Rejected

The sting of the rejection letter cuts to the bone and crushes the fragile ego. Here are a few of the rejected works that were not selected for inclusion on the Fotofest Biennial Participating Space Website.

















I have a feeling I may soon have opportunities to show other rejected works from various photo annual submissions, etc..

I Love Oregon Locations

Last Thursday in the dunes near Florence.

Blatant self promotion

What keeps me going in tough times such as these is the knowledge I possess that rarest of gifts, the ability to make a living doing what I love to do, I get paid to play. That and the fact that I have no other serious marketable skills.
And while the debate over whether magazine photography can remain a viable industry may rage on in other quarters I stubbornly push forward with little more than the knowledge I’ve survived previous economic downturns and a deep love of the game.
Of course not every gig is a dream come true but I find something in most all of them. Then there are those that come along now and again that require me to pinch myself.
In that vain I present my second published story for Travel Oregon magazine in which I was assigned to photograph and write about riding my motorcycle around backroads in the central Oregon high desert. Not a bad gig, huh?






Just for fun here are some of the images that didn't make the edit.

Shepard Fairey + Manny Garcia + Terry Gross

An interesting interview today on Fresh Air with Shepard Fairey and Mannie Garcia regarding the now famous Obama portrait. It raises all kinds of interesting and complicated questions about the ever popular “appropriation” of source material for art and the appropriate attribution and compensation.

I’ve always been of the opinion that if an artist took source material and significantly changed it, such as Rauchenberg’s use of news photographs in his paintings, or Robert Hienecken’s use of advertising in his work, well it seemed fair enough to me. Where I call bullshit is with artists such as Richard Prince or Thomas Ruth who simply reproduce someone else’s art work and I’ve yet to hear an argument compelling enough to change my mind.

This case is a more difficult call for me and I have a leg on both sides of the fence, but leaning to Garcia. Fairey’s point of view is that he significantly changed the image and it’s purpose from a news reportage image to a political statement. But I agree with Garcia, that the image was his and he should have had the right to decide whether to allow it’s use. To bad Fairey couldn’t have done some legwork and tracked down Garcia prior to all this. Then again, Garcia may have denied him the rights and we would have never seen that iconic image. Tough call.

This isn't Fairey's first time being criticized for appropriating artwork and his defense claiming he uses proceeds to promote social causes rings a bit hollow because it also promotes Fairey in the process.

The sadder part of the interview came when Garcia was discussing his own dispute with AP regarding whether he as a free-lancer with no signed contract, was in fact “employed” by the AP. AP is claiming all his images were works made for hire and therefore the property of the AP. But if he was a free-lancer, not an employee, meaning not on salary with full benefits, etc. and had not signed a contract granting such rights, then all works should remain Garcia’s property. I hope he wins that one.

Mikah

I met Mikah while volunteering for the Do1Thing project. She’s just turned 20 and is currently living at Bridge House in Portland, right in my neighborhood. Here are few details from her past:
Her father abandoned the family when she was an infant. At 14 she was placed in foster care because of her Mother’s drug addiction. At 17 she ran away to Las Vegas where she lived on the streets, slingin dope, stealing and using meth. Pregnant at 18 she was forced to surrender her parental rights. About 14 months ago she found out she was pregnant again. Hoping to avoid repeating her past mistakes and give this baby a chance she knew she had to get clean. She and her boyfriend went to live in Mexico with her boyfriend’s parents and kicked. About 7 months ago she returned to Portland Oregon where she couch surfed, slept on friend’s floors and eventually got into Bridge House.
Jordan is now 5 months old, chubby and bright eyed. Mikah attends AA meetings with her Mother and is working towards getting her GED. She hopes to get some education, a decent job and be a good mother to her son, hopefully earn back some parental rights to her now 2 year old daughter.
There were a few consistent themes that ran in the stories of the kids I met and spoke to while working on Do1Thing, primarily drug addicted parents, the foster care system and methamphetamine. If I learned nothing else it was that the best contribution to society I can ever make is to be a good parent to my own kids.
Mikah wants that for Jordan. The odds are stacked steeply against her. I hope she makes it, for her and Jordan’s sake.

2009 Louisville Photo Biennial

This summer the Louisville Photo Biennial will be taking place between June 1 and July 31. The theme this year is "The Center for Photographic Studies" which happens to be where I attended my very first year of photography school. The Center, founded in 1970 by C.J. Pressma, was an alternative school for creative photography and it's impact on my career was monumental. The school had two galleries which showed work by important artists, such as Ansel Adams, Minor White, Henry Holmes Smith, Ralph Eugene Meatyard and many more. The Center also had a regular stream of visiting lecturers such as Russell Lee, Duane Michals, Les Krims and W. Eugene Smith. A. D. Coleman would come around from time to time. One of my most vivid memories was of smoking a joint with Eugene Smith and then taking him out for White Castle hamburgers at midnight in my old jalopy car. I had no idea just how cool that was at the time, I was so naive.
I received a query for material a couple of months ago and while digging through very old negatives and contact sheets I came across some of the first portraits I ever made, a series of fellow students shot in 1976. Using a borrowed Rollei, they were mostly made in the 4th floor loft of the school building under the skylight with natural light. Sadly the ravages of time on my memory have left me unable to name but a couple of these folks, (after all it was 32 years ago) but I remember the shoots and remember many things about each of them. If my luck plays out I will be able to attend the reunion scheduled for this summer and maybe pass on a copy to them all.

