The end of an affair - an eBay Germany seller, abandoning film photography, commits well lit photographic murder by selling his remaing Ilford stock with enthusiastic illustrations.

My favourite part is towards the bottom where our jocular ebayite disclaims: "der Artikel ist Ordnung, hat aber keine Garantie" - The item is in good condition but comes with no guarantee...

(Like most German humour it sometimes takes a little while to get the joke and extensive therapy to get over it.)

Impact 2005 is an international printmaking conference started by my 'alma mater' (to use the america parlance) CPFR and hosted this time by academy of fine arts in Poznañ, Poland, and the Universität de Künste, Berlin, and organised by the University of Tennessee. My paper is nearly ready, and as i've just secured funding through my university, I can confirm that I'm going. The paper takes me back into my core research area and was written so as to explore the pedagogic implications of inter-disciplinary activities. The abstract goes a lot like this:

Paper: "Interstitial Languages: Photographers and Printmakers"

Printmakers are not photographers and vice versa. However, both fields share common territory. Within educational structures the fields are still divided, as the two subjects often have very different concerns, attitudes, aesthetics, languages and technologies. This said, newer technology is bringing together this last aspect, and we are seeing this convergence, and it is obvious that this project is well underway.

The computer has achieved what the alchemists could not, it is a philosopher's stone dissolving subjects into its binary language. Although this presents opportunities for subject areas to interact it does not solve nor offer solutions to the fundamental languages used by the distinct fields.

The common language between photography and printmaking has been long present: the printed reproduction of photographic imagery has been critical to the development and sustenance of photography, as after all, most photographic images seen are in fact reproductions, and the number of actual photographs that even people in the field see is small compared to the number of reproduced images. Of course this commonality has grown in recent years as the 21st century philosopher's stone bringing together some of the practices of production and image making from both fields. This is the current situation for many students, artists and pedagogues: there is a technology which is bringing together our fields, a digital locus which permits us to translate images from one field's language to another and there is also a technical language which specifically covers the reproduction of photographic imagery. But this language mostly covers the overlap of the two technologies and speaks about the mechanics of its creation. It will be argued that this language is useful for describing material aspects, but it is limited.

The broader languages of photography and print most commonly diverge at the aesthetics and concerns. For example, a printmaker could explore social elements through mechanical reproduction, through the distance and lack of "aura" of the repeated image. Photography seldom considers the media of production to be politically and socially significant but more often is concerned with subject through the practices of social documentary and ethical photojournalism. Or to give another example, at a formal level printed images are often concerned with marks and often its material effect, whereas photography is concerned the luxurious distribution of tone. Of course photo-mechanical prints has some of the formal concerns in common, as does alternative photography, but for the majority of practice the paradigms are quite different.

The paper will explore this heterogeneous area, searching for a critical and visual language that can bring together aspects of the photographic image with the language of the printed image in an effort to build on the strengths of both, and question the foundations of each and the traditional separation of the areas when the technologies are bringing both together in order to facilitate communication across the subject areas.

Le Monde this weekend has a article on the photographs of a grocer from the village of Kabylie, that were once lost and now (obviously) found again. Here's a little information about the images via google's authentically foreign sounding translation software (they've been working on the this-isn't-my-first-language translation algorithm for a while now). What is quite beautiful about the images is the sense of another place and another culture contiguous to ours and different - nothing terribly radical in that thought, but its nicely represented here.

As a westerner, the soft, calm lighting schema, the tonality of the images together with some of the subjects makes it reminiscent of the C19th colonial practices, but others present themselves something nearer our time, or as something more casual than the exposures or circumstance of C19th photographer would allow. This throws the western viewer's own historical consciousness into relief, which often genuine colonial images don't. In part this is because they are images from a man in Algiers - not some expedition to 'document' and frame the people of another culture, so if they contain any vestiges of colonial thinking, its embedded in an intersubjective complex between the photographer (having grown up in a late-colonial situation) and me (with my history of the dispassioned western eye).

(via).

I've put up a few photographs of the graduating MFA students on flickr, so please take a look. Sadly, I've only got a few shots as both of my camera batteries died whilst in the gallery.

Further apologies for my absence this month - teaching has now finished, and the final administrative mopping up is more-or-less done (give or take several significant things), but I'm flying back to the UK in a week and have to move my apartment to NY before I go, so things will remain sparse here for a little while longer.

