On Originality...

Penelope Umbrico, 4,786,139 Suns from Flickr (Partial) 1/14/09 2007-2009 4 x 6 inch machine prints (detail).

Every artist has to grapple with the question: Is your work original? Some say that no artwork is original. This statement is a cop out. Originality still exists and flourishes. A lot of original art grows out of looking at other works and reacting to it. The danger is when the artist finishes a project and knowingly or not comes up with work that is too derivative or even plagiarized from others.

Last week at a talk benefitting the Camera Club of New York, artist Penelope Umbrico talked about her work to a packed house at SVA. Her art is a remixing of photographic media into a dialogue about the larger culture of photographic consumption. For her project, Suns from Flickr, she utilized the abundance of sunset images uploaded to the popular photo sharing site, Flickr. Through a careful cropping and arrangement, she remixed their original purpose, transforming them into a random wallpaper of candy-colored sunsets.

When her exhibited work was uploaded back to Flickr, some viewers were offended by the appropriation (remixing), thus missing the point of the project. Umbrico's Suns has a very different intent from those who uploaded their pictures to Flickr. The art is not simply the imagery; it is the sum of the parts used to illustrate an idea. There might be artistry to mixing a tube of paint, but I have never heard a paint manufacturer claim that an artwork was partly theirs, since they formulated the paint.


Richard Prince, "Untitled (Cowboy)."

Another case is the appropriation of photography by Richard Prince of Cowboy images from Marlboro ads. Recently, A Photo Editor interviewed one of the photographers, Jim Krantz about Richard Prince. If you have not read the interview, check it out here. While I appreciate Jim's work, Prince has appropriated it differently than the work for which Krantz was commissioned. These images began as an advertisement for cigarettes. Marlboro used Krantz's fantastic images of the American cowboy to sell a product that has killed thousands of people. Marlboro combined these images with their logo to sell the idea that smoking their brand of cigarette was a classic American thing to do. The freedom of the American West was equated to the act of smoking. Thus, these images were no longer about anything but the lowest form of propaganda. They were selling death, plain and simple.


Jim Krantz's "Calf Rescue" (1998), taken on assignment for Marlboro.

Richard Prince's re-photography of these advertisements significantly shifts their meaning. In Prince's Cowboys, the work begs the question, What is real? Prince peers into the American veneer of the cowboy and calls it fake. In his new work, the viewer can identify the copied surface in the pattern from the advertisement. Logos have been removed. All that is left is the idea of the American cowboy. His new work is about questioning the authenticity of both the myth of the cowboy and the honesty of that idea.

In A Photo Editor's Interview:

APE: But, that's the irony isn't it. Someone steals a photograph and suddenly your work is important to the art community. That's what it took.

It's amazing to me that the curators at the Guggenheim would bring this work in without acknowledging the source or giving the viewers the opportunity to see what motivates and inspires a person. You need a footnote in a paper but there's no source recognized here.

As a photographer I understand the desire for credit. I have certainly felt the sting from not getting credit for something. But we need to remember there was no byline in the ad. Marlboro paid thoroughly for these ads. It's difficult to feel for the photographer who became part of the cancer stick propaganda machine. He sold out his images literally and complained when they were used as paint for someone else's artistic expression. If anything, Krantz is lucky. His images could have easily been forgotten, lost to the void of time. Because of this controversy he has gained recognition, the chance to make some work express his artistic intentions, and receive a wider audience than he might have received without this experience.

Recently, another controversy over originality has been getting attention. This is a case among fine art photographers. The playing field is a bit different. Jorg Colberg has written a lot about this in his blog, specifically in the posts "On Plagiarism and Similarities" (2006) and recently "When does similar become too similar?" and "Way too similar?" In his last post, he explains the current controversy of David Burdeny and his project "Sacred & Secular." When comparing this project to the work of Elger Esser, and particularly with the work of Sze Tsung Leong's project "Horizons" troubling similarities occur. This story was first discussed in the blog photo muse in this post and recently PDN magazine has posted a story "Copycat or Not? Photographer Challenged Over Look-Alike Work."

