Monday, May 20, 2013 Last Update: 3:53 pm EDT

Friend of TPP, Ashley Simpson, recently skyped with photographer Vicente De Paulo on the eve of his commissioned project for Visionaire and Paddle8.

Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC), Niteroi, 1991

He was the one to shape the original Brazil,” says Brazilian photographer Vicente De Paulo of 104 year-old architect and Rio native Oscar Niemeyer. The architect, renowned for his curvaceous, concrete Modernist designs, is the focus of a special commissioned project by Visionaire and Paddle8, which debuts on the art retail site this week and will come to life in Visionaire’s RIO issue, out this September. The collaboration features ten 3D photographs of several of Niemeyer’s most iconic cites—including exterior views of the sensuous Gustavo Campana Palace and images the city’s famous hyperboloid Cathedral—, all shot by De Paulo. “Because Brazilia is my hometown and I had never done a project about the city, I was very excited to be able to go there and shoot those buildings,” explains the 46-year-old photographer. “Niemeyer brings to Rio this whole glamour because he was based here and did so much. The whole world paid attention.  He gave us not just an identity, but the icon of what the symbol of what the Brazilian lifestyle means.

Cathedral of Brasilia, Brasilia, 1958

Cathedral of Brasilia, Brasilia, 1958

Itamaraty Palace (Ministry of External Relations), Brasilia, 1962

Photography Courtesy Vicente de Paulo

This is a still. And this is the video. I’ve been waiting for some really subtle landscape video, and this one is checking all the boxes.

Thanks, Grant Cornett.

I realize we’ve had a bit of a hiatus lately over here on TPP, but I’m pulled out of retirement by some really staggering work by Manjari Sharma. In this age of instagram, it’s rare to see something truly new and groundbreaking, especially as it pertains to the photographic medium itself.

Enter Manjari Sharma’s Darshan. Named for a Sanskrit word which means “sight”, “vision” or “view, Manjari’s new project seeks to photographically recreate nine classical images of Hindu Gods and Goddesses. These icons are deeply connected to Sharma’s spiritual upbringing. By melding them with her reverence and devotion to photography, she is creating altars of her own.

You’ll never believe what goes into making these images. It’s a full-on production of costume designers, set stylists, jewelry designers, carpenters and painters. Sharma believes art is much about the process, and this is one hell of a process.

This is the first image, Maa Laxmi, the goddess of wealth, good fortune, and prosperity.

Here is more about the project, and an amazing behind-the-scenes look at the work as it is created:

Darshan from Manjari Sharma on Vimeo.

PLEASE consider donating to Sharma’s project. These images ought to be created. Click here and help out! You can even receive a signed, editioned print. Totally worth it, this is an excellent use of Kickstarter.

Here is more from Sharma in her own words:

“I grew up in a Hindu home to parents who were quite spiritual, religious and god fearing as they would call it in India. I visited countless temples, shrines, and discourses as frequently as my parents wanted. These discourses circled around unraveling the mysteries locked in chapters of mythological enigma and tales of deities, reincarnations and astrology. The roots of hindu mythology run deep; my own experiences as a child ranged from being fascinated and enlightened to lost and still seeking. Naturally, coming back home still consists of delving back into the same routine of worship and meditation I left behind.

I moved from India to the United States in 2001 in order to pursue an undergraduate study in Fine Art Photography. The frequency with which I visited Hindu temples in what felt like my previous life, gradually got replaced with visits to art galleries, museums and studios, where creativity in all mediums of expression are revered.

This series bridges two parts of my world. Iconography in the Indian religion found in temples and scriptures are ultimately artistic representations of mythological characters. Most hindus have seen the use of painting and sculpture but rarely photography taken to the level of exacting measures with respect to showcasing deities. The creation of these images has become my act of devotion, to art and to religion.”

Go to Manjari Sharma’s site.

Go to Kickstarter and be inspired.

This is the sixth installment in a conversation series initiated by Lucas Blalock with contemporary artists concerning materiality in regards to current photographic practice.

Ruth van Beek is a Dutch artist who works mainly with an archive of found photographs that she manipulates and re-contextualizes in ever changing relationships. The disjunctions in her collage works are often redoubled by the feeling that each piece is somehow part of a greater network. Ruth’s work has been exhibited widely in Europe and the United States and she recently had a solo exhibition, The Great Blue Mountain Range, at Okay Mountain in Austin, TX. I caught up with her on occasion of a two person exhibition (with Philip Miner) currently up at SEASON (a residential gallery opened by Robert Yoder) in Seattle.

Untitled, 2010

LB: I feel in your work a kind of insistence on the subject of the photographs that is often absent from collage / bricolage work. For me, the psychic drama of the work is in trying to reconstitute the object (as in the one above [will be the one attached]) where in most collage the attention is in constructing a picture plane. Is this an attitude that is important to you in making the pieces?

R: Yes, for me it is not so much the technique of collage that interests me, but its the ability to transform existing photographs into the images of my imagination. By cutting and folding,  the work not only represents an object, but also becomes an object itself.

Untitled, (orange), 2009

LB: There seems to be some consistency to the content of the photographs you use. Rocks, animals, and furniture come to mind. Do you see this content as particularly important?

R: When I collect these pictures I think a lot about the way the subjects are photographed. This is more important than the subject itself, since I can easily change or cover up the original subject of the photograph. So in this way the content doesn’t really matter.

But then again, I intentionally go for these kinda nondescript, “useful” photographs.  It is not as if it is just any image that I can get my hands on.  Most of them come from books published to teach people about how to make things: how to decorate your house, how to take care of your plants, how to recognize gemstones, all about hobbies, cats or rabbits and so on. How to do things the right way. So the content of the single image does’t matter to me, but the origins of the photo are important.

Untitled, 2010

LB: For me there is a kind of intimacy in your obscuring. As if by removing or folding together the “faces” of these objects we are left to explore the pictures for other clues. This leads to a kind of weighing and measuring in an attempt to come into terms with the image. Or in other words, it is as if by obscuring the face you have come to reveal the body. Tthis sense of physicality is really pervasive. Does this relate to your idea of an object? And do you see this objectness (the one w/in the photograph) as dependent on the second objectness of the physical thing itself?

R: I like your comparison to the face and the body. I actually try to animate the objects.  The work is much about actions related to the object: obscuring, collecting, transforming, but also the guessing or longing brought out by these interventions.  They come alive once separated from their original function. When I cover up the object, it is to make the viewer curious about what is behind, but I also give the viewer a clear shape in return.  The original object is never to be seen, only to guessed at.  This makes the viewer long for what he can’t see, which in these works becomes an impossibility.

Untitled, 2006

LB: It is a strategy that is really successful in the work! When I have seen your work in the past I feel like the obscured content in the photographs has often been similar — leading to feelings of a group or collection, also a museum display. The works in the SEASON exhibition feel more disparate, which makes you focus on them more as a group of pictorial interventions. Is this something you were thinking about?

R: I guess like the collections I have brought together in the past, the images I selected for the SEASON exhibition also try to tell a story. Either case begs a reconstruction of something by its traces. In this case, I do not only hide and transform furniture and objects, but the people in a number of the pictures also become hidden in their homes. The exhibition is actually in a house. I wanted to play with this.

Untitled, 2009

*All images copyright Ruth van Beek

Have you heard about the Graflex cameras with the Polaroid backs? A fellow by the name of John Minnicks constructs them, and a lot of cool kids have them. The latest is Mark Tucker. Here’s his note to me from a few days back:

I’m doing this side personal project, where I’m documenting offbeat characters in my town of Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve acquired an old 1942 custom made Graflex camera that shoots 4×5 Polaroid, and I’m shooting that, plus some Nikon, plus some video. I scan the Polaroids and then work with them. The lens is from 1941, and it’s amazing, how you never know how it’s going to render a scene.

I’ve only been working on it for a couple of weeks, but here is where I am at this point:

http://mydaywith.com

We’re really digging the results, have a look:

We like the goats best.

See more.

ps: the goat picture was actually shot with the NIKON D3X. still, we love it.

As a Friday before Valentine’s day treat, I thought I’d share the work of some of our favorite naughty photographers. If you were looking to surprise your sweetie with something sexy, fun and a little off the beaten path, consider hitting up these talented teasers for a session and document your looooove – they are for hire!

