┐ Anne Collier └

© Anne Collier, Questions (Viewpoint), 2011

© Anne Collier, Questions (Evidence), 2011

© Anne Collier, Questions (Connection), 2011

“I only work in the studio and use a large-format plate camera. It’s a very laborious process that allows almost no room for improvisation. Everything has to be perfectly aligned and calibrated. I’m typically photographing things that are two-dimensional: book and magazine covers, record sleeves, film stills, etc. or objects that have very little physical depth such as the developing trays or audio cassette tapes. I’m interested in this flatness. My approach to making images is very influenced – and informed – by commercial and technical photography, where there is no ambiguity as to what is being depicted. Like commercial photography I’m interested in establishing an aesthetic clarity but at the same time, through the nature of the objects I shoot, I’m equally interested in creating a sense of emotional or psychological uncertainty. This tension – between what is depicted and the nature of its depiction – is central to my approach.
(…)

Photography, by its nature, encourages various forms of framing – whether it’s in the camera’s viewfinder, the format of the film used, or the dimensions of the subsequent print, you are constantly made aware of how a photograph edits things. The studio is increasingly present in my work as a kind of stage where objects are presented and documented. This is perhaps most evident in the images of stacks of records leaning against the studio’s grey floor and white walls. I’m interested in the apparent neutrality of these kinds of spaces, which include the monochromatic backdrops I also use in my work. Like the white cube gallery space, these visual devices serve to distance individual objects from their original circumstances or context, creating a space that is somehow both specific and ambiguous.”

excerpt from an interview by Alex Farquharson

More of Anne’s work here

┐ Lucas Blalock └

© Lucas Blalock, Portrait Study (Nina), 2009

© Lucas Blalock, W.M.t.M.M.B.M, 2010

“I feel that in my own practice I use various strategies to alienate the viewer from the picture but the pictures figure as stand-ins for the world at large.(…) I don’t feel my work is particularly concerned w/ content except in terms of the kind of flexibility you have mentioned. When I say my pictures are “stand ins” I mean that I am interested in the photograph’s power to direct and focus attention. I feel that any strategy/category, whether documentary, studio, appropriated, abstract, snapshot or whatever greatly defines the viewers interaction, and can act as a real impediment to a picture opening onto the world in a resonant way. My work over the last few years has involved borrowing elements from these traditions, as well as developing these more gestural methods, and yet trying to undermine these ready made systems of meaning.”

source: Humble

More of Lucas’ work here

┐ Anne Leighton Massoni └

© Anne Leighton Massoni, Summer’s calling wishful pennies, from the series Holding Nancy

© Anne Leighton Massoni, Woman wind woodard warehouse, from the series Holding Hila

© Anne Leighton Massoni, My prom sunday promenade, from the series Holding Leighton

“I’m interested in combining photographs i’ve made of empty spaces (spaces once inhabited or currently inhabited, but with no one present) with found photographs of times that no longer exist (images that are empty of personal memory) and then inking a thin line (in this case white) to draw a literal point of connection from one image to the next. the titles are constructed by using two identifying words for each image used in the diptychs. the spaces in my photographs are identified by their non-present owner or descriptively; the appropriated images are titled by that which seems most relevant to me about their denotative content – in a few this may include information from the back of the image. appropriated images are stripped of their tone and cropped but nothing else is disturbed in the image (scratches, imperfections, contrast etc), where as my “space” images are adjusted in the same way i would in the darkroom.”

More of Anne’s work here

┐ Devin Yalkin └

© Devin Yalkin, Untitled, from the series Hades (work in progress)

© Devin Yalkin, Untitled, from the series Hades (work in progress)

“In HADES Devin Yalkin is not so much photographing people, but rather the way they move in space, individually and collectively. He records the culmination in blurring faces, constantly changing gestures and melting bodies. The work suggests a series of illusions, the treacherousness of outward appearances. These are apparently images from a dream of an underworld, dark and gritty.”

source: Noorderlicht Metropolis Photofestival

More of Devin’s work here

┐ Kathleen Robbins └

© Kathleen Robbins, Untitled, from The Hostess Project

“In an effort to further inhabit my grandmother’s memories as a young wife, I began an autobiographical, photographic record of my experiences with her recipe journal. This ongoing project is as much a social experiment as a nostalgic experience. I dress in her clothing, prepare meals based on her hand-written recipes, serve invited guests, and perform the role of hostess. I prepare dishes based on her hand-written instruction: her recipes. Aspics, croquettes, meatloaf with pickle and egg garnish . . . And I photograph the results.

In all of my work, I am interested in trying to create larger units of meaning through editing. With The Hostess Project, the photographs and the handwritten recipes are interwoven into sequences and pairs, which illustrate a more complex experience, divided in time and space. Tiny’s recipe journal includes details about intimate family gatherings. I prepare the recipes, not to recreate their associated events. (To recreate any of these gatherings, a deceased family member’s birthday celebration for instance, seems oddly irreverent; see Figure 2.) Rather, the performance of the meal is about inhabiting certain aspects of my grandmother’s memory. The recipe book reveals something compelling about Tiny’s friendships, her marriage, my grandfather’s suicide, and her subsequent years spent alone on the farm. Lists of ingredients are scrawled on the backs of envelopes and scraps of yellowed paper. The book is stained with drips of grease and drops of cream. If my grandfather enjoyed a dish, this is noted in the margin. Recipes are revisited and journal entries revealed first, the details of dinner parties and holidays and, later, why it was too unbearably sad to prepare my grandfather’s favorite dishes. In this respect, the food becomes almost beside the point.”

excerpt from Kathleen’s article on The Hostess Project

More of Kathleen’s work here

┐ Erin M. Perfect └

© Erin M. Perfect Untitled, from the series Suspending Belief

© Erin M. Perfect Untitled, from the series Suspending Belief

More of Erin’s work here

┐ Christina Z. Anderson └

© Christina Z. Anderson, Great Catch, from the series Family of Origin, 2009

© Christina Z. Anderson, Summer Sun, from the series Family of Origin, 2009

“Growing up the youngest in a family of 7 girls and 1 boy was a unique opportunity to be an observer of the social landscape, particularly of the female variety. In 2000 after the death of both parents, I became the archivist for my family of origin’s photographs. This archive includes both black and white and color images from the 1800′s to the 1980′s, about 25,000 images in all. Most of the images are damaged, moldy, and dusty. Over the past 8 years this work has been edited and reedited and is now woven into the fabric of my present work to express a sort of continuum of universal family “reality.” All images are printed in the tricolor gum bichromate process. Images are printed “as is,” with damage not Photoshopped out. Quirk and humor exist alongside sadness and darkness, because, in this family as well as in most, there were darker dramas going on beneath the smiling Kodachrome faces.”

More of Christina’s work here

┐ Aline Smithson └

© Aline Smithson, Untitked, from the series Daughter…

© Aline Smithson, Untitked, from the series Daughter…

© Aline Smithson, Untitked, from the series Daughter…

“Daughter: As a photographer, I explore a variety of subjects, styles and processes, but the one consistent element in my photographic journey has been my daughter, Charlotte.
As I continue to grow and explore as an artist, she continues to grow and explore as a person. Her willingness to participate in my work has been immeasurable. I look back at the past ten years, grateful to her for helping me realize my vision, but I am also grateful to have a photographic record of my very special daughter and the time we have spent together.”