Blogistan is catholic in scope but varied in quality. Here's some of the things that I read regularly, and that frequently repay the visit:

Metafilter is probably the broadest in scope, mostly because it is sustained by a community of over 20,000 members, who are free to post and discuss 'the best of the web'.
bOINGbOING is probably the most widely read blog out there, and is full of useless, useful and intriguing things.
Drunkenblog is the most interesting site on computer related, mac specific matters. Drunkenbatman writes very in depth articles which don't underestimate his reader's intelligence and consequently its possible to actually learn something quite new. Plus he likes picking the occasional intellectual fight, which makes for some good drama.
Inhabitat is ikea's website of the future. Its showcases design related matters, materials and products that make you go ooh and ahh in the appropriate places.
Digital Photography Review is the principe source for news on digital photography. The reviews are indefatigably in-depth (often 20 long long pages) but, like a high school teacher near retirement, usually lack any real criticism of the products, making it difficult to judge the quality of some characters. Fortunately, they include a lot of metrics (comparative graphs, charts etc) inbetween the paragraphs where it is possible to find substantial differences.
43 folders is the geek enthusiasts site for productivity and general tips on living easily and well.
Future Feeder brims with techno-junk of the highest order. Interesting research, web projects and future technologies spill from the pages and are often visually oriented.
Girls are pretty delivers daily paranoia and vicous hilarity through the magic of the interweb.
Fafblog does this too with an unholy trinity of characters with more satirical teeth.
Earthbound Light Photography Tips are once a week titbits and insights into digital photography.
Photoshop News does exactly what you'd imagine from some of the important folks in PSland.
Apple insider is a good source for the usual rumours, developments and general appleness.

There are many others that are growing on my RSS reader list (mac folk try NetNewsWire, 'lite' version at the bottom of the page) but I think I've wasted enough of your time with the little list. (RSS readers strip the styling of the website and place the content in one convenient location, kind of like a more specialised web browser. I'm sure there are wintel versions but I really don't know about them).

I just want to congratulate my two photography classes on the work that they've produced and the progress that they've made, and as most of at least one class is graduating, on their futures, too.

This is firstly a mesmerising and chilling series of photographs of a girl with only one expression, but is also bizarre evidence about the role of photography in identity. The consistency of her expression is truly startling, as is the position that she takes in relation to the camera. She frames herself related to the camera, knowingly of course, but at the same time unthinkingly as her expression is governed only by the presence of the camera and not by anything else that is present (her friends, her state of mind and so on).

NB: first link uses Flash and loud music to ill-effect.
Via.

The Montclair State University's MFA show opened yesterday at the White Box Annex, 601 W. 26th Street. It's open from Tuesday through Saturday, 10am-6.30pm and is well worth a look. There's a catalogue available for a mere $2 with colour reproductions of everybody's work and an introductory essay by critic in residence Nancy Princenthal.

I'll post some images of the work soon, and tell you a little about each of the artists.

Gregory Crewdson's Beneath the Roses opened tonight at Luhring Augustine and it seemed that most of Manhattan was invited to the event (or like myself, just turned up). Crewdson is big stuff, his photographs are big, the production is big, and the opening event was big, too.

Crewdson is known for creating dense, luscious images of uncanny events and this show maintains that theme. An alienated pregnant woman stares into the middle distance, a alienated young couple hold hands whilst avoiding each others gaze, another couple lie naked post coital and distant, and so on. The pschological effect of these images is undeniable, and their beauty is a necessary part of the plan. The rich colour palette, the often frightening patterning when inside (or atmospheric effects when outside) and the truly extravagent lighting schemas relentlessly bombard the viewer. (As a photographer just calculating the cost of the lighting rigs and set up is terrifying). Each picture implies a narrative of a isolation, of quite desparation and psychological mal-being and the grandeur and beauty of the photographs highlights this discrepency intensifying the experience. The figures are side lit frankly neatly extracting the figure from its environment, drawing attention, and creating another layer of prozac-artificiality to the sense of the figures. Every building, wall, or room is lit to articulate the depth in the palette and throw drama into x-number of square inches of pictorial space. This is not only technically impressive but shows the degree of care that is placed into these set-ups. However, the pictures also do not gives us moment not to be emotionally hurled around our own psychological space.

If a figure is in a car - light the car from within, with a warm tone to isolate the space from the cool light outside; if a figure is staring off into the middle distant with the line of sight preferably crossing (but not engaging) another's - light them acutely from the side but hide the source of the light (on occasion digitally or by placing it between buildings, or in another room); if there's plenty of walls - sharp long shadows are good; and so on. Typically comparisons are made of his work to cinema and although the light is hollywood because time is captured and intimated differently in a photograph the viewing is different, limiting the analogy. However, Crewdson's modus operandi is certainly as operatic as hollywood, and the stories he creates trigger (in my head at least) a low generic soundtrack for a truly immersive experience. The immersion in the work is the difficulty, stifling the viewer's responses and possibilty of understanding, and in fact making any kind of empathic response difficult.

This is only one show, there's bound to be consistency in the work, however the light is used to throughout to enact one compound pschological effect, as if all of these figures are alone in suburbia, in Generic-small-town, and all have been made into emotional simpletons, but truly beautifully so.

Currently showing at the Jersey City Museum is Raïssa Venables, who is presenting a series of haunting spaces, distorted, discoloured and lit to unbalance our pschological well being. Here's some more work of hers.

