harlan erskine — photography/blog

©2008-2009 Harlan Erskine. From the series “Imaginary Wars,” The Phantom Brigade 20 x 37 inches.

I am happy to announce that my School of Visual Arts thesis project has been awarded 3rd place in the Linhof Young Photographer Award ’09. The above image is a sample of what will be shown at the June thesis show for the at the School of Visual Arts Gallery on 26th Street in New York. I will be posting more images in the next few weeks and I’ll post the upcoming School of Visual Arts thesis website so you can browse the rest of the class of 2009. Take a look at the Linhof Award’s Press Release below.

LINHOF YOUNG PHOTOGRAPHER AWARD 09

On April 24, 2009 the jury met in in the headquarters of Linhof Präzisions-Systemtechnik / Munich for selecting the winners. 468 participants from 39 countries had sent more than 3.500 images. The ratio of female to male photographers was almost exactly 1 : 2.

The Linhof company and the jury were surprized by the big number of international participants of the competiton despite of tough restrictions relating to the age and the theme. The theme was “HUMAN CITYSCAPES” and the photographic realization should comprise the urban environment “City” showing contrasts or unity of citizens and architecture.

The jury had a hard job. Quite often excellent images were submitted but missing the conceptional work. Some photographers submitted individual images but did not follow the concept for their whole series whereas the judging always referred to the total entry.

The entries from 39 countries also revealed rational preferences for contents and aesthetics. Most of the entries originated from Germany. These 169 participants often referred to the theme fairly strictly combined with conceptional architectural photography – at high quality standard. Entries from China (81) can be described as more formal experimental. Many-sided but also individually were the works of the English (31) and American (21) participants.

The jury has evaluated the image series for a position reflecting the changing impression of human beings in relation to his environment.

Members of the jury were:

Thomas Weski (Associate Director, Haus der Kunst Munich, Curator of photography)

Professor Peter Bialobrzeski (High School for Arts/Bremen, Photographer)

Brigitte Nusser (Collectioner of photographs)

Anna Wondrak (Historian for Arts)

Barbara Wolff (Photographer). All three living in Munich.

The first prize, a Linhof Camera equipment to the value of 10.000 Euro goes to the 28 years old Russian photographer Alexander Gronsky (link 1, link 2) living in Talin/Estonia. His series “The Edges” is about exploring the boundaries of Moscow city. In almost surrealistic scenes he shows people and animals disintegrated from the city and put in the abstract plane of the snow.

The second prize, a Linhof Camera equipment to the value of 3000 Euro goes to the team Philipp Diettrich and Matthias Keller (High School for Design/Karlsruhe and High School for Arts/Bremen) for their work “Kolonia Megawatt” dealing with the Polish border city Bogatynia. The series shows the transformation of the town and the people. Destruction, re-building and the strongly dominant power plant create a peculiar cosmos visible in the series of images.

The third prize, Linhof Camera accessories to the value of 1000 Euro goes to Harlan Erskine, New York (School of Visual Arts/New York). His series “Imaginary Wars” show games of his childhood in New York with imaginary foes lurking around the corners. Children play games in which they imagine themselves in adult roles that they may not fully grasp. In the images the photographer stretches his memories into an apocalyptic world.

The Linhof Prazisions Systemtechnik being the organizer of this competition says many thanks again to all participants. The company plans to issue such a contest bi-annually with new topics thus establishing this competition as an important international photographer award.

The winning images will be posted soon on Linhof’s web site. For further information see: www.linhof.de

____

note: If you know of any better links for the first and second place artists please send them to me and I will update this post.

i heart photograph, too.

Black Sun 0006, c-print on diasec in wood frame, 48" x 64"

Thanks to for the posting my Black Sun Project. I have been reading i heart photograph for a while now maybe I’ll run into you durring the NYPF this year, I see you’ll be doing another panel on the state of the blog.

i heart photograph: harlan erskine

I keep forgetting to post this but when I came across the viewfinders series and watched Shen Wei‘s webisode I remembered he has a show up now. I’m sorry I missed the opening but I am going to try to get out to DUMBO right before the end.

