New York City

The State of the Industry

The State of the Industry

Hacked for Islam

I didn't quite know what to make of it when I first saw it, whether to laugh or be horrified. Sometime around 10:00 pm last Saturday night I received an email telling me my portfolio site had been hacked. When I checked, instead all the nice pictures on my landing page that normally greet a visitor I found this:


Accompanied by ominous music. According to the official incident report the attackers found a vulnerablity and ran a rogue code that over wrote any files with the word index in the filename, defacing a number of sites hosted on the servers. The attack was traced back to a group called Milw0rm and while I will likely never know the identity of the attacker and whether they were jihadists or just bored teenagers out for some mischief, the creep out factor was over the top, coming as it did the day after the 8th anniversary of 9/11. The site was fully restored in a matter of hours and I can't say enough good things about the customer support at Easystreet.

Andrew Wheating for Runner's World

The University of Oregon star is being billed as the great American hope in the 1500. A really nice kid, I hope he make it happen.

72nd All American Soap Box Derby World Championships

My daughter, as the top points earner in Region 1, earned a return trip the All American Soap Box Derby World Championships in Akron Ohio, held the third week of July. This year she bounced back after last year's devastating crash and won 8th place in the Stock Rally division.
It's often frustrating to attend this event as a photographer because while I am constantly inspired by the rich visual environment of the event, my job as car handler for my driver prevents the kind of attention necessary to make serious photographs. So I keep my G9 handy and shoot what I can when I can. Not much race day action this year due to her staying in the race but I'll trade the pictures for the trophy any time. If you have a kid between the ages of 8 and 17 I urge you to get involved in this fantastic old school family activity.

Playing Catch Up, Fourth of July

Thunderstorm over Indiana

Dave Makes Killer bread

Dave Dahl's story has received a fair amount of attention locally and now it's gone national with this feature in Inc. written by my friend and many time collaborator Bill Donahue. He's a three times convicted (Dave, not Bill), former meth dealer / addict who, with the help of his brother Glenn, has jump started a new life for himself baking amazing healthy bread.

This guy makes cool bikes in Portland

Sacha White hand builds each Vanilla Bicycle himself. The attention to detail is sublime. The waiting list is three years or thereabouts. Makes me wish I was thirty, skinny and riding one of his fixies.
Photographed for Forbes.

The Vendor Client Relationship

More on Louisville

The last time I showed work in Louisville was May of 1976, a student work show at the Louisville Public Library (if my memory serves me correctly), I had the distinction of having one of my entries removed due to obscenity. You be the judge but I'm guessing someone saw something homoerotic in the image.
Here's the story behind the picture. My friend Bobby Adams and I were interested in making deliberately provocative, dada'esque images often using each other as models. We were on the roof of the Center for Photographic Studies on W. Main St in downtown Louisville. I had just shot Bobby, with his camera, nude and standing on his hands with the cityscape of Louisville behind him. As he pulled on his jeans he remarked, "damn, look at the black stuff all over my hands" and I took a couple frames with my own camera.
The exaggerated grain in the image was from deliberate reticulation of the negatives during processing, a technique I used quite a bit during that period, and one which I now look back on and mostly groan. First year photo student stuff.
Anyway, it was kind of cool having my print banished. At least I got a reaction.

Inspiring and Overwhelming.

I came away from my two mornings reviewing portfolios at Photolucida both inspired and overwhelmed by the level of talent and quality of the work, re-affirming my belief in the still image as a powerful medium. Three artists stood out for me:

Karen Davis’ series of staged set pieces using mechanical dolls that had belonged to her late disabled sister. Re-creating scenes, both imagined and actual, of their shared childhood Davis presents a powerfully emotional body of images.

Lauren Hinkin’s “Displaced I & II” series uses landscape to communicate a sense of loss and abandonment in two bodies of staggeringly beautiful B&W prints.

Alejandro Cartagena has over a period of years chronicled the affects of sprawling new suburbs in Mexican cities. He seduces the viewer by utilizing a combination of traditional landscape, abstract formalism and documentary motifs to achieve a complex simplicity that is at once both informative and beautiful.

It was such a pleasure and honor to be able to meet all the people who so generously shared their work with me. Thanks again to the good folks at Photolucida for putting on a great event.