artist Post: Michael Birt

Michael Birt is one of the leading portrait photographers of his generation, specialising in celebrity portraits. He works both in the UK and the USA taking pictures for magazines and also produces fine art prints of celebrity subjects.

Birt studied photography at the Arts Institute in Bournemouth in the early Seventies. His dream then was to be an artist and he thought seriously about leaving the college after a year to focus on art. But a senior lecturer stepped in to explain how hard it was to try and make a living from painting so he stayed the course before finding a job in London as a photographic assistant. He worked for Time Out and various women's magazines and started to build a career based on his growing portfolio of work.

“I didn’t originally set out to be a portrait photographer, but my first commission was to take a portrait of a fashion designer and I have since been unable to escape the call of the portrait.”
The quality that Birt most likes to bring out of his subjects shows his thoughtfulness and compassion. “Capturing someone’s generosity of spirit definitely helps to make a better photography. It’s important that they offer a part of themselves to the viewer.”

“Everyday I meet some of the world’s most interesting people and whether they come to me , or I go to them, I am given an insight into their lives. However brief this glimpse may be, it allows me to see the qualities that make us all individual.”

Birt’s style of photography is very unique. Accoring to him, he is sometime limited to a very short shooting period of his subjects so he must find a way to connect with them and open them up fairly quickly. All of his portraits seem to have a playful air to them, something that I can hope to have in the future. Looking at his works has made me want to go out and photograph everybody that I see, doing something crazy and yet spectacular all at once.

“Photography is a difficult method to work in. Either one captures the moment at the perfect time, or not. And if not, it is lost forever.

Website:
http://www.michael-birt.com/

Interview:
http://www.calumetphoto.co.uk/birt

Gallery:
http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person.php?search=as&grp=1068%3BPhotographers&lDate=&page=1&LinkID=mp58828

3/1/10 Artist Post:Michael Franzini

Michael Franzini is the author of One Hundred Young Americans. The book is a first-hand account of youth culture in America. It profiles one hundred teenagers in all fifty states. More than two hundred images show every kind of teenager from every part of the United States, mirroring census data for gender, race, religion and sexual orientation, balanced across urban, rural, suburban and small-town locations. “Our goal was to have a balance of city/suburban/rural as well as rich/poor/middle-class and mainstream/fringe.”
“These are not candid fly-on-the-wall documentary photographs. These are images in which there is a connection between the subject and the camera.”

I really enjoy how Franzini makes each of his subjects completely comfortable with the camera. He is able to establish a relaxing environment for each person that he was photographing. “We made it clear that we understood something about their world and that we were not there to judge them, that they were the center of attention and that they were in charge of how they wanted to present themselves, what they wanted to say, where they wanted to go.” This is the type of relationship that I strive to have with each of my subjects. I used to have a huge problem getting to a personal level with subjects that I did not really know but I have since been working on that issue. Reading about how Franzini treats his subjects helps me understand the type of relationship that is necessary between the photographer and the person that they are photographing.

We also have the same tendency in our photographs that there is eye contact between the subject and the camera lens. When asked why he always has people make eye contact when photographing them he responded, “I believe you can learn more about people by looking into their eyes and interacting with them than you can by watching without being noticed.” I have always felt that by looking directly into somebody’s eyes you can see a part of them that most people avoid. I have noticed that it starts to make people uncomfortable if you hold their gaze for too long and they will break eye-contact.

Gallery:
http://www.phhfineart.com/michael_franzini.html

Website:
http://www.michaelfranzini.com/mf-main.html

Interview: (REALLY GREAT INTERVIEW!!)
http://www.ypulse.com/ypulse-interview-michael-franzini-100-young-americans-2

2/22/10 Artist Post: Gillian Wearing

Gillian Wearing's series "the Album" is the series that intersts me the most.

“The Album photographs are a continuing series, begun in 1993, featuring Wearing posing as members of her family. Costumes, wigs and meticulously crafted silicone prosthetic masks go into recreating, in detail, the snapshots and portrait images on which her photographs are based. The results are spooky and raise questions around loss, the passage of time and disintegrating identity.”

“However, it's an expensive process (each mask costs more than £10,000 to produce, followed by up to 40 rolls of film to capture the perfect image of Wearing inside it). Until recently the series consisted only of parents and siblings, two self-images and an uncle. Now there are two new additions to the album: Wearing's maternal grandparents.”

Inevitably, the further Wearing extends Album to include previous generations, the more her own position seems like an end point; the final name at the bottom of the family tree. "That's true - how to take it forward? I don't have any children, but if I did, I probably would use their pictures in this series. It's made me think about how people in years to come will be lucky, because they'll have photographs that go back through generations and generations of their family."

That last quote is shows how her work relates to mine. The photographs that I am recreating are of important meaning (first day baby came home, first time going to pick a pumpkin for Halloween, first prom, etc.). These photographs are ones that will be passed from generation to generation and it has been an interesting adventure to go back through generation after generation and see the same types of photographs.

Website
N/A

Interview
http://www.mattlippiatt.co.uk/Gillian%20Wearing.htm

Website
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/wearing_gillian.html

2/15/10 Artist Post: Duane Michals

Duane Michals (born February 18, 1932) is an American photographer. Largely self-taught, his work is noted for its innovation and artistry. Michals' style often features photo-sequences and the incorporation of text to examine emotion and philosophy, resulting in a unique body of work. Duane Michals emphatically defines himself by what he is not, saying first and foremost that he is not a photographer. “I am an expressionist and by that I mean I’m not a photographer or a writer or a painter or a tap dancer, but rather someone who expresses himself according to his needs.” Michals never learned traditional photographic methods, and that lack of education has contributed, he believes, to his success. In his own words, he never had to “unlearn” anything and was therefore always free to be different.

Duane Michals “The House I Once Called Home” is a series in which Michals traveled back to his the home he lived in when he first started to get into photography. When he arrived there he soon learned that it was going to be torn down because it was completely decrepit. We are both revisiting places from earlier years. His work is comparing how it used to be just like I am. However, mine is holding something else because I am rephotographing the people as well to show how they have changed.

Website
N/A

Interview
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~karlpeter/zeugma/inters/michals.htm

Gallery
http://www.pacemacgill.com/duanemichals-4-1.html

2/8/10 Artist Post: Angie Buckley

Angie Buckley Artist Statement:

“Our opinions are continuously shaped through associations with people in our immediate environment and our culture. Habits, stories and traditions from various groups are passed from one generation to the next and most of these things transform over time through a subtle metamorphosis. One of the results is a magnitude of assumption made about others based on a pre-constructed interpretation. My artwork is driven by a fascination with the invisibility of such transmutations and its affect on our society as a whole.”

“The dreamy quality of the pinhole camera distorts the sense of scale of the landscape and the dioramas. Likewise, the primitive quality of the camera contrasts a current obsession with technical advancement. Cutting out various shapes of figures or objects and placing them in front of the photograph from which they came makes it seem as if they have stepped out of time to confront the viewer. The duplication of characters is similar to the retelling of the stories and the open silhouette holes are analogous to the vacant cultural histories of the displaced. Subsequent generations, such as my own, find themselves in-between imagination and the real world in order to put pieces together to build understanding of oneself and the culture around them.”

Buckley is showing the ghost of person that used to be there and put them there by using the original photograph in the image of photoshopping the original person into the scene. She would also shoot through a cut out of a person so that there is an empty space where they used to be.
I relate to Buckley because we are both trying to reconstruct feelings from old photographs. I love the way that her images look so dreamy and I wish that the photographs that I am recreating had this type of quality to them so that I can learn

Website
http://www.angiebuckley.com/

Interview
n/a

Gallery
http://artslide.fa.asu.edu/mfaslide/buckley/index.htm

2/1/10 Artist Post: Taryn Simon

Taryn Simon lives and works in New York. The Innocents has been exhibited in 2003 at PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York and at Kunstwerke, Berlin. Simon was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Photography. The Innocents, Simon`s first book, was published in the spring of 2003 by Umbrage Editions and will be an accompanying element of the exhibition at Nikolaj, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center. Her photography and writing has been featured in numerous publications and broadcasts, including The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Frontline, CNN and BBC.

Taryn Simon’s series “The Innocents” is images of people that had been arrested, went to jail, and then years later because of DNA testing they were proven innocent and released. She would then have the subjects return to the scene of the crime that they were accused of being at years ago and pose for her. At issue is the question of photography's function as a credible eyewitness and arbiter of justice. “The primary cause of wrongful conviction is mistaken identification. A victim or eyewitness identifies a suspected perpetrator through law enforcement’s use of photographs and lineups. This procedure relies on the assumption of precise visual memory. But, through exposure to composite sketches, mugshots, Polaroids, and lineups, eyewitness memory can change. In the history of these cases, photography offered the criminal justice system a tool that transformed innocent citizens into criminals. Photographs assisted officers in obtaining eyewitness identifications and aided prosecutors in securing convictions.” The photographs are accompanied by the Innocence Project's case profiles and Simon's interviews, collected during her cross-country journey. While mugshots and photo arrays are used to condemn and imprison innocent people, Simon has turned the camera around to document the victims of misidentification and perverted justice.

Our artwork relates because we are both having people return to an area that they “should” remember. Her subjects may or may not have ever actually been at this area and mine have been there but might not necessarily remember that exact moment that the snapshot was taken at. They are both bringing people back to a certain time.

Website
http://www.tarynsimon.com/

Interview
http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/taryn-simon/

Gallery
http://cds.aas.duke.edu/exhibits/innocentspast.html
http://www.mocp.org/exhibitions/2005/08/taryn_simon_the.php