From the press release:

Randall Scott Gallery
is pleased to present the opening of our new gallery in DUMBO Brooklyn
this Thursday, April 2nd

Shen Wei
Almost Naked

Shen Wei, Joey, 2005 from the series Almost Naked

April 2nd-May 2nd
opening reception for the artist
April 2nd 6pm-8pm
RSG in Brooklyn
Please join us for the Gallery opening reception on April 2nd, 6-8pm.

An afterparty will be held at reBar at 147 Front Street, at 9pm.
cash bar, good friends

our new location:
Randall Scott Gallery
111 Front Street #204
Brooklyn, NY 11201

DUMBO
www.randallscottgallery.com
info@randallscottgallery.com
Hours:
11am-6pm Wed-Sat
DUMBO First Thursdays 11am-8:30pm

Location:
Located on the corner of Front and Washington Streets
in-between the bridges

Trains:
F (York St)
A C (High St)

In this video clip (found via Screenlabs) filmmaker Werner Herzog sits down and discusses his idea of ecstatic truth and the The Minnesota Declaration with Henry Rollins. The key part of the interview begins 1 minute into it when they begin a discussion:

Henry Rollins: Lets talk about your documentary film making, which to me is I’ve never seen anything like your documentaries. Can you explain the idea of “ecstatic truth”?

Werner Herzog: I think at the moment there is a major tectonic shift going on. We have virtual reality, in the Internet we have reality TV we have got digital effects, we got Photoshop we got everything is pointing towards a redefinition of reality. We have to start seeing and working and explaining and articulating reality in movies in a different way.

Cinema Verité was the answer of the 60s. Today is something else out there and I’ve always said sure reality has to be seen in a new way but its that is not so much the interesting part of it the interesting side of it is where is truth in all this? Cinema Verité is the accountant’s truth. As I keep saying I have insulted many with that but I’ve always been after what I call an ecstatic truth, an ecstasy of truth.

HR: And so you would say that with all the new technology truth has not changed but now that there’s different methods to get to it they should be employed to reach that–that ecstatic truth?

WH: And facts will not create truth. Facts create norms but they do not create an illumination.

HR: Do you think people who are seeking to make documentaries today are somehow limiting themselves by going back to the ideas of cinema Verité and limiting themselves by those confines?

WH: They will find there way themselves but there has to be a major shift in dealing with reality. Its as simple as that and in my documentaries they are always very close to feature films and I often stage and rehearse and repeat like in a feature film. And the feature films that I’ve made have some sort of a common border line with documentaries anyway when you look at Fitzcarraldo it’s a film where I hoisted a steamboat over a mountain a couple of hundred tons heavy. And I keep saying that this is my best documentary.

Is Cinema Verité the equivalent to documentary photography in still image making? I’m starting to think the answer is yes.

Herzog argues for an ecstatic truth for cinema. So far, only some of Jeff Wall’s work, maybe the new Stan Douglas’ images and possibly Taryn Simon and Paul Graham. They all seem to be approaching an ecstatic truth in photography because of how they approach the documentary image by utilizing the tools of fictional image production.

Anyone have any other artists they can think of?

I am trying to work in this way for my thesis project in school. I hope to be approaching this illusive ecstatic truth as closely as I can. Either way, that moving away from a “photographie verité,” which seems to be one of the most popular forms of image making, would be good for the art of contemporary image making. I believe there can be an ecstatic truth in art where art provides a greater illumination than just straight facts or ambiguous images of the world.

Thanks to Ruba Katrib and her curated show now up at Dumbo Arts Center – Jannicke Laker and Julika Rudelius, Ecstatic Truth for pointing me in the direction of the The Minnesota Declaration and the Herzog’s idea of ecstatic truth.

natalia ulianova, from the series “receipts“

Last semester during my class with Lyle Rexer we had an interesting guest lecture from Vladimir Kupriyanov a Russian Photographer and Lecturer at RODCHENKO art school. Although we we following along through a translator the lecture let us hear a first hand account of Russian photo history from an active participant. The RODCHENKO art school is only a few years old but it seems that it is still one of the few artistic focuses photography schools in contemporary Russia.