Constance and Eric are a team (yes, they are also in love) and they specialize in whatever you like. They have a show up right now at the NY Studio Gallery that is closing tomorrow night! Check it out with your sweetheart! Here are a few images from their appropriately titled Fever series…

Natasha Gornik prefers to be called a “kink” photographer. Specializing in raw, immediate portraiture and documentation, Gornik knows her way around your deepest desires. Here are a few images from her supercharged Fantasy is Reality series…

This is the fifth installment in a conversation series initiated by Lucas Blalock with contemporary artists concerning materiality in regards to current photographic practice.

Zoe Crosher is an artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. Her current undertaking is The Michelle duBois Project; a series of investigations into the personal photographic archive of Michelle duBois, a call girl and aspiring flight attendant who worked the Pacific Rim during the 1970’s and ’80’s. The range and depth of the archive is tremendous, owing greatly to the fact that the subject was enthralled by her own portraiture. Crosher has approached this archive in ever evolving iterations that highlight the strategies and structures of fantasy as much as they expose anything concrete about Ms. duBois herself. Two independent iterations of the archive can currently be seen in Los Angeles; one as part of the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, and the other, For Ur Eyes Only: The Unveiling of Michelle duBois, at the Charlie James Gallery with related events at Dan Graham, Royal Pagoda, and EGHQ. This final iteration (the tenth), curated by Emma Gray, will be the last before Crosher commits it to a monograph to be published by a new arm of Aperture Books next year. Work from other of the artist’s projects are also currently on view in The City Proper (curated by James Welling) at Margo Leavin, also in LA.

LB: Can you talk a little about how photographs “act” as material in The Reconsidered Archive of Michelle du Bois? They seem to be considered as both images of someones life, but also as objects or keepsakes from that  life. For me this doubles the notion of archive in that it is both an ‘archive of her’ as well as ‘her archive’. Is this something you were thinking about?

ZC: Yes it is absolutely something I am thinking about! Not only is this an  ‘archive of her’ as well as ‘her archive’, but with all these different iterations/shows accumulating over the course of the project and everything gradually collapsing together, it also becomes an archive of my ever-shifting relationship to the work. This cumulative collapse will ultimately play out in the upcoming book to be published by Aperture in the Spring of 2011, where images from previous versions of the book, install shots, various reviews, the recent mock-mock up in the CA Biennial, possibly even this interview will end up as part of the larger archive. This cumulative layering of material and history, playing out through the “Kodak Promise” of every single film type, size and print, add to the impossibility of seeing the archive as a totality of ‘her’, or whatever various fantasies there are of ‘who she is.’ The fiction of the totality of ‘her’ mirrors the fiction of totality that the actuality of the archive can never achieve.

It is here that the materiality of the archive gets sussed out through the photographs themselves. Their (the photographs’) object-ness and material-ness become paramount in the connection between the archive’s own materiality and the concept of the archive specific to this historical moment of the end of the analog. There is a parallel between the unraveling of her narrative and the unraveling of the material of the narrative, of the end of the analog…Somewhat secondary to this you also have my exploring the physicality of the archive through its materials (through the backs of photographs and the fronts of albums), and furthermore, there is an interest in anything inside the image frame that references things ‘kodak’. I am interested in the vernacular tropes of the amateur photographer that become the invisible layer through which you view the images themselves. Neither the ‘images’ nor the ‘photographs’ are neutral. Both get read (reconsidered, unraveled, unveiled)  simultaneously against the backdrop of this perfect example of an amateur photographer known as Michelle duBois.

LB: I want to continue down this idea of the archive-at-the-end-of-the-analog and it’s relationship to narrative.  Do you see the digital as the end of a certain kind of narrativity? Said that way it reminds me a bit of Christopher Williams’s “period piece” For Example: Dix-Huits Leçons sur La Société Industrielle which also comes into itself through a collection of iterations, except that where he is focused on a broad material (Marxist) history your work seems to focus on the problematics of a personal history. Maybe you could even say a personal history as it could be told/collected in the brief ‘age’ of analog photography?

ZC: I do want to make clear that this idea I’m working with of archive-at-the-end-of-the-analog and it’s relationship to narrative was initially rooted in the impossibility of totality concerning a persons’ persona (or history) in photographs. This fiction (of possible totality) as regards the archive is in fact nearly inverse in that in fact accumulation does not equal clarity but in fact compromises it. Starting off with my LAX work that played with the fiction of the ‘documentary’ in relation to the mapping of Los Angeles via LAX, I next wanted to extend this notion of documentary failure to a question of numbers; amounts of images and what that means. The problems I am interested in; the archive and mapping, became intertwined in this project with the problematics of the “amateur photographic history” that the duBois’ archive encapsulates. All of which now seems clearly specific to a historical, pre-digital, Kodak moment.

I don’t think the digital is the end of a certain kind of narrativity, but I do see it as the end of a certain physicality of the narrative. Information is always embodied, it is just that there is now distance from this type of analog embodiment that is particularly physical and messy; in this case, as messy as the content of her life and fanatical self-documentation, or what I called Autoportraiture. Not only are you dealing with the collapse of her pose over time, of the ‘quality’ of her image, but you are dealing with a physicalized collapse of the photograph (or film, or polaroid or print.) In the analog the way that time takes a physical toll (in all senses) is so vastly different from the digital and its comparatively immaterial relationship to history; where information be so easily deleted on the spot or forgotten on some hard drive somewhere. The problematics of the narrative and the archive are of course still present with the digital, but in such a vastly different realm.

It’s also interesting that you bring up Christopher Williams as he was quite influential when I began to think about photographing the language of photography and the schism between image and objectness (Anne Collier was also very inspiring in this way). He is actually so inspirational that there are a couple of pieces from the duBois project dedicated specifically to him, Like Mika Smiling for Christopher Williams and Like Mika Almost Laughing for Christopher Williams. There was such an amazingly innocent readymade reference to Williams’ faux commercial images of the ladies with the towels on their heads that I ended up extending the reference by mimicking his exact print size, mat size, frame size & type and edition size, which is always the same. This was part of an early investigation into mining the (unintentional) art historical references that duBois had (see also the Cindy-Shermanesque cluster.)

I’ll have to think more about the comparison to Williams in regards to the problematics of history, but yes, I am clearly working within that realm, specifically from a feminist vantage point…

LB:  That the material (c-print) mirrors the dissolution of a lifetime in the analog is a really resonant notion, and inherently gets to the sense of their being no achievable totality either in identity or in history. I feel to treat the information physically (bringing it’s decaying substrate into focus) really does make for a strikingly corporeal photography which for me opens easily to certain traditions in feminism. I am interested in the way that the contemporary explorations of the analogue and it’s properties really deconstruct a great deal of the popular mythology about the medium. Popularly, the photograph has often been considered in spite of it’s materiality in notions of permanence and objectivity, yet from here (on the digital horizon) it seems we are all-of-the-sudden often relating to pictures through their ‘bodies’ as it were. I am interested in the way duBois’ “amateur-ness” defines this relationship in your work. You said earlier that she was a sort of “perfect amateur photographer” and to me her relationship to the photographs production is the initial point of capture. (Who is this woman? What was she seeking by making these? etc.) I feel like amateur here comes with a fully articulated set of conventions as if it were a genre all its own (even the notes on the back feel like a convention)? Do you see this acting out as implicit in the “Kodak promise”? that she was performing not only a set of fantasy roles in her life but ones that come to necessitate photography? is this a stretch?

ZC: The wonderful thing about the word amateur is that it is based in the root word amour, meaning love. There has historically been a distinction made between the “amateur” and the “professional” in regards to art-making, with Professionalism as a concept going through an interesting bout of self-definition in the last forty years. Howard Singerman speaks a lot about this, a huge shift towards MFAs, formalizing art production, the system of a monied art world dictating terms of production on all levels. This simple and very misleading dichotomy, to make something out of ”love” or to make a “living” is also encapsulated in the Postmodern discussion of High/Low art and the questioning (and resulting collapsing of) that so-90s question of selling out. It begs the larger question, how is art judged?  In the amateur world, there is no assumption of judgment, or at least no perception of one, and this supposed liberation is key to reading the duBois work.

Her amateur ‘liberation’ is indeed conventional, all amateur things are, because one lets go any assumption of criticality and can therefore be “free” to do whatever it is they want, from stamp collecting to pole dancing to photographing oneself in many Mae-West like poses all over Asia in the 70s and 80s. This fantasy duBois has of herself, the “freedom”, is seen in the quality and, most importantly, the numbers of her photographs. And I agree with your “stretch” – there is no question her fantasy relationship to herself is inextricably caught up with assumptions of the photographic (and the cinematic), especially in relationship to feminism and to how women have been photographed/objectified/posed/etc.

The project swings back around when duBois’ agency gets complicated by her relationship to her means of production – she was completely in charge of every aspect of the image, from the materials to the pose to the keeping of the photographic stuffness that begs this embodied question of the digital horizon.The crazy part about the whole thing is that the viewer isn’t sure whether the/her/my intent is cynical or not, and that confusion is especially profound. She has all the hallmarks of “art” yet her “work” was made without any self-reflexive relationship to that. Perhaps self-reflexivity is a key to that amateur/professional distinction.
LB: I thought we might leave off this installment w/ an extended quote from Claude Levi-Strauss that I came across in Ann Reynolds book on Robert Smithson. I feel like it has a lot of relevance here. She quotes:

“The virtue of archives is to put us in contact with pure historicity. As I have already said about myths concerning the origin of totemic appellations, their value does not lie in the intrinsic significance of the events evoked: these can be insignificant or even entirely absent, if what is in question is a few lines of autograph or a signature out of context. But think of the value of Johann Sebastian Bach’s signature to one who cannot hear a bar of his music without a quickening of his pulse. As for events themselves, I have pointed out that they are attested otherwise than by the authentic documents, and generally better. Archives thus provide something else: on the one hand they constitute events in their radical contingence (since only interpretation, which forms no part of them, can ground them in reason), and, on the other, they give a physical existence to history, for in them alone is the contradiction of a completed past and a present in which it survives, surmounted…”

* all images copyright Zoe Crosher

2010 was a year of flower torture. Some cruel things were done to them. Martin Klimas led the charge.

So I think William Rugen’s specimens are resetting the flower photo clock for 2011. Flowers will be treated more humanely this year. Even with reverence for their perfection.

I think the third Sunflower from the left deserves best in show. You?

This is the fourth installment in a conversation series initiated by Lucas Blalock with contemporary artists concerning materiality in regards to current photographic practice.

Jason Fulford is a photographer and publisher based in rural Pennsylvania and hailing from Atlanta, GA. He is the co-founder of J&L Books with Leanne Shapton. His work has not only been exhibited internationally at venues including PS1, the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, and The Soon Institute in Amsterdam, but also published in several monographs including Sunbird, Crushed, Raising Frogs for $$$, and The Mushroom Collector. Fulford is currently involved in a 5 week residency in Amsterdam with The Soon Institute. The project, called The Mushroom Collection, will be on view in Amsterdam and virtually through December 18.

1-110 The Shipment Arrived

LB: I wanted to ask first about the structure of the book which seems to have three distinct parts: the text, the mushroom pictures, and your own photographs; and I would again subdivide your photographs in the book between the studio studies and the more ‘worldly’ or ‘of the world’ pictures. For me the project is like a dance between these elements. Is this the kind of thing you were intending?

JF: Yes, exactly. And I like the reference to dance. Each element has its own moves, yet they react to each other, and somehow move together.

LB: and the arc is that of a road trip? Did you conceive of the book as relating to the genre?

JF: No, I mean it happened without preconception. The intention was only to make sense of my own pictures through the filter of the mushroom pictures. The first draft of the book was completely visual, without text or reference to place. The visual narrative works on its own, in a linear way like an evolution. It starts with the spark of an idea, and then each new decision takes into account everything behind it. [Half way through the book, it starts again from scratch (on an island) and something completely different emerges.] But I found that it was overly cryptic to other readers. And for this book, I didn’t want a wall up front like that. I wanted an open door and a greeting, so that’s how the text started. Somehow the text took on the form of a road trip.

12.

13.

LB: Oddly, for me I think it was that rupture in the book that initially pulled me in. As I was flipping through it was as if the pictures had somehow gone from external to internal which I know is a strange thing to say but it is sort of how it feels to me.