The title of the show is intimacies, clearly evoked in the domestic spaces, but is at the same time frustrated by the treatment. Just how intimate or even domestic is a lift? or a staircase? Even the bedroom (with its dual single beds) seems oppressive and distant rather than welcoming. The floatation tank in the centre of the room is bizarrely coffin shaped through the distortions in perspective. The distortions in the imagery close and open and twist photographic perspective, creating a world that due to the reference to a presumed scene, a discrepency results and gives us a hitchcockian Vertigo moment across the surface of the paper. Perhaps intimacies refers not to the qualities of the spaces alone but the act of viewing and intimating the changes in the spaces.

I mentioned e-flux only yesterday, and today I got an email from them promoting this. CIA.IS is really the Centre for Icelandic Art, at the domain .IS, but I suspect the copywriter for e-flux was having some fun given the similarity to a well known drug that right now seems to be very popular but curiously difficult to spell.

Yours,
Prognosis F. Initiators

Sort of obvious now but in the whirlwind of my life I didn't think about it: a month long trial of Photoshop CS2 is available from adobe. Go on have a look, and just by the time you've gotten used to it, it'll lock you out until you unlock your wallet.

One of the difficulties is knowing just what is going on. This is true of life in the fullest sense of the word and knowing what is going on in artland.
e-flux offers a email subscription which will crowd your inbox with interesting shows around the planet. Mostly centred around Europe, and to a lessor extent, the US, it gives a reasonable and easy to consume picture of who's who in the global art world. Its a good way of keeping track as to who is showing at the some major and some less obvious but still very credible venues, and what their new work is like. Because it is fairly global, and some times off the beaten track it gives a nice rounded picture. ArtUpdate offers an infrequent (I think monthly) listing of contemporary art shows. Unlike e-flux, It doesn't gives you images to look at but is a good survey of NY, London and some of the bigger western european cities concentrating on galleries rather than museums. Even more locally, DKS gives a continuously updated list of what is happening in NYC, and offers smaller galleries a place (most obviously the less glamourous but often very interesting Brooklyn/Williamsburg flock).

A slightly divergent but worthwhile mention is the email service of photo-eye, which sends pretty emails weekly with images and new work from the broader world of photography.

Thomas Demand recreates photographs of infamous scenes with the scenes made in colour paper and card. The scenes are not places famous in themselves, but are locations where political or historical events took place. Often the places themselves are conspicuously absent of any telling signs, they are anonymous corridors, bathtubs, polling stations (scroll to bottom), a kitchen, offices, working rooms, and so on. Each of these spaces resonate with barren modernity, and in that regard the distance of that 'essence' is brought out in the paper reconstruction, with its cool shapes and the flat generalities of formal description. However, more significant are the events that transpired in these whether they are locations for murders (the corridor and bathroom); of corrupted elections (polling station); Saddam's final hideout (kitchen); the stormed offices of the stasi after the political changeover in germany; or the room where L. Ron Hubbard wrote Dianetics. Demand's images resonate when this is discovered in the utter absence of the significance of the space. Everything that took place is not there, even when the results of the events are still recorded.

One of the notable aspects of Demand's reconstruction is that they are built from mass media images of a scene. Often the media images are spectacular and empty themselves - they disclose the event presented but distant the viewer and leave an intelligent observer wondering what exactly is represented, as the final point of the images is not there. The paper models underscore this absence. Another aspect is that he takes the scene and reconstructs and rephotographs it slightly different from the original image. By reconstructing the scene and not the image directly Demand asks us to engage with the reality of the place and with the act of perceiving a space, which is quite different from the act of viewing a mediated image reconstructed. It engages with how we read the physical space in the photographic image and the incredibly significant but not always obvious difference between the two. This is the most haunting aspect of Demand's work, the most compelling articulation of the basic premise of his photography - an insistence on the critical eye, and of reflectively understanding our viewing experience.

It is unfortunate that in some ways this role of perception of photography and of the understanding of mediated images is the real subject of Demand's work. That slender act of repositioning on top the major undertaking of reconstruction is the key. The rooms in which it happened are, when viewed collectively, less significant. It is almost as if it is the arbitrary choices and their broadly coherent (but not always completely convincing) selection was contributing to the experience of the hollowness, because of a lack of method deeply embedded in his images. Or perhaps it is better understood that there are several projects at work in his ouvre, and that the paper cut-outs betray a false consistency. There are the historical spaces most obviously in the earlier work; and more recently there has been a shift towards work which opens up a critical space regarding perception and knowledge more directly. Sounds rooms, recording equipment and computers now feature more often than mediated images of loaded politicised nowheres.

However, the experience of each individual work is compelling, from the soft general institutional lighting in the space, to the cooler-that-thou aesthetic which belies the critical role space testifies to. The formal paper processes are as beguiling as any architect's model and the relation of photograph to photograph is continually disturbing. Demand is undoubtably a very significant photographer, whose exacting mind is locked to his quietly impassioned eye and provides an important and original contribution to contemporary photography, even if there are questions regarding exactly where in the conceptual field the illusions are taking place.

(Demand is currently on show at the MoMA.