This comparison is more direct since we are looking at two photographers. At first, I thought this might simply be a case of two artists working on common themes. A while back, I wrote about artists making images that shared the theme of falling. Each image depicts falling people, but the artists go about making the images from different approaches. The more I look at Burdeny's work, the more I start to think that it is just too close to Sze Tsung Leong. Not only is the subject and angle of the shot similar, but Burdeny also utilizes Leong's method of hanging the show. If I were a curator, I wouldn't want to show art this unoriginal. Even if it doesn't meet the legal definition of plagiarism, it meets the artistic definition of unoriginal.


David Burdeny, Grand Canal II, Venezia Italy, 2009


Sze Tsung Leong, From the Horizons Series, Canale della Giudecca I, Venezia. C-Print 2007


David Burdeny, Sacred & Secular, Installation view


Sze Tsung Leong, Horizons, installation view

As you can see from the above examples the intention of the work is extremely suspect. As a community of artists we need to be aware of others' work and ideas. As an artist brainstorms for new ideas and an interesting thought bubbles up they need to be careful. You can use ideas and art from the past to inform and inspire your work but you always need to be aware of what has been done so that the finished piece is your original concept.

In David Burdeny case, is there something that we are missing from viewing the project on the web only? Because unlike the differences in the first two examples of artists remixing another person's work, Burdeny's similarities include not only the content, but the intent of his art. What do you think? Is it too close?

--
Further reading, Todd Walker, aka Ocular Octopus weighs in on this topic in his post "Plagiarism in Photography Is Impossible"

This will be the topic of this week's #photoartchat Tweetchat. Tomorrow, Tuesday Feb 23rd at 9 pm EST, we will be hosting David Bram, photographer and publisher of Fraction Magazine.

suburbia gone wild by Martin Adolfsson

Martin Adolfsson, St. Andrews Manor, Shanghai, China

I'm digging Martin Adolfsson's work. Especially his Suburbia Gone Wild. I enjoy how at first I thought these were rather typical suburban landscape pictures that have been popular for some time now and then you notice that this isn't America's suburbia. This is the world copying America's bad habits and bad example and its frightening.

I think I even found the real estate listing here:
http://www.torent.com.cn/unit/BJU1000439.html

From Martin Adolfsson's statement:

Within the past two decades we've seen a huge shift in the balance of economic power. Countries that didn't have a middle class 20 years ago have seen a rapid transformation from an agricultural economy to an industrial based economy so much so that a sizable percentage of the population now belongs to the middle class. How does that affect the social groups who have been able to benefit the most from the economic boom? How does that influence one's identity when the change is so rapid? What happens to the native culture amidst the economic influence of international status?

I've chosen to put my focus on the model homes built in recently constructed suburbs for the newly minted upper middle class. These full-scale replicas act as giant shopping windows decorated with a ready to buy lifestyle for the homebuyer.
When the projects is finished I will have depicted model homes in 7 suburbs spread across the rising economies of the world. By omitting geographical and national traces I want to create a strong visual narrative between the suburbs. The similarities interest me more then the national and cultural differences. My intentions are to create a visual narrative that takes the viewer in front of the scenes of a new global movement.

A project by Martin Adolfsson
http://www.martinadolfsson.com

Ruins of the Second Gilded Age or Ruins of Bad Retouching

Photo: Edgar Martins for The New York Times

I recently came across a New York Times Magazine picture essay by photographer Edgar Martins published in the Time's Architecture Issue called "Ruins of the Second Gilded Age." I have always been interested in the built environment, especially in relation to suburbia. For too long now America has over-relied on designing cities for cars and not people. This design practice has led to an unsustainable housing dream.

The New York Times story featured quiet pictures of abandoned construction sites. Overzealous devolopers had left these building projects in this economic downturn and turned them into ghost houses. When the 5th image loaded (see above) I was struck by the aesthetic similarity to my own project, affordable homes (see below image).


