Visuals

Went last night to the final viewing of the Art of Photography show in downtown SD. It was at that mega-shopping paradise, Horton Plaza; i was one of literally three people who made their way downstairs to the Lyceum Theatre to check out the photos. It was pretty rad. Here are my favorites.


"Back to nature 1" - Patricia Van De Camp
(Superb colors in this one. The actual print looked a bit darker. Gorgeous!)


"Arcimboldo W6I0970" - Klaus Enrique
(um, YES. This one was gigantic, and incredibly shot. Also, what an effing brilliant idea.)


"Long Winding Road" - Dejon Walker
(stared at this one for a long time. it was huge and beautiful.)


"Dad's Things Aren't Dad" - Russ Rowland
(since i'm obsessed with collections, and items as evidence of our 'self'.)


"Dissolve" - Alison Turner
(one of the first ones i saw that stopped me in my tracks. Weird, but excellent.)


"Covered in White Powder" - Larry Louie
(so, this is a balloon factory. gave me the shivers. i sell those fucking things every day.)


"Three in the Lake" - Carl Tremblay
(perfect.)


"Litter" - Linda Kuo
(this was way better in person. water glistened on every surface. although i still can't figure out what that white thing is.)


"Louise" - Tom M. Johnson
(Louise = obviously amazing.)


"Girl, Ballinasloe Horse fair, Ireland" - Kenneth O Halloran
[this one got 'Honorable Mention']
(another large, stunning portrait. i was transfixed by those freckles.)


"B 1004 (Window)" - Noritaka Minami
(is it weird that i want to sleep in here? this was related to this other photo.)


"Hot Rod Dream Girl Priscilla" - Jennifer Greenburg
(check out her shift knob! Also, the light was fantastic in this one.)


"Day 47" - Jennifer Wilkey
[also received 'Honorable Mention']
(creeptastic.)


"Place 1861" - Jose A. Gallego
(this was possibly my favorite. can't really explain why. i just wanted to be there, badly.)


"Feet Over Coconut Shell" - Andre Cypriano
(visceral. i want to do this!)


"Red China" - Li Jiangsong
(slightly ominous, obviously accidental.)


"Let Sleeping Dogs Lie" - Brian Almaraz
(surreal! kind of reminded me of a scene from a Gabriel Garcia Marquez story.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

These 2 were the first-place winners:

"Flesh Love Chihiro & Takeshi" & "Flesh Love Michico & Yuhei" - Photographer Hal

...and this one was also pretty great:

"An Ordinary Day" - Bev Short


Well, that's all folks. Off to make shrunken apple heads.

Double-takes.

Wow, where to begin? I mean, it's not hard to explain, or understand: Alexa Meade paints people and then photographs them, the end result being a photograph that looks exactly like a painting. She sits, above, with one of her subjects. It's fantastical! Magical!

Enjoy:
















first seen on

a new favorite.

At the SF MoMA a couple of months ago, we went to see the special exhibit (the Steins' collection of Matisse, Picasso, et. al.) and, as usual, a photography series elsewhere in the museum ended up being my favorite thing in the building. More specifically, a handful of photos taken in Africa by Jim Goldberg. The one that made me stop dead in my tracks was this one, "Poachers":



(please tell me they don't look like cats, waiting to pounce?)

but there were others, too:








(keep in mind that these photos are stunningly huge, like 5' x 6'.)


And today i found a few more by him, from older projects:











The Africa images are still on display at the MoMA through October 16th, along with (of course) lots of other good stuff. Get thee there!

forward and back.

As the girlfriend of a philosopher of time and physics, i think and hear quite a bit about the nature of time. Now, i'm someone who's always felt that our human, recorded (or "ordered") time is somewhat arbitrary. Why do we measure single seconds, instead of two- or three-second increments? Why are there twenty-four hours in a day instead of twelve (two-hour units)? As Nat has pointed out, our system of time is based on the actual movement of the spheres: rotations of the Earth, and Sun.

Being a huge Dark Crystal fan, this orrery-inspired time measurement model feels right (see also Stonehenge, sundials, and so on) somehow. Anyway, apparently those crazy ancient Egyptians with their base 12 numbering system led to our modern-day measurements. Fun fact.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In related(ish) news, we saw Inception last night. It was certainly a thrilling, mind-bending nail-biter. Pretty nice to look at, even though the sound editing was awful. (Just try and tell me you caught every spoken line in that film. Go on.) Our boy Chris Nolan certainly seems interested in the nuances of perception, time, memory, identity, and reality – and boy, can i dig it. He obviously understands the awesome power of our brains, and how this can both help and hurt us. i would love to sit and eat tiramisu with him some day, and talk about layers. Also, i really liked how he named the characters and entities in Inception: (highlight if you want to read the end of this paragraph:)
Cobb's unsettling wife 'Mal' kept bringing to mind grand mal seizures, or words that begin with that root, such as malicious, malevolent, maladjusted, etc. Naming Ellen Page's architect character 'Ariadne' was clever, and the nefarious company that Leonardo was (or was not?) running from, 'Cobol', might quite possibly have been echoing that mischievous sprite, the kobold.

...Here's an interesting delve if you're so inclined.

In the spirit of the above nonsense, here are some fab time-lapse photographs. They've been sitting around in a folder on my desktop for who knows how long (minutes? months?), so i'm afraid i can't remember where they came from. It would certainly be nice to give credit where it is due, but for now they remain in limbo. Enjoy.

journeys.

If you have a few moments (okay, more like half an hour), sit with a cup of coffee and listen to some music while you watch the slideshow of winners' shots from the 2009 New York Photo Festival.

Just to give you fair warning, there is some unpleasantry. Birth defects, homelessness, stark death. But you will find joy, along with the pain.

My favorites were Elliot Ross's Animals series (those eyes!), Tyler Brown's single shot "Filamentis" (if anyone can tell me what this is a photo of i will love you dearly), Ernesto Bazan's photo book Cuba (multi-faceted wowness), and another photo book called Strangely Familiar: Acrobats, Athletes, and other Traveling Troupes.

i was also quite struck by student Ed Ou's honorable mention piece for the "Social Documentary Essay" category, Under a Nuclear Cloud. As i mentioned above, these are a bit hard to look at, but i have always been intensely drawn to the ramifications of the human race's development (and eventual use and misuse) of nuclear energy. Lastly, student Patrik Budenz's photo book Post Mortem knocked my socks off. At first i could barely look at these clear, intimate portraits of bodily death, but then i realized that this is a basic truth, pure and simple. So i began to see them through another lens, a photographer's lens. They are great shots, no doubt about it. The subject matter is (for me, at least) hard to grapple with, but i was able to set it aside, for the most part. There is still mystery in the simplicity of it all.

One of the truly amazing things about photography is the ability for those images to grab more than one individual and join them together somehow, even though geographically (and spiritually, socially) they may be thousands of miles apart. i don't doubt that there were others around the globe watching these same images along with me, and feeling their minds open up as their thoughts began to travel..... to travel..........

Anyway, here is a nice image of some daffodils (narcissus?) to make everything better. Toodles.


(via)

Helen Levitt:

Another great photographer you never knew about.

NPR has a short article and a slide show of some of her (really killer) photos over here.

Another good reason i should really stop dicking around and just get to school, already. i could have learned about her ages ago. It's not surprising, either, that she made two documentaries in the '40s with another extremely talented individual, James Agee. i've gotta get my hands on those...


Had a labyrinthine dream last night involving babies and pearl anklets... in Part One, i was carting this baby around on my hip for hours. i was at work (the bakery, my old job), and i couldn't find a place to put him down so as to get anything done. At one point someone left the door open and i was in a rage because the baby had managed to toddle out into the hallway. Curious, we ventured down to the large windows at the end of the hall together, where a college class was assembled on the stairwell quietly watching the goings-on outside with great interest. The "goings-on" i speak of were an intense armageddon/firestorm scenario. i felt like all the wind got knocked out of me, so baby and i sat down heavily on the steps and watched, in silence, with the rest of them.
Eventually, we got up to leave but some of the students swarmed around us (were they fleeing?) and blocked our way back to the room we had been in. Two men started duking it out right there in front of us, very viciously, so nearby that i was cringing and trying to cover the baby with my head and arms as best i could.

Trip out!

Anyway, in Part 2, i was at a huuuuuuuuuge flea market with my sister, and we were scoping the scene for a really important piece of jewelry. Basically i was just following her around, up and down rickety stairwells and peeking behind dirty tarps until she finally saw what she was looking for from a raise walkway. There! she pointed. i followed her finger down to a small studio space where a woman was belly-dancing rhythmically. i couldn't see what my sister was trying to show me, but finally it appeared: beneath the woman's long russet-hued skirts, i saw a flash on her ankle. She had an exquisite pearl anklet on her left leg. This was the "jackpot", apparently. It meant something, somehow, which was beyond me. A creepy guy had attached himself to out cause, at some point, and now he and my sister argued about how to wrest this priceless bauble form the woman's ankle. After a half-hour of listening to (increasingly sketchy) scenarios, i finally offered up, How about we just ask her how much it is? It's probably not very much. We can just pay her, no? and they looked at me like i was crazy. But my sister grudgingly agreed. The woman penciled the price on a grubby slip of paper and handed it back to us: $37.95. i felt a wave of relief wash over me but one look at my sister and her cohort was all i needed to know that this adventure was far from over. Their faces were wide with shock.


So yeah! interesting night up there, in the ol' brain pan. Gosh, to be a fly on the wall in there- oh. Wait.

Ta ta!

Tilt-shift Photography.

Here is a singular video for you. It uses Tilt-shift photography, which is definitely my new favorite thing. Everything looks like a tiny model! But they are actually normal size! Fabulous.

Wish i had more time to post; nothing interesting to say anyway. Lost something special last night, hope it turns up. Gettin' along on scanning in photos, even though it is immensely time-consuming. Cropping, straightening, adjusting the size, etc. etc.

TTFN