Tonight!!! William Greiner opening at Klompching Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

Loungers
Noac, 1995, Digital C-Type Print, Signed & Numbered Verso

I am exhausted, spent and still unfinished with my final projects for the School year but I have to go to this for a bit tonight. I'm looking forward to seeing the final images in printed form. So far, I have only viewed Greiner's work on his website and his blog.

FALLEN PARADISE — William Greiner
May 1 — June 27

OPENING RECEPTION: May 1, 6pm — 8pm

This is the underbelly of pre-Katrina New Orleans. Greiner presents an image of a city that was already devastated, by neglect and abandonment, long before natural disaster struck. His imaging of New Orleans' urban vernacular is perceptively pictured through a carefully constructed use of color, form and content.

William Greiner's modus operandi is the American Color Tradition — the snapshot that isn't. Here, the familiar becomes unfamiliar. The seemingly objective actuality of the city, its banality, its ordinary everyday impression, is transformed into a vista of flush saturated palettes of color. Born, raised and (until Katrina) living and working in the city, New Orleans has always been an importnt source of inspiration for Greiner's work.

Here, a decade of looking and picturing his immediate environment, is brought together and displayed for the first time. Fallen Paradise is a celebration of apparent incidental imagery that is, of course, abound in formal devices — frame, vantage point, shape and line. Although there exists an autobiographical subtext, Greiner is most successful in compelling us to also look, not just at his city, but at the photograph itself. Whilst the importance of his subject does not disappear, these images function as photographic artifact — at once, they are observation and cultural object.

William Geiner lives and works in Baton Roughe, Louisiana.

KLOMPCHING GALLERY

111 Front Street, Suite 206
Brooklyn, NY 11201

What is wrong with AIPAD?

Photo of the 2008 New York APAID show by Susan Sermoneta.

A few weekends ago, I went out to see The AIPAD Photography "show". I wouldn't call it a show - that would give it too much credit. The only thing that was like a show was the price.

$25 dollars for the day.

No student ticket pricing.

Zero.

What is wrong with these people? Are they that elitist that they need to overcharge EVERYONE? Even the bigger more prestigious and more historically significant show, The Armory Show has a fair student price of $10. I am glad I didn't post this right after I went since I was in a angrier mood then and I maybe would have said something rash.

I almost didn't go until I found an artistic method of entry. As for how the fair was? It was ok there were some highlights and some embarrassments. I would post them here but I wouldn't want to help them. One thing I will note is how interesting it is to see who isn't represented at these fairs but are in other fairs. Those famous Germans with the big price tags weren't there at all as far I saw.

So, next year AIPAD please consider at student pricing all the cool Art Fairs are doing it.

Lots of blog coverage here here here here and countless others...

The Black Sun by Ansel Adams and Minor White.

Last fall, after the bulk of my Black Sun Project shooting was complete, I began researching and writing about the work. I looked into symbolic and historical meanings of a Black Sun, the history of photography as well as the more recent artist manipulations with glitches. Its quite amazing how research can help you more fully understand what you were doing in your work.

harlan erskine, “Black Sun 0181,” c-print on diasec in wood frame, 48" x 64"

I hope to discuss the symbolic meaning of a Black Sun and glitch art in other posts. Now, I want to discuss the biggest revelation in my research; two historical photographers have come up with very similar Black Sun pictures. The first image I came across is the image above by Ansel Adams that was made in 1939 and the other is by Minor White produced in 1955.

Through a bit of Google image searching I came upon several blogs that mentioned an Ansel Adams’ image called “The Black Sun, Tungsten Hills, Owens Valley, California.” There is very little web information and virtually no good images floating around but Ansel talks about this image quite thoroughly in his book “Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs,” starting on page 124.

My first negative was planned for development in Kodak D-23. The film was Kodak Super-XX, a fine material of the "thick emulsion" type. The sun flared strongly in the sky, and in the center of the flare was a small circle of slightly gray value, representing a partial reversal of the sun's image. The second exposure was identical to the first, but compensating development was planned for the desired reversal effect. It was gratifying to see both negatives as experiments and one, The Black Sun, as a striking surrealistic image. It was proof that the subject may prompt ideas, ideas crave visualizations, and craft makes their realization possible. 

Ansel does a nice job of talking about where the technical and the aesthetic join up and work together. I am not sure if he imagined the outcome before the negative was produced, like he claims, or if it was a happy accident. Either way his image stunned me when I first found it in his book.

“The Black Sun” by Minor White, 1955 from Time-Life’s “Great Photographers,” ref. 163, p. 185 via “Solarization Demystified” by Professor and artist William L. Jolly.

Another surprising discovery happened more recently, when I came across an article on solarization by Professor William L. Jolly. Apparently “Adams claimed that the reversal was anticipated and previsualized. White admitted that, in his case, it was an accident and rhapsodized, The sun is not fiery after all, but a dead planet. We on earth give it its light.”

Another contemporary photographer working with similar content of sun images with a different method to get there is Chris McCaw. Chris has been harnessing the sun to literally burn the photographic medium and has been getting some breathtaking results. I look forward to seeing the real prints in person someday.

Sunburn GSP#039, by Chris McCaw 2006.