More of Aline’s work here and her blog “Lenscratch” here

┐ S. Gayle Stevens └

© S. Gayle Stevens, Walking, from the series Calligraphy, 2011

© S. Gayle Stevens, Cornucopia, from the series Calligraphy, 2011

Calligraphy: beautiful writing or drawing
photography: light drawing
taxonomy: the science of the classification of living things
Calligraphy consists of a series of wet plate collodion tintype photograms of plant and animal specimens I have collected on my daily walks. Inspired by cabinets of curiosity, my collection contains diverse specimens such as leaf skeletons, snakeskins, wings and many toads, frogs and insects. I have always been inspired by the overlooked and these objects, which would normally be passed over, are found and cherished for the unique beauty of their sparse remains. Often all that is left is a “skeleton,” a drawing of a being that no longer exists.
I have rendered my drawings as wet plate collodion tintypes. my hand coated plates, collected specimens and light complete these drawings. Black marks of the photogram are similar to brush strokes in Chinese calligraphy, sparse yet expressive. The plates themselves are unvarnished and therefore changeable. The silver rich plates will tarnish with age; the speed and degree will depend on their environment.
These images are my memento mori; an acknowledgement of lives passed, a rendering of fleeting shadows.

more of Gayle’s work here

┐ John Divola └

© John Divola, The Little Man, 1987-89

© John Divola, Rock Falling Through Water, View From The Bottom Of the Pond Looking Up, 1989

“This body of work is based on some personal observations about photographs. I am fascinated by the concept of the photograph as an impression from, or remnant of, that which it describes. To stretch a metaphor – the photograph as an object has an relationship to that which it represents something like the relationship the snake skin has to the snake that sheds it. The relationship of something dead to something living. I would like to make images which are about opacity, muteness, and distance.
The subjects in this body of work are all signifiers of the natural, expression, and the sublime. The specific subjects are cyclones, rocks falling into or through water, animals, mountains, the woods, and phases of the moon. Further, all of these fabricated scenes involve the use of expressionistic gestures (e.g. brush strokes, splashing paint, staining, etc.). While this work may be rather self conscious, it is not my desire to illustrate a premise. Rather, these ideas are a basis for a subjective investigation and involvement. While these images are about distance and loss in relation to gestural and iconographic potential, they are equally about accident, gesture, process, and a melancholy faith. They are about both possibilities and limits.”

John Divola, 1989

More of John’s work here

┐ Celia Perrin Sidarous └

© Celia Perrin Sidarous, Untitled, from the series The Book of Things, ongoing 2008-2010

© Celia Perrin Sidarous, Untitled, from the series The Book of Things, ongoing, 2008-2010

More of Celia’s work here

║ Santiago Mostyn ║

© Santiago Mostyn, from the series Excerpt: All Most Heaven

© Santiago Mostyn, from the series Excerpt: All Most Heaven

Particularly difficult to do a post on this work. There is a lost of passion within and in between the photographs. Worth seeing it all here

║ Katie Koti ║

© Katie Koti, Tangle, from the series Asunder, 2008-current

© Katie Koti, Fall, from the series Asunder, 2008-current

“The images in my current project, “asunder”, reflect my continuing exploration of gender and its relationship to sexuality through the means of photography. The landscape works on various levels in my images. I use the landscape to seduce and engage the viewer with its beauty and textures. The landscape also acts as both an ambiguous form as well as a means to speak a shared and tangible language. The viewer can recognize the landscape as part of our world, it is ordinary and evokes a sense of comfort. The universal voice of the landscape creates a common thread for viewers to access ideas of gender and sexuality that may otherwise be foreign to them. I build symbolic connections, through metaphor, between the human body and the natural forms of the land. These connections allow the viewer to break away from a more literal, confined context, and in turn enables them to identify with the familiarity of the landscape. Aspects of the figures identity are revealed when they have partial or no clothing on. Our society has attempted to rigidly define gender and sexuality into a binary divide. There is often a sense of disconnect that one can experience as a result of not fitting into these boxes. I hope to challenge these dichotomous roles as well as expose the struggle an individual can go through inside of their skin. A struggle that is not only psychological, but also social and physical. I am particularly fascinated by the intersection of pain, clarity, and spirituality, that can come from this struggle. “