©2004 harlan erskine, '#14967 B 26/58', c-print, 20 x 25 inches from the triptych affordable homes

My image was taken as the real estate market was heating up in Miami. Developers were building huge clusters of McHomes closer and closer to the everglades and in areas that used to be farmland. The homes have been finished by now. At least one resident has occupied them since their completion. I made the images out of frustration with the banality and cheapness of their design, construction and planning. How can we look at these creations as Americans and not ask: is the future we want? Building homes in this manner is unsustainable--a fact that we are only beginning to digest as a nation. The results of these careless choices will reverberate through our economy for generations.

The images by Edgar Martins warranted a blog posting. I pasted the links into Blogger with a quick outline and saved it for a later posting. I experienced all these images on the small screen and have yet to see the printed version. If that was the end of this story, this post would end here. Tonight as I revisited the links, I loaded the Time's webpage and found a note from their editors.

Editors' Note: July 8, 2009

A picture essay in The Times Magazine on Sunday and an expanded slide show on NYTimes.com entitled "Ruins of the Second Gilded Age" showed large housing construction projects across the United States that came to a halt, often half-finished, when the housing market collapsed. The introduction said that the photographer, a freelancer based in Bedford, England, "creates his images with long exposures but without digital manipulation."

A reader, however, discovered on close examination that one of the pictures was digitally altered, apparently for aesthetic reasons. Editors later confronted the photographer and determined that most of the images did not wholly reflect the reality they purported to show. Had the editors known that the photographs had been digitally manipulated, they would not have published the picture essay, which has been removed from NYTimes.com.

The photography blogosphere has eaten this story up. PDN Pulse has a long post will several updates running down when the issue was discovered and outlining the offending retouching in a print version of the story. Other photography / art bloggers a photo editor, Gallery Hopper, the online photographer, art most fierce, Joerg Colberg and industry pub Editor and Publisher all have good coverage mixed with their thoughts about this controversy. And now the big bloggers have weighed in with posts from Talking Points Memo, a political blog, Gawker and even the New York Times photography blog, Lens writing about the story from the inside out. (damage control?).


from the PDN Pulse.

With countless more blogs weighing in I figured I would give my two cents.

First, I could care less that an aesthetically manipulated image is illustrating a magazine article. As long as the image is truthful, the alterations don't detract from the article. The photographer has been quoted in many of the above posts as saying, "When I photograph, I don't do any post production to the images, either in the darkroom or digitally, because it erodes the process. So I respect the essence of these spaces."

Why mention it at all? I don't see Gursky or Burtynsky making a big deal about their retouching. Why should anyone? Unless the artist made inept use of Photoshop, there is no problem. Sure, it's not as bad as Iran's retouching missiles or the offenders in this Gawker post, but who really cares? This type of retouching wouldn't fly with any creative director in the advertising business. The art world would laugh at it.

The sad thing is this story is now lost. Before this controversy was discovered by a few Metafilter watchdogs, people were discussing the content of the article. Has this "Second Gilded Age" ended? These discussions were getting some coverage with sites like Tree Hugger and the Times' dot earth. I find it sad that something like this happens and immediately hundreds of commentators flood the blogosphere. Why weren't we discussing it on this level before? What's a more important issue--the economy and the environment or bad retouching by an artist wearing a journalist's hat?

To bring it back to those thoughts, I will point you to a quote posted in the tree hugger blog:

Andy Revkin, who asks:

Are these portraits, perhaps, of the end of the age of unfettered consumption, simply a short pause before human communities resume their 150-years-and-counting fossil-fueled sprint, or a foretaste of Alan Weisman's 2007 thought experiment, "The World Without Us"?

If you want to see the images, the Times still has them up on their site without captions. Just go to this url and change the ending number to access each image.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/06/30/magazine/05gilded.1.jpg

Does "The Minnesota Declaration" also apply to still images production?

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.

RODCHENKO art school

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]

Another solarized sun discovery.

Hans-Christian Schink, 2/23/2006 4:04 pm - 5:04 pm N: 34° 03.712' W: 118° 20.979', 2006, Silbergelatine-Abzug, Auflage 5+3

Amazing how the internet has brought work together that was made around the same time. Just ten years ago it would have been very hard to find other artists working with similar themes around the world. Maybe because of this there are also more artists working today? just a theory.

So, I was looking through Mrs Deane a blog about photography run by Beierle + Keijser and I came across this post: congratulations hans christian schink! Hans Christian Schink, represented by ACE gallery in America and GALERIE ROTHAMEL in Europe. He recently won the newly created "REAL Photography Award" brought to you by ING Real Estate. The award was announced in March of 2008 so the sustainability of this award is certainly in question considering the current state of financial markets and especially real estate. But all economic worries aside I am quite interested in Schink's project and the parallels between it, Chris McCaw's Sunburn project and my Black Sun Project. I wonder how many from the Award show's jury were aware of McCaw's work which is quite similar? And, if they were what were their thoughts on them and why one is more worthy of the award that the other project.

Brooklyn Doorbells

© 2008 harlan erskine

Recently, one cold night I found my doorbell had frozen over. I guess the night before it was raining or melting and then it all froze over. I took this pic to remember the freeze of that night and the nights to come. Its been a cold winter up here more like the winters of high school. One year I remember all of central park froze over is this amazing sheet of ice several inches thick. Several teachers were hurt trying to enter the park to bust students for smoking. After school we would steel cafeteria trays and ride them on the hills.

New York based photographer, Kai McBride, hauled an 8x10 view camera around brooklyn in 2005 photographing Brooklyn Doorbell much like my frozen doorbell above. I wonder what a 8x10 image of a surface like this looks like in a proper print. I quite enjoy Kai's latest project Facing Tampa which riffs on the real estate advertising so ubiquitous around Florida.


©Kai McBride Facing Tampa, 16x16 inches, silver gelatin print

Video Gamers as Subjects

Robbie Cooper for The New York Times, “Name Alexander Kinch Age 12 Location Grimsby, England Game Call of Duty 4”

Last weekend's New York Times Sunday Magazine had a video piece made by Robbie Cooper that captured my attention. I was first drawn into the article through the stark images of the video gamers staring straight back at me. Then I fount the Immersion piece and was struck with the video more then the stills. While the stills are dramatic and leave a fair amount of ambiguity for the viewer to figure out the video adds the sequence of expressions that build into a more interesting piece on video games. I could see a little snippet of the player's personality in a more dramatic, unexpected and natural way then when it was a frozen moment.

The subject and viewer's gaze were a critical component to this project's success. Cooper utilized an Errol Morris technique of filming that Morris' wife termed the Interrotron. This method allows the subject to stare straight into the camera's lens wile being distracted by viewing the interviewer in front of the camera (diagram). In this case, Cooper has placed the video game screen in place of the interviewer.

Jorg Colberg has almost the complete opposite view, arguing this is a case where photography is superior to video. This depends upon the intentions of the artist. Ultimately the success of the project depends on the right selection of media, an interesting expression and a skilled and appropriate technical application. In this case I am more interested in the moving images of the video gamers as opposed to the static images made from the video. I appreciate ambiguity in the stack images in this case but I'm more drawn to the emotion (or lack thereof) expressed in the moving images.


Shauna Frischkorn“Robert (Playing Smuggler's Run 2: Hostile Territory),” C-Print, 40x30 inches

Jorg also pointed out that Shauna Frischkorn deals this the same subject–video games–but due to her use of stills, he preferred her images. I took a long look at her images of gamers. They didn't work for me. Maybe it’s the was they are reprinted on the internet. I am trying to imaging what they would look like at 30x40 sized on the wall, assuming they will hold up to the enlargement. Maybe this is a situation where the print is vastly better then the net? Still, the subject's gaze above the viewer isn't as strong as the direct gaze of Cooper's images.


Phillip Toledano, “Video Gamers”

While I was researching Shauna Frischkorn's work, I noticed she was a Fall 2007 Hey Hot Shot Winner. In the comments section of the announcement post I was pointed to Phil Toledano Gamers series, which have the opposite gaze of Frishkorn's subjects. Toledano's Gamers are looking downward toward the screen with extremely expressive faces subtly shifting the gaze and the viewer’s reaction to them.

All of the photographers mentioned above have taken slightly different topological approaches to the same subject of video gamers. Which brings me to the work of Todd Deutsch.


Todd Deutsch, “Gamers”

Deutsch's approach builds a story of gamers. The image above also fits into a similar category as the other images do, but he also takes a variety of other images: Landscapes of computer chaos, still life images of gamer trash and portraits from varying distances. I'm still digesting which approach is the best one here but its really interesting to see one contemporary subject from four (any more out there?) perspectives.

In the end who wins? The artist who first thinks of the project, the artist who executes it the best or something else I am not thinking of?

The meeting of medium and message.

Clifford Ross, HARMONIUM MOUNTAIN I, Archival Pigment Print 70 3/4 x 203" (framed quadriptych) 2008, Archival Pigment Print 42 3/4 x 93 7/8" (frame) 2008, Archival Pigment Print 26 1/4 x 54 3/4" (frame) 2008

Recently Jorg Colberg wrote a post in reference the use of various mediums and photography. Colberg argues intelligently that sometimes photographers confuse the format choice for actual content in photography. In his original post he argues:

Using a so-called toy camera, for example, doesn't automatically produce a great photo. A light leak or a soft lens might contribute to what makes a particularly photo good, but that doesn't mean that if you buy a Diana camera (which are now in production again and sold for way too much money - seriously, if you want one buy a vintage one on Ebay) you're guaranteed good photos.

The same is true for large-format cameras. There almost is a cult of large-format photography out there. It's true, large-format cameras can lead to very spectacular results, but using a large-format camera is no guarantee for that.

Or take vintage/alternative photography processes, many of which are notoriously hard to use. But as before, using a wet-plate collodion-type process (or whatever that might be called) does not guarantee good photographs.

The medium a photographer uses does not grantee quality artwork and this conversation reminded me of a lecture my professor of last semester, Philip Perkis (book) gave to the class. In the short lecture, Perkis, strongly urged the class to stick to a particular medium; that is find the medium that you like best and stay with it learn it inside out use it all the time. He even went so far to argue against the zoom lens. After Perkis's lecture I kept thinking about his arguments while I was looking at established artists in the New York galleries and museums and on the whole the majority of the shows the medium of the photographer what integral to their style.

Colberg brings up Gursky and an example of a photographer who:

produces equally large and involved images (please don't email me to start arguments about whether or not those are "Gigapixel" or "What-have-you-pixel"!), using Photoshop (or whatever else), but whose images are vastly more interesting. Seriously.

I think part of Gursky's strength flows from his evolutionary track. Andreas Gursky uses a large format 5x7 camera and has learn over the years what the world looks like through this particular view. Gursky found a format that suited him and committed to it.

A photographer does not have to work in the same format their whole life but Clifford Ross's scattershot approach lead to the flop of his most recent exhibition Mountain Redux. I really enjoyed his previous work for the Hurricanes and then the Mountain work with his new R1 Camera. Part of what I really enjoyed with Clifford Ross's R1 camera and the Mountain series is described by Peter Galassi in his introduction to Andreas Gurski's Book (MoMA 2001):

A small picture is illegible except from near at hand, but a large one may be viewed from a distance and then by degrees more closely. This range of regard is an old story for painting, but it became familiar to photography only recently. Many artists have treated it with indifference, making big pictures whose imagery, as we approach, simply dissolves into the unlovely industrial material of photographic paper. Some of Gursky's largest productions, sacrificing precision of detail to grandeur of effect, do suffer slightly at close range. Most of his pictures, however, offer a continuous reward from very far to reasonably near, as the macrocosm reveals its microcosmic structure.

Clifford Ross made a successful first crack at exploration this relationship that larger photograph can have with the viewer. But in moving from his R1 camera into remixing these images into "Harmoniums" through the use of 3d software and a lot of computer power I believe he is loosing the original qualities that I enjoyed in the original Mountain Series.

Ultra Large Format (ULF) Color Photography (Clifford Ross's R1 vs. Graham Flint's GIGAPXL Camera vs. Alastair Thain's 9"x9")

I have been following Clifford Ross’s photography since 2005 when I read my first article about the R1 Camera he commissioned to build. The camera is based around an old World War 2 era arial film cartridge system that is still in circulation and Kodak still manufactures color film for it.

The New York Times article puts it nicely:

The camera, called the R-1 (R for Ross), looks oddly rigged, like something out of Dr. Seuss, and almost like an antique viewfinder camera on legs. In fact, Mr. Ross pulls a cloth over his head and the back of his contraption when he takes a picture. But with this camera that he concocted out of 60-year-old camera parts, mirrors, a microscope and other items - none of them digital - Mr. Ross has taken photographs on 9-by-18-inch negatives that when slowly processed by hand and digitally scanned contain 100 times as much data as the average professional digital camera.

For example, in the mountain photographs that Mr. Ross took in Colorado - of Mount Sopris, near Carbondale - shingles on a barn appear in sharp focus 4,000 feet from the camera, as does a tree on a ridge four miles away.

You can get some sense as to what standing in front of a Clifford Ross print is like from a zoom feature on his website.


Clifford Ross, Mountain III, Chromogenic Color Print, 71.5"x130" (frame) 2005 and 53"x93" (frame) 2006


Clifford Ross, Mountain III (full size detail)

Not long after reading about Clifford Ross I stumbled upon the Gigapxl Project (wiki). Forming around the same time as Cilfford Ross; the Gigapxl Project was created by retired physicist Graham Flint. Using a surprisingly similar technique Flint’s Camera uses the same film format as the R1 Camera thus the two cameras have a vaguely similar tank like look. If you are interested in the technology of these types of cameras Gigapxl’s website has a geeked out technology section for your statistical pleasure. I am much more interested in the aesthetics of creating landscapes so dense with details then diving into technical differences.

WIRED has a good discription of looking at a Gigapxl image in a 2005 article, “Photographer Seeks Resolution:”

A photograph of a San Diego beach shows a paraglider swooping over bluffs. Zoom in on some tiny dots on the cliff, and a group of people with binoculars and telephoto lenses can be seen. Follow their gaze, and you’ll see naked sunbathers on the beach.

These cameras allow for a viewing interaction where the viewer’s distance far to near adds a layer of intensity usually only seen in large paintings. Now that these photographs can be produced in similar size and intensity the interaction with the picture becomes vastly different then when you look at a standard sized image.


Copyright 2006 Gigapxl Project, Mount St Helens National Volcanic Monument. Southwest Washington, Gigapxl 480-mm (normal) camera, f/19, 1/60s


Gigapxl Project, Mount St Helens National Volcanic Monument. Southwest Washington (full size detail)

When an image lush with detail such as the mountain images produced by Clifford Ross and the Gigapxl project the viewing experience becomes charged with interaction. Not only do your eyes dart across the image building the image in your minds eye but upon closer inspection since detail is maintained your eyes are flooded with information and leads to a more immersive viewing experience.


Alastair Thain, 560,000.00 Hours, London 2004

While I was writing this post I came upon another photographer using a home made camera largely based upon the same aural film cartages. I found Alastair Thain’s work via Flat-e: ICA: The Show episode seven. ICA: The Show is a British based video magazine. Although Thain’s Camera is quite similar to Ross’s and Gigapxl’s his images have more in common with Eggleston then with Adams.