I have been wanting to link to the site he showed us for some time.I had forgotten about it until yesterday when I was looking through it again and found natalia ulianova. I find it interesting how much it reminds me of the early work of Brian Ulrich.

Check out Vladimir Kupriyanov’s work here:
short bio, CV and some work at Moscow House of Photography > Vladimir Kupriyanov, About the eightieth [1980-1989]

nice clip on Current tv from by filmmaker Stuart Kershaw.
from the pod info:

What makes a man? How do we come of age in the 21st century? In a world where you can still be a boy at thirty, One young-ish filmmaker sets out on a belated quest for manhood.

With a little internet digging I noticed this history of this quote. Originally written by Wilhelm Stekel who was then quoted in J. D. Salinger‘s The Catcher in the Rye as saying, “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one” (p.188). This quote is also used in the anime Ghost in the Shell.

I also enjoy the pod’s discussion of the roll of war, the warrior and how the military can act as a coming of age. As these topics relate to my final project in school and I am still working them out for myself. Holden Caulfield’s musings of what the world means are not that far off from this film maker’s. As society moves further away from Caulfield’s era will we develop new rites of passage into maturity? Or are these very rites passe and the sequence itself flawed?

Douglas Gordon, 24 hour psycho back and forth and to and fro, 2008. Video installation with two screens and two video projections, 24-hour loop, Courtesy the artist. Installation view, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2008.
© The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. Photo: Kristopher McKay.
January 6, 10 a.m. – January 7, 10 a.m. Rotunda Floor, Free

So, here we are, 2009 space monkeys and flying cars and all. Its an exciting yet anxious year for me – finishing school and re-entering the working world at a time when people are suggesting our economy is tanking more then it ever has in my lifetime. So what do we do? celebrate? turn off the TV try to read the news a little less and hope Obama can jump start this economy with a full on Keynesian / New New Deal Plan.

On the bright side – there are no lines for bread and institutions like The Guggenheim are still very much alive and kicking out interesting events like the tomorrows-

from the Press Release:
24-Hour Program on the Concept of Time
Tuesday, January 6, 6 p.m. through Wednesday, January 7, 6 p.m.
Download a PDF of the 24-Hour schedule.

On the occasion of the exhibition theanyspacewhatever, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will present a 24-hour event concentrating on the concept of time in its myriad philosophical, psychological, biological, sociological, poetic, aesthetic, and economic manifestations. Constituting a multi-disciplinary approach to the subject, the program will bring together artists, architects, scientists, philosophers, historians, engineers, filmmakers, musicians, and other cultural producers.
…
Also on view:
Douglas Gordon
24 hour psycho back and forth and to and fro
January 6, 10 a.m.-January 7, 10 a.m.
Rotunda Floor, Free

Serpentine Gallery Marathon Archive
New Media Theatre
Tuesday, January 6, 6 p.m. through Wednesday, January 7, 6 p.m.
Download a PDF of video descriptions.

I am really looking forward to this event but I am not sure when to go. anyone else going or have suggestions? I am really interested who will be staying up for the 4:30 – 5 am presentation by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, maybe it will be me?

So, the Festival is over I am exhausted but visually satisfied. I had tons of fun and I will write some more about the highlights next week. You can read the list of award winners here. Congratulations to all the winners and especially to Amy Stein for reppin’ SVA in the Canon G9 winner’s circle.

Over the next, few days leading up to the festival on the 14th I hope to complete this compilation of portfolio websites for yours and my photographic surfing pleasure. If you have any comments of portfolio suggestions, requests for additions and or removals please email or comment in this post’s comment section.

2008 Nominees

Harlan Erskine, “Guest Bedroom. Vero Beach, Florida” © 2007

The image above was my submission to the Student Personal work / fine art – Single category that is now a nominated work.

From the events Press Release: