Making the symbolic and triumphant journey from the hospital to our home is one evey parent will warn you of. “you’ll never look at the world the same again”, “you’ll drive slower and more careful than drivers education class”.

Ours was the usual excitement and careful driving. Looking past the city storefronts and bus stops, things do seem somewhat clearer. The messy roads, streets littered with down and outs, trash and all too familiar boarded up windows (should I be surprised?).

When we stop at the traffic light to make the turn 1 block away from our home, it’s not the new found perspective that is shocking but the woman sitting in a doorway speaking to an elderly man in a wheelchair. The woman procedes to lift her shirt up for the man to gaze upon potential merchandise of boob sandwich in a cheesy gold bra. She notices my dumbfoundedness at her reveal in full view at 6pm on a busy Chicago street and giggles. Perhaps as a way to secure a potential client or sugar daddy she begins to grab the wheelchair mans crotch. All the while smirking at the car full of newborn family.

In the backseat is my uncorrupted, fresh and angelic daughter, cooing to mom in her newly installed baby seat.

My wife Rachelle and I are expecting our first child and we’ve spent the last 3 days laboring, tv watching, back rubbing and generally not sleeping.
We were due July 9th and are now expecting to deliver this evening (Sunday) or tomorrow.
In the comments, predict the time/day, sex (surprise for us too) and weight. Closest guess without going over wins a print!
Compliments of Baby Ulrich

Rolling Acres Mall, 2009

Quite wonderful to have one of my photographs from Dark Stores, Ghostboxes and Dead Malls paired with Roger Lowensteins’ article ‘Paralyzed by Debt’ in this Sunday’s NY Times Magazine. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea that a big interest of mine is the ability of contemporary photography to act as propaganda for a like-minded cause. Like practitioners a century ago such as Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis, photography often can contain content and a narrative that speaks of social issues. It seems though that many don’t always pay enough attention to the fact that as intrinsic to the pictures was the use of them by the Child Labor Committee or Riis’ lectures. This use and context is what seems to truly drive the meaning, agenda and critical discourse of the image in it’s present and through to the future. When we think of Hine we think of photographs that operate as a catalyst for social change, again it’s as important to note that Hine’s project was a result a collaborative effort and the effect and change was a result of a larger construct.

In the 21st century as photography has become sublimated into digital media, this actually allows the photographer to act as the catalyst to insert that degree of context and use into various venues. I was having this conversation with friend and photographer Scott Fortino recently that his photographs of prisons, public schools and state institutions, aside from being considered, wonderful and inventive aesthetic objects can serve as the caption to so much contemporary discussion. Simply put the articles are being written, the discussions happening, why not attempt to place the work within those contexts?

Having my work alongside Lowensteins’ essay is a victory in it’s pairing (aside the tickling fact that it will be seen by many). Rather than focus on the fact that photography loses so much in it’s new secondary role to the internet, why not see it’s opportunities and strengths. It worked for Hine

“Indeed, the underlying cause of deleveraging is that Americans got too leveraged. This excess was decades in the making.” -

Amanda, Denver, NC 2009

The newly created Photography Council at the Milwaukee Art Museum is hosting its first auction event which judging by the wonderful people involved up there should be quite the shebang.

Silent auction works by Anna Shteynshleyger, Sonja Thomsen, Shimon & Lindeman, Jason Reblando, Fred Marsh, Aron Gent, Colleen Plumb, Ciurej & Lochman, Jon Gitelson and more.
Attendees will also be able to bid on a personal portrait session by yours truly. The portrait will be the result of discussions between the subject and myself, whereas we’ll decide how, where and when, etc.

Exposure
Wednesday August 4/ 2010
6/ 10pm
234 W. Florida St
Milwaukee, WI
Call to sign up: 414.224.3284