Alastair Thain, I -10 Freeway 1989

I will certainly keep looking into these three artist’s development and what the will happen as the digital world collides into their film biased practice. Already they are going into new directions. Clifford Ross is experimenting with 3d manipulation which so far has underwhelmed me (at least in web form). And in August of last year Google started incorporating the Gigapxl photos into the 3d virtual environment of the Google Earth.

I also have to wonder what other artist would yield if they worked with these oversized cameras and really go to know them. Would a Andreas Gursky be improved is you could see more detail?

Let Me Take Your Foto

Check out the original video by the band the Speedies made in 1979. The Speedies were originally made up of
JOHN "BUCK WHEAT" MARINO - Frontman, Lead Vocals.
ERIC "POP" HOFFERT - Lead Guitar, 11 string Acoustic, Computerized Keyboards.
GREGORY "ZAP" CREWDSON - Rythm Guitar, Backing Vocals, Snapshots.
ALLEN ZANE HURKIN - Percussion, Gong, Cowbell, Amazing Drums.
JOHN CARL - Bass, Backing Vocals.
via Speedies MySpace Page


Directed and Edited by Danny Cornyetz and Dennis Politakis.

More info, here on the Speedies website. Reciently the folks at Goodby Silverstein & Partners used it in a hp ad. You can read the story for whats going on in a New York Times Online article "A Photographer's Pop Star Moment". I must say I really like both versions.It’s good to see songs used in advertising where you not totally grossed out by the ad and then soured by even hearing the song ever again.



here is another hp ad with a similar feel:

Pictures of you
via duncans.tv

and originally pointed out via
Christian Patterson's blog

also interesting the speedies reunion:

Jonathan Glazer vs. David Lynch

Jonathan Glazer's clip for Rabbit in your Headlights has some parallels with this David Lynch Clip for PS2.

Olafur Eliasson laser cut book

Olafur Eliasson (wiki) recently designed a amazing looking laser-cut paper sculpture art book.
(via Origami Tessellations blog) Its also interesting to note this post mentions who the manufacturer was for the book - Kremo Visionen in Papier.I couldn't read much from their website but if I am right in my assumptions then I would love to see what a Kremo vs Jen Stark Co-Lab would look like.

Common Themes: Falling in Contempory Photographic (UPDATE)

fall5 © elijah gowin. 2006 All rights reserved.

La chute © Denis Darzacq. 2006 All rights reserved.

Porch © kerry skarbakka. 2002 All rights reserved.

Its always interesting to me to see how different photographers approach the same themes. Notice how the environment, coloring and location set the mood as well a composition. If you're up in new york you have a chance to go see Elija Gowin's project at Robert Mann Gallery on 210 Eleventh Avenue between 24th & 25th Streets.

Thanks, "Anonymous" for pointing out two other Falling/Jumping works. One is by Yves Klein, a French Artist who worked in the 50s and early 60s. In 1960 he documented a performance of him jumping off a ledge and the resulting phtoograph as documentation entitled Saut dans le vide (Leap into the Void).

Saut dans le vide (Leap into the Void). © yves klein. 1960 All rights reserved.

The other Artist mentioned is Bas Jan Ader who is another performance biased artist whose work is now largely preserved at photography.

Broken Fall (Organic) © Bas Jan Ader. 1971/94 All rights reserved.

I also just remembered that Young British Artist group member Sam Taylor-Wood has a whole series of falling and suspensions that are also strikingly along the same lines as the works above.

Self Portrait Suspended I © Sam Taylor-Wood. 2004 All rights reserved.

Self Portrait Suspended VII © Sam Taylor-Wood. 2004 All rights reserved.

Bram Stoker's Chair II © Sam Taylor-Wood. 2005 All rights reserved.

Falling VI © Sam Taylor-Wood. 2003 All rights reserved.