Impulse buy

I stumbled onto this image while looking through prints for an upcoming portfolio submission. Made me lament the passing of Polaroid once again. Then I did something impulsive. I went online and found a place that has been hoarding it and is selling it for outrageous prices. So I did what anyone else would do who should be sticking money away for the impending depreession, I bought three packs of 665 for something like triple of what they should have sold for. I have no plans for a particular project or the like, just a strong desire to have some film should an idea arise. We'll see.

Pumpkins and an Ape

Floydada Texas, September 29, 2008

Sunday morning Fujiroids

I awoke to a light dusting of snow. We've had more snow this year than the previous twenty I've lived here combined.

Citizen Photojournailsm

Citizen photojournalist.

I’ve recoiled somewhat from the notion in the past, fairly confident the power of photojournalism would be diminished if we relied too much on everyday people and their cell phone videos to report the major stories of the day, (and of course concerned about the ultimate affect it might have on my own livelihood). However when I first heard of the crash into the Hudson last week I immediately thought of the citizen photos that would inevitably appear, yet also confident there would be “real” images as well given it was NYC and the home base of some the finest photojournalists in the world. What I’ve found remarkable, and perhaps I just haven’t looked in the right places, is the relative dearth of those “real” images and the relative high quality of the citizen images. In the NY Times for example there are 16 news images and 18 reader submitted. I hate to say it but in many cases the reader submitted images are more compelling.

Check these:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/01/15/nyregion/20090115_plane_readers_slideshow_index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/01/15/us/20090115-PLANECRASH_index.html

and commentary here:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/01/citizen-photo-o.html

Nadav Kander's Obama's People

It’s been interesting reading the comments to aphotoeditor Rob Haggart’s posting of the “real behind the scenes” to Nadav Kander’s Obama’s People shoot and subsequent portfolio in the NY times Magazine, as well as other blogs. Lots of snarky comments criticizing the work, questioning the choice of Kander, the lighting style, and reeking of “I coulda, woulda done better”. I find it telling that the most vocal of these critics posted anonymously. For the most part an examination of the work of those few who did have the courage to post a link to their own work showed them to be artists of a lesser caliber and hardly with the credentials to take their comments seriously.

I found it curious how differently I responded to the printed version of the portfolio as opposed to the web slide show and it reaffirmed my belief that the web is an inferior medium for viewing photographs. Sorry it just is. I found I spent more time and looked at the images with a more curious and open mind, that I actually “looked” at them whereas on the web I “scrolled” through them much more quickly. On that note perhaps the web is an inferior format for serious criticism as well as most commenters seem to have blabbed out the first thing that popped into their heads rather than spending time with the work in question and looking at it in context.

Many people at APE criticized the lighting design, which is rather flat and shadowless and I have to admit I initially found it uninspiring as well. But as I spent more time with the images I began to believe a more shadowed richer light would intrude in allowing the viewer to simply see the person, which is I think the goal of this project. Avedon’s work was always more about Avedon and his own notions of the subject rather than the subject themsleves, something he never denied, whereas this project succeeds by letting the subjects tell their own stories without being burdened by the weight of technique. I suppose many might say the project fails for the same reason.

These images are of course being compared to Avedon’s landmark “The Family” portfolio in Rolling Stone from 1976, which was a purposeful source of inspiration for the Kander's portfolio, as well as Jeff Reidel’s brilliant portfolio from the campaign in GQ earlier this year, and the blog’s critics offer no shortage of suggestions of other artists who should have been given the assignment. Why not Annie, Heisler or Greenfield-Sanders. Hell why not Terry Richardson for god’s sake. The decision who to hire rests solely with the editorial staff of the publication and to suggest they somehow made a mistake only opens oneself to the same criticism anytime your own work is published.

The suggestions that it should have been limited to an American photographer was most ludicrous in my mind and I was reminded of D.J. Stout’s statement he never hired artists by zip code. As if The Americans would have somehow been better had Robert Frank been born in Chicago?

Whether Kander’s portraits live up to Avedon’s is unfair as what could? But I find them to be a compelling, if perhaps flawed, portrait of a group of people on whose shoulders the weight of expectations, hope and desires of the entire world must carry. I can only hope these people receive a better range of consideration than have Kander’s photographs from aphotoeditor’s audience.

A Photographer Bailout

I got a chuckle when I heard that Larry Flynt and the Girls Gone Wild guy were calling for a Porn bailout. Naturally I came to the conclusion there should be a photographer’s bailout. Then I read a comment over on Mark Tucker’s Journal “Maybe if we wait a few more months, and things get even worse, the WPA and FSA will come rolling back into town” and I’m thinking why the hell not. In a bailout world of multi-billions a mere $100 million or so could put a number of fine documentary photographers to work creating an invaluable archive of these “interesting” times. I’d sign up. And since I'm dreaming the new crew would only be allowed to shoot film, black and white film, thereby resuscitating another dieing industry.