More of Katie’s work here

║ Claire Martin ║

© Claire Martin, Untitled, from the series Slab City

© Claire Martin, Untitled, from the series Slab City

“Slab City has been created by a small but committed community of squatters in the Colorado Desert of South Eastern California, USA. Taking its name from the concrete slabs that remain from an abandoned World War II base, it is a tragic yet romantic landscape that commands its residents to possess the same balance of beauty and beast. Unbearable temperature highs in summer weed out the many who inhabit the free space in winter leaving only the most resilient, or the most unfortunate, as permanent residents. These same people maintain the ad-hoc infrastructure that makes it such a desirable community to visit in the cooler months. Those who stay year after year could be described as poverty stricken; living in some of the worst conditions in America. Some residents would tell you this is the truth. Others fiercely defend their lifestyle as a deliberate choice of rejecting mainstream society. For these people Slab City provides a freedom they’d never experienced before. There are others who were forced here through circumstance; society won’t tolerate them due to their pasts as felons, addicts or vagrants, but who wholeheartedly embrace the opportunity to live in a community that won’t judge them. Slab City is a place for the broken and desperate and for the fierce defenders of freedom from tyranny. But more than anything else, it is what this small group of people call home.”

More of Claire’s work can be seen here

║ Augusta Wood ║

© Augusta Wood, Sesame Street, from the series I have only what I remember , 1980/ 2008

© Augusta Wood, Planting Geraniums, from the series I have only what I remember , 1987/ 2008

“Augusta Wood explores the persistence of memory, and the ways in which imagery and text can interact to shape meaning of experience. (…)
Her latest series I have only what I remember (2009) investigates further the ways photography can elicit meaning from the personal archive that is memory. Revisiting the center of her early life, Wood projects into the empty rooms of her grandparents’ former home multiple, overlapping family snapshots of the artifacts, figures, and circumstances that shaped her past experiences, and thus, her present memories. As constructions of the documented past, Wood’s photographs urge us to recall for ourselves the former presence of rooms and relationships that shape our current selves.”

Edward Robinson

More of Augusta’s work can be seen here

║ Matt Lipps ║

© Matt Lipps, Untitled (hallway), from the Home series, 2008

© Matt Lipps, Untitled (garage wall), from the Home series, 2008

“In his radical reassembly of photographic imagery, Matt Lipps exploits appropriation’s inherent possibilities for generating new relationships and meaning. His recent series Home (2008) depicts contoured cut-outs of Ansel Adams’ pristine, monumental landscapes, affixed to cardboard backing and propped on a tabletop before backgrounds comprised of multi-toned photographs of the artist’s childhood home. Casting the cutouts into sharp relief, the resulting shadows heighten a sense of material process—the precise black-and white printing of the Modernist master contrasting with the abraded color reproductions of domestic record—and evokes, too, a physicality to the passing of time. By pairing particular landscape formations with particular rooms, Lipps presents what he calls “portraits through landscape” of different family members, including himself. The possession at a young age of Adams’ widely available reproductions elicited Lipps’ earliest fascination with the possibilities of the medium; the varying arrays of his background colors correspond to marketed groupings of Benjamin Moore home paint colors. Lipps’ work also reflects the artist’s reckoning with an engagement he describes as being “in-relationship-to, alongside and around” photography. Raised and practicing in California, Lipps recognizes that he lives in “the capital of that image producing media industry (Hollywood)”. Seeking to challenge his relationship to the forces of personal and professional tradition, it is Lipps’ achievement to have found and formed in the city of Los Angeles—“one hyperreal, photo postcard backdrop”—such fruitful grounds for the search for new photographic meaning.”

source: fotofest biennial

More of Matt’s work can be seen here

║ Tanya Marcuse ║

© Tanya Marcuse, Maximilian Helmet, c.1510, from the series Undergarments & Armor, 2002-2004

© Tanya Marcuse, Corset with Hip Pad, from the series Undergarments & Armor, 2002-2004

