Fertile Image Working Surface

LOOK AT ME!

JEM COHEN

It's late and I should at least be in bed if not already asleep but I have been on the net for awhile and came across some work by Jem Cohen, a filmmaker whose work I appreciate. Here is one of his shorts documenting the Occupy Movement.

 

Brent Greene

Brent Greene is an animator whose work I really like. Here is a short story about his aunt who came to live with his family when he was a boy. Check it out. 

One of Those Kind of Days

I've had one of those days that come along every now and again when I plan (should) be doing something else but end up in the studio and something comes out that I hadn't expected at all. The creation of this piece speaks to one of my ways of working that involves long deliberation. The central photograph in the composition was taken almost a year ago but never left my mind. It just sat on my desktop while I was doing other things, deciding whether it was enough as just the photo as shot or would I do something else with it. Here is what I did with it that nakes it both hers and mine. 

UNMOVED 2012

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Each time a year closes and another opens it provides us all with an opportunity to move forward and transform ourselves into people wiser and more thoughful than we knew possible the year before. May 2012, a year of great potential be better than any of us can imagine!

The Fool Embraces the Folly of Worry  2011

Thoughts About Photography & Reality

Am I The Only One Here? 2009

Photography presents a gift and a problem for our society. The gift is the ability to document events and places for people to refer to that can then aid in expanding their vision of the world, but the strikingly literal representation that photographs portray can often mislead us into arriving at conclusions that are less than factual. The photograph (unlike a painting) depicts its subject so clearly as to give the illusion of reality when nothing could be further from the truth because the truth of any circumstance can only be derived when context is part of the equation. The split second that is portrayed in a photograph without surrounding context, at best can only pose questions about the scene or people involved. It is never the answer. Therefore photographic recording is truly always an art form and not the stoic method of documentation that it is often thought to be.

In many of my photographs I purposely seek to interrupt the illusion of reality by adding things or using devices that deny the truth or illusion of reality of the scene depicted.  I am curious about finding other ways to explore the interrupting of percieved photographic reality even further as I continue to produce photographic art.   

Making Art and Thinking and Stuff

Some time ago an art critic in Atlanta said that I wasn't a painter but a person who thought a lot who just happened to paint. Well I don't think my photographs are turning out any different. I'm always doing things to them, trying to say some things I've been thinking about .... and at the same time violating the art form I'm using in the process. Writing on pictures, typing on pictures, just making marks on pictures .... a lot of the time without any real consistency ... just working with the moment ... what ever strikes me. 

The three pictures below are examples of what I mean. They are from a time when I was running around in cemeteries a couple of years ago taking pictures and thