When Amy Stein, Jennifer Galvin and Lyle Rexer began talking about some of our ideas for our Instruments of Empire show at the Cpation Gallery we spoke of the need to bring together more informative voices into the dialogue of the work. Often the gallery serves as a presentation of the work and may back that up with some literature but what about the influences, and cultural conversations? Not always relevant but certainly with the work Amy and I do.

This Friday is the first in a series of planned events around our exhibition. The film Wendy and Lucy by Kelly Reichardt will be screened at the Caption Gallery followed by a discussion between Amy and curator Lyle Rexer. Space is limited so RSVP. One not to miss.

Friday February 19, 2010 at 7:30 p.m.
RSVP info@caption.is

Caption Gallery 55 Washington Street, No. 802 Brooklyn, NY 11201 www.caption.is

Winrock Shopping Center, Albuquerque, NM, 2010

In January, Ian Whitmore and I took a trip to the dramatic landscape of Albuquerque, NM, myself to make the above picture, among others.

We had also had the pleasure of hanging with some of artists in the area. David Bram (also of Fraction Magazine), David Ondrick, Johnathan Blaustein made the trek down from the mountain for food and beers. Johnathan is not only a prolific photographer but great debater of politics. Fun all around.

I’ll never get over the fact of the impact of the super close mountains in almost every direction in that town. Surreal to be reminded of such a force of the earth at every traffic light.

Clearly there is something in the air in NM and aside from all the great energy coming from Santa Fe, Albuquerquians are producing some great things aside from their own photographs. Take a gander at the new issue of Fraction Magazine which features some very recent work by yours truly alongside, Johnathan Blaustein, Liz Kuball, Gordon Stettinius, John Divola and a review of the Versus show from Mary Goodwin of Lightwork.

Today I was happy to see the new issue of Flash Flood announced in the inbox. Flash Flood features some excellent writing, reviews and smart interviews and is put together by Johnathan Blaustein, David Ondrik, Melanie McWhorter, and Jennifer Schlesinger.

Good things abound in the NM hills.

Last month we finally sat down to jury the Picture Black Friday project. I promised accolades to the winner. I’ll be honest it was tough looking over all these works and not feeling like some were pictures I have thought about, or that some appeared a bit too editorial for my taste or that a few really went too far away from the ‘theme’. Not exactly an easy challenge to ask someone to run out, make work on a common theme and give it a fresh perspective. That being said, there were some pretty great ones out of the bunch. I particularly loved the work of Alex Boerner, Matt Gamber (though I would’ve preferred the object over the photograph), Ruben Natal San Miguel has a great portrait of a flower seller (recalling John Thomsen?), Catie McCabe makes great reference to those ‘day-traders-with-hands-on-head’ pictures from last year, and Shawn Rocco makes one of my absolute favorite pictures of them all. Sentimental?… maybe but honest and clearly a difficult picture to make.

Winner goes to buddy (and fellow mall-breaker-inner), Sandy Carson.

It’s become fairly commonplace for one to put together a website or blog. Ask several questions of an artist by email, spellcheck and publish them. These two ingredients (along with whom the artist is) can immediately garner a reputation for the site and site publisher.

I also see this with a proliferation of online photography magazines. Before the age of the digital medium, magazines such as DoubleTake, Blind Spot and Aperture were one of the main sources to discover new and emerging work by artists. In fact much of my early education was spending hours in the basement of my local library carefully looking through every issue of Aperture they had on hand. This served to enlighten myself as the young-artist-in-training to the many possibilities being explored in the medium that were narrated by a critical discourse from some excellent and profound writers.

I was excited as any to have these tools put into my hands when i began publishing online in 2004. It was an exciting time. Many new blogs and websites devoted to the medium sprang from the nether regions giving voice and broadcast to new work and, like the printed versions, an exploration of conceptual paradigms at a crucial time for photography. Even then it was evident who could write out of curiosity and strong questions about the work done and being done.

Fast forward to 2010 and one can’t click without a new online magazine, blog or archive of photographs appearing on the browser page. The daily email calls-to-submit flood inboxes, some with themes, some without but all looking for you to submit your work on to our website so we can broadcast it unlike your website. The worst ones become all too formulaic and simply just publish a selection of work chosen by the artist (550×125 pixels pls.) along with an artist written statement. No curatorial concern other than selection, in many cases no different than the content on the artists website that is linked to somewhere in the article.

The ability to email an artist directly also provides the opportunity to interview them. I like that accessibility and clearly I believe in it through my own site/blog/facebook/twitter/whatevercomesnext. But an interview is not a questionnaire and all too many of these interviews are distilled down to a manufactured series of questions where it may even be obvious that the person asking the questions hasn’t even looked to see if those questions were answered somewhere else before. ‘What got you interested in photography?’, ‘tell me some of the inspiration behind your current project _____’, etc…. I hasten to say it but we would not stand for that sort of journalism in the printed press why should we stand for it online? I don’t mean to sound so condemning, it’s simply because I love interviews. There is so much to discover there about artistic character, nuance and the creative process. I recall reading the interviews in the small softbound Smithsonian Photographers At Work series. In the Lee Friedlander and Eggleston editions one discovers more about their character than I imagine one would in conversation (true dat!). Another favorite, the Paul Graham book published by Phaidon, Graham is interviewed by artist Gillian Wearing! It’s a real interview; giggles, off topic shared nostalgia about television and some intense conversation about process.

I feel we have a responsibility as publishers and broadcasters of media today. If we’re going to do it, let’s make it right, give us something we can learn from. I know the vague questions can be an opportunity to really speak my own agenda but there is plenty of places to do that. I also know there has been some interesting discussions regarding online curating, editing as of late. Some people are fantastic at simply editing the internet into fantastic cornucopias of ideas (Laurel, etc.) but others need to give us more than a repackaged version of what the artist presents to them. What ever happened to ‘never trust what an artist has to say about their own work?’.

These thoughts are not meant to condemn anyone but to challenge the idea of the discussions around the medium. We’re still in baby steps but I see a ramp at the end of the driveway.

StSander’s Rolling Stones vs. US Maple – Stuck