© Tanya Marcuse, Maximilian Armor, c.1510, from the series Undergarments & Armor, 2002-2004

“From the bizarre steatopygous forms of Victorian bustles to the haunting facial masks on medieval helmets, Tanya Marcuse has illuminated the complex relationship between body and clothes, with all the ambiguities this entails. — from the essay by Valerie Steele Since time immemorial, humans have sought to cover parts of their bodies, with materials ranging from animal skins to the finest silk. Clothing not only keeps us warm and protected, it allows us to alter our appearance and the way others might regard us. Tanya Marcuse’s fascinating photographs show that although clothing on its own can look strange and inanimate, it also has a story to reveal. The undergarments she presents here are the kind that would most likely have been kept well-hidden from view, for these are the hard foundation garments such as corsets and bustles that – invisible on the outside – could completely change the shape of their wearer. Conversely, the rigid outer shell of armor would blatantly transform the appearance of the person concealed inside. For women, these undergarments enhanced (so they believed) their beauty and status; for men, the armor likewise presented their desired image – strength and bravery – to whoever crossed their path.”

in Nazraeli press

More of Tanya’s work here

║ Elad Lassry ║

© Elad Lassry, Burmese Mother, Kittens, 2008

© Elad Lassry, Two wolves, 2008

“Rarely is there enough visual information in a photograph by Elad Lassry to quite tell what is going on in the picture. Thatʼs the reverse of what most photographs intend, dedicated as they typically are to delivering data selectively plucked from the quotidian world. Since we live in an engorged image-environment, where we are continuously hectored by photographs that purport to be telling us stuff, the subtle absence disorients. (…)”

source: Knight, Christopher, “Photographs that ask questions” Los Angeles Times, October 16, 2009

More of Elad’s work here

║ Herman Nicholson ║

© Herman Nicholson, Untitled #5, from the series Family

© Herman Nicholson, Untitled #7, from the series Family

More of Herman’s work here

║ Patrick Millard ║

© Patrick Millard, Patience Within the Antechamber, from the series Formatting Gaia (stage ii), 2007

© Patrick Millard, Grounded Merge, from the series Formatting Gaia (stage ii), 2007

“The cycle between human beings and the natural world has been transformed into a new formation that inspires intricate modes of transmitting and receiving information. Through the development of modern technologies human beings have begun to unfold the possibilities of telematic and cybernetic systems of communication. Earth is no longer a simple exchange of biological entities, but a more complex system that employs digital signal to mediate our existence within it.

Human beings, technology, and nature are now all part of a congruous system of existence that is becoming more and more visible in our landscape. Formatting Gaia depicts this world, where there is a physical connection between the three and all work in unison with one another.

These images explore an alternate version of the human existence than what we have known it to be in our short history. As opposed to being what we at times feel to be independent of nature and technology, the images show the necessity we have for them, as well as how we have used technology to steer our own genetic makeup. Photographic investigations into this world leave one with a visual depiction of the possibilities that we’ve already begun to travel toward along our evolutionary path.”

Artist statement

To see more of Patrick’s work click here

║ Jen Davis ║

© Jen Davis, Untitled no.5, from the series Self Portraits, 2004

© Jen Davis, Untitled no.15, from the series Self Portraits, 2005

More of Jen’s work can be seen here

║ Molly Landreth ║

© Molly Landreth, Untitled, from the series Embodiment: a portrait of queer life in America, 2007

© Molly Landreth, Untitled, from the series Embodiment: a portrait of queer life in America, 2007

“This series of photographs is an archive and a journey through a rapidly changing community and the lives of people who bravely offer new visions of what it means to be young and queer today. It’s about love, the process of growing up into ones self and the complexity of relationships found between a diverse group of young people who playfully reveal unique and subtle shades of gender expression and with a glance or a touch re-assemble the sometimes-delicate anatomy of family.”

More of Molly’s work can be seen here