I am curious about the “mushroom pictures” themselves which run throughout the book. Is the ‘mushroom collector’ a kind of stand in for the photographer? Recently, I have been generally uninterested in appropriated pictures in photo projects because I feel it often conveys a kind of cheap ownership of the world, as if the labor of experience was unnecessary. However, here I feel like the appropriated images develop in a different and fundamentally additive way. Can you talk a bit more about the mushroom pictures as “filter” and how this idea came together?

JF: I agree. Sometimes artists confuse the distinction between inspiration and output. In this case, I’ve tried to make it clear that the mushroom pictures are a reference point. They were a gift from a friend. It wasn’t until I’d owned them for a year that I realized a relationship was developing between my own new work and the mushrooms. In this way it made sense to include the found images in the book. They serve as a sort of key, or a decoding device, and also as a sort of glue. The play (between the reference and the new work) becomes a complete possible reading of the book.

61. I Took Them South

LB: I feel like the text (as you said earlier) also functions as a kind of key. It is really unusual that the book begins on the dust jacket w/ 01 and it (the numbering) continues onto the rear jacket as well. This detail keeps it from feeling so much like a container for the project and transforms it into more of an object. Without the text it would have never occurred to me that the image on the jacket was the beginning of the story. For me I think this becomes a sort of significant element of a “complete reading” of the book. Was this an intuitive decision?

JF: It goes back to the idea of an open door and a greeting. This book requires a lot from the reader, and works best from front to back. So I wanted to speak directly to that person right from the beginning. Do you know the film Blast of Silence? The opening sequence made a big impact on me.

And yes, the text is also a clue. Some of the ideas in the visual sequence enter the text in the form of storytelling. For example, there is a reference to King Ludwig II of Bavaria. He built a copy of the Palace of Versailles on an island in a lake in southern Germany. His copy is not exact though. It’s the idea of Versailles, filtered through Ludwig’s own eccentricities.

105.

LB: I haven’t seen Blast of Silence but it sounds intriguing. The references throughout this project give the feeling of having a lot packed in but maybe without a clear method of unpacking, which to me is a real strength and keeps me looking and searching through the book making new connections. I would like to turn the focus now to the latter part of the book (post-starting from scratch) where the work seems to deconstruct (is this an appropriate word?) it’s initial condition. The light is at times literally coming apart (in a spectral sense) [pictures 79 and 105]. There are also a number of self-evidently contrived studio studies here. The turn (and I feel it is a turn in your practice as a whole) makes me think of Svetlana Alpers’ essay at the beginning of her book The Vexations of Art: Velasquez and Others where she develops the relationship between the scientist’s laboratory and the painter’s studio as both being (in their own way) apparatuses with which to look at the world. In her words, “Withdrawing from the world is a regressive act. It rehearses how we come into an experience of the world.”(Alpers, p. 18) or again, where she later quotes Gombrich; “The artist works like a scientist. His works exist not only for their own sake but also to demonstrate certain problem solutions.” (Alpers, 45). These are particularly resonant notions in my own practice and I was hoping you could talk about whether this relationship to/through the studio is important to you here? As a photographer I think the camera itself can also be seen in these terms (as a venue to rehearse seeing) and I am further curious if in the evident darkroom work here you see these elements as an extension of this rehearsal or as a separate kind of participation all together?

JF: I love the title The Vexations of Art. I read a Benjamin Buchloh essay on Gerhard Richter once that described his paintings as picture puzzles that remain vexations to the viewer. I loved that.

The second half of the mushroom book was all shot within one month on an island in Florida. The pictures evolved as things from the outside world were brought into the studio, and the studio experiments then affected the way I perceived the outside world. So in a way, each image became a rehearsal for the next (both in and out of the studio). The process was not a deconstruction, but a repetition that changed form each time, flipping back and forth between reality and abstraction. The color spectrum pictures were also made with an additive process. R+G+B.

When I returned to Pennsylvania and printed the work in the darkroom, I placed some of the actual objects onto the paper as I enlarged the negatives. These fotograms became illustrations of the experience on the island. The silhouettes of objects also give a sense of scale to the prints, like the matchbooks and nails in the mushroom pictures.

Table, The Soon Institute, Amsterdam

LB: That idea of a sense of scale is really elegant! I wanted to talk more about digital vs. analogue but I feel like your answer has such an internal logic that I wouldn’t really know how to proceed. Can we instead return to my earlier line of questioning about the numbers starting on the jacket? I just realized that they continued on (111-135) to elaborate quite a collection of things on The Soon Institute’s site. Can you talk about your current activities in Amsterdam, and more specifically how you see this collection of extended ephemera in relation to the project as a book?

JF: Over the next few weeks, I’m creating a sort of expanded appendix for the book, in four dimensions. The Soon Institute and I are occupying a storefront space in the center of Amsterdam. It’s a store, an exhibition, and also an event space. The “inventory” includes objects, images and video. The list starts with things that are directly related to the making of the book. It continues to include new things that connect my experience here to various ideas in the book. For example, in the book you’ll find two photographs of moiré patterns that I made while playing with a plastic grid material. It’s an optical illusion. This week in Amsterdam, I spent a day at the FabLab (an experimental workshop conceived by MIT, and housed in one of the oldest buildings in the city) cutting plexiglass with a laser cutter into an object that’s also a kind of optical illusion (see number 145). As I’m writing now, the list is up to number 147, and growing.

* all images copyright Jason Fulford

Lucas Blalock is a photographer and writer living in Brooklyn, NY.

I’m incredibly taken with Richard Mosse‘s project Infra, which I’ve just seen for the first time. He has used a special film to create an otherworldy pink effect to offset the very intense political temperature of the Congo. It feels to me like an incredible way to envision and encapsulate this experience, and is beyond groundbreaking. Not to mention simply beautiful.

Does anyone else love this as much as I do?

Whitney Johnson wrote recently about the project in The New Yorker:

“His work from Eastern Congo, a part of the world largely overlooked by mainstream media, is no exception. Mosse used Aerochrome, an obsolete technology, to create an alternative image of the complex social and political dynamics of the country. The film, designed in connection with the United States military during the Cold War, reveals a spectrum of light beyond what the human eye can perceive. He aims “to shock the viewer with this surprising bubblegum palette, and provoke questions about how we tend to see, and don’t see, this conflict.”

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This is the fourth installment in a conversation series initiated by Lucas Blalock with conte more...

Peter Puklus got in touch to share a new project called Budapest, Eden. A slight departure fr more...

David Schoerner launched Hassla Books in January of 2007. The independent publishing company  more...

TPP checks in with our favorite artists on their inspiration, work in progress and studio pra more...

If you missed Day Glow at Nudashank Gallery in Baltimore, you missed seeing Letha Wilson’s wo more...

A biocentric reading of SFMOMA’S permanent collection; or foraging for sub-narratives withi more...

The Photography Post checks in with our favorite vendors.

TPP had the pleasure of speaking wi more...

Toronto based artist Maryanne Casasanta got in touch a while back to introduce us to her work more...

I like it when old things come back into style and new things get created. In honor of old an more...

Published Tuesdays and Fridays, The Photography Post Market column highlights items for sale  more...

TPP checks in with our favorite artists on their inspiration, work in progress and studio pra more...

I recently became reacquainted with the work of Anne de Vries and wanted to take a minute to  more...

Like large large format camera’s and to cool off by the water ? Well then more...

I aspire to live the life Elizabeth Weinberg’s pictures portray. The latest adventure involve more...

TPP checks in with our favorite artists on their inspiration, work in progress and studio pra more...

I mentioned Asger Carlen’s recent release Wrong a few weeks ago and have been dying to do a f more...

This weekend, after some serious weekend warrioring, I dropped in on Dia: Beacon to see what more...

Published Tuesdays and Fridays, The Photography Post Market column highlights items for sale  more...

On Friday, I had the opportunity to view Jon Rafman’s much discussed Google Street Views proj more...

I was psyched last week when Alexander Binder got in touch to tell me about a new body of wor more...

I had a few conversations this week with photographers about likability, and how important it more...

1. On July 10th, tiny worlds abound! Check this one out if you are in the Portland, OR area.

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I’ve never been to Hawaii, which makes me feel very sorry for myself. Luckily David Strohl ha more...

TPP has been receiving some cryptic emails the past several days, referring to a mysterious b more...

One of my compadres posted Nicolai Howalt’s series of Car Crash Studies on TPP’s Facebook yes more...

I was recently introduced to the work of Jessica Labatte and I was utterly seduced.

Jessica  more...

Today, I decided to round-up some of my favorite Facebook “Likes” and suggest that you “Like more...

This is the third installment in a conversation series initiated by Lucas Blalock with contem more...

I haven’t looked at Angela Strassheim’s work in some time, and was blown away when I took a p more...

Today the task at hand is to review portfolios at the ASMP Fine Art Portfolio Review. Unlike  more...

This week, in my weekly investigations situating contemporary image makers within traditions  more...

Heidi Norton is a Chicago based artist and educator. She interviews Barbara Kasten, also a Ch more...

Last week I started a series of posts situating contemporary image makers within movements in more...

As previously posted in our Friday Top Ten, this Saturday is your last chance to see Karl Hae more...

Man-about-town Ruben Natal- San Miguel reminded me via Facebook last night about the show he’ more...

For this rainy Fall Spring morning, here is something delicious from the feeds. Found on fff more...

Lately, I’ve been thinking of the contemporary photography I see in terms of movements. So, a more...

Or, perhaps it’s better to say, “image-based art”. Last week, PS1 announced the artists inclu more...

… for large amounts of contemporary image based awesomeness! In honor of the CONTACT Photogra more...

I like these four friends. They brightened my weekend.

Thanks, Robin Schwartz and Triangle T more...

In light of NEXT 2010: The Invitational Exhibition of Emerging Art in Chicago, I would pay ho more...

Yeah, I’m going to Paris in a few weeks, and I’m delighted how this map Sarah Glidden has sh more...

I discovered Philippe Halsman’s jumping genius quite innocently, when I saw The Cat Girl in  more...

SMOKEBATH is an online exhibition (in which I am honored to have my work included) launched i more...

Willy Somma and Andrea Galvani met on a ship on the North Pole, and embarked on a photographi more...

Jogging is an original content blog that displays immaterial art projects and writing. TPP Ch more...

Ah, hello there. By the time you read this, I will be high in the sky on my way to a shoot. I more...

Do you follow us on Facebook? We’re kind of fast and loose over there, I recommend it. Yester more...

This is the second installment in a conversation series initiated by Lucas Blalock with conte more...

Ohh helloo Monday! I’ve been looking at Playboy centerfolds and fellatio (AKA “blowjob”, take more...

There seems to be a bit of a theme developing on TPP this week. We’ve been looking at Dutch p more...

Photographer Lucas Thorpe posted a public service announcement on his Facebook page about the more...

I just saw Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin’s “Mirror Mirror” in V Magazine and, while more...

This is the first installment in a conversation series initiated by Lucas Blalock with contem more...

I’m back from ten days tooling around the Yucatan and feeling muy refrescado. The Yucatan is  more...

Oh boy, there’s a full Spring schedule of openings tonight, and Ernie Anastos told me it may  more...

Rob Kroenert got a pretty amazing shot at Yosemite. Here’s the story of his picture:

Horseta more...

Klaus Thymann is a photographer interested in global tribal culture who has had a longterm co more...

Heidi Norton is a photographer and educator based in Chicago, IL.

“He has lived an interest more...

To say that the opening of Humble Arts’ 31 Women in Art Photography was a mob scene would be  more...

The work of acclaimed Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen will be on view at Danziger Projects  more...

I learn so many things from so many people in my line of work, but I think Kara Canal takes t more...

The prestigious and mysterious Festival Hyerès has announced the photographers shortlisted f more...

So Fridays are supposed to be a discussion on gear and technology. It’s now 5pm and still sno more...

Unless you’re Anna Wintour or Clayton Cubitt.

I wonder if Hedi feels as cool as he seems?

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Ben Alper is a founding member of The Exposure Project, “a photo collective designed to facil more...

Kate knows all about fashion photography. Me, not so much*. But I do know that this is what I more...

Shane Lavalette is a photographer and publisher based in Boston, MA.

Through various methods  more...

Well hello, everyone, so nice to see you here! This is our launch day, and we’re excited. I t more...

It ‘s been 10 years since a barely legal Ryan McGinley, published The Kids Are Alright and, more...

Google Reader, RSS feeds, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr… It’s no wonder that these networking too more...