Artist a Day

So, last Thursday I get an email from the publisher of the blog Artist A Day asking me for permission to be featured on his website. I was in the middle of a freelance job and I quickly looked at the blog. If you're not familiar with the blog, everyday the blog posts a new artist with two images from that artist followed by their bio and or statement and a link back to their website. And they allow their readers to rate each artist on a scale of one to five stars and post comments below the post. After seeing that few days before he contacted me, my friend Jen Stark was posted and was doing nicely in the site's ratings I gave them my blessing to post me (link). (maybe they got to my work from a link from her?)

Right after I gave them permission I got a little freaked out thinking back to my old rating/commenting experiences with someone posting me on metafilter and I was also thinking of Alec Soth's experiences with the dpreview lighting forums. But I didn't have much time to really think it over I had to get back to what I was working on so, I was hopeful this wouldn't lead down a bad road.

So, first of all I have to thank everyone for all the lovely comments. Its seems like their audience was the right one for this kind of thing. I have heard Metafilter and forums like dpreview have a different critical (?) audience.

Its also been fun to watch as the site seemingly goes through and posts new artist from my link section. First came Emiliano Granado then Amy Stein and then today Alec Soth!

So all this raises some questions for me that I haven't adequately answered. What does looking at artwork in the small format of the internet and then rating it to to art? it this progress? how does or doesn't this encourage critical discourse to allow for instant knee jerk ratings? What would happen if we were to give viewers rating meters when they browsed the MET or MoMA? Does art need a high popular rating to be critically good? In regard to this last question I am thinking no high popular ratings might kill good art. But then again I feel like lots of art would be considered good it its audience spent more time with it to understand it better.

What is wrong with AIPAD?

Photo of the 2008 New York APAID show by Susan Sermoneta.

A few weekends ago, I went out to see The AIPAD Photography "show". I wouldn't call it a show - that would give it too much credit. The only thing that was like a show was the price.

$25 dollars for the day.

No student ticket pricing.

Zero.

What is wrong with these people? Are they that elitist that they need to overcharge EVERYONE? Even the bigger more prestigious and more historically significant show, The Armory Show has a fair student price of $10. I am glad I didn't post this right after I went since I was in a angrier mood then and I maybe would have said something rash.

I almost didn't go until I found an artistic method of entry. As for how the fair was? It was ok there were some highlights and some embarrassments. I would post them here but I wouldn't want to help them. One thing I will note is how interesting it is to see who isn't represented at these fairs but are in other fairs. Those famous Germans with the big price tags weren't there at all as far I saw.

So, next year AIPAD please consider at student pricing all the cool Art Fairs are doing it.

Lots of blog coverage here here here here and countless others...

The Black Sun by Ansel Adams and Minor White.

Last fall, after the bulk of my Black Sun Project shooting was complete, I began researching and writing about the work. I looked into symbolic and historical meanings of a Black Sun, the history of photography as well as the more recent artist manipulations with glitches. Its quite amazing how research can help you more fully understand what you were doing in your work.

harlan erskine, “Black Sun 0181,” c-print on diasec in wood frame, 48" x 64"

I hope to discuss the symbolic meaning of a Black Sun and glitch art in other posts. Now, I want to discuss the biggest revelation in my research; two historical photographers have come up with very similar Black Sun pictures. The first image I came across is the image above by Ansel Adams that was made in 1939 and the other is by Minor White produced in 1955.

Through a bit of Google image searching I came upon several blogs that mentioned an Ansel Adams’ image called “The Black Sun, Tungsten Hills, Owens Valley, California.” There is very little web information and virtually no good images floating around but Ansel talks about this image quite thoroughly in his book “Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs,” starting on page 124.

My first negative was planned for development in Kodak D-23. The film was Kodak Super-XX, a fine material of the "thick emulsion" type. The sun flared strongly in the sky, and in the center of the flare was a small circle of slightly gray value, representing a partial reversal of the sun's image. The second exposure was identical to the first, but compensating development was planned for the desired reversal effect. It was gratifying to see both negatives as experiments and one, The Black Sun, as a striking surrealistic image. It was proof that the subject may prompt ideas, ideas crave visualizations, and craft makes their realization possible. 

Ansel does a nice job of talking about where the technical and the aesthetic join up and work together. I am not sure if he imagined the outcome before the negative was produced, like he claims, or if it was a happy accident. Either way his image stunned me when I first found it in his book.

“The Black Sun” by Minor White, 1955 from Time-Life’s “Great Photographers,” ref. 163, p. 185 via “Solarization Demystified” by Professor and artist William L. Jolly.

Another surprising discovery happened more recently, when I came across an article on solarization by Professor William L. Jolly. Apparently “Adams claimed that the reversal was anticipated and previsualized. White admitted that, in his case, it was an accident and rhapsodized, The sun is not fiery after all, but a dead planet. We on earth give it its light.”

Another contemporary photographer working with similar content of sun images with a different method to get there is Chris McCaw. Chris has been harnessing the sun to literally burn the photographic medium and has been getting some breathtaking results. I look forward to seeing the real prints in person someday.

Sunburn GSP#039, by Chris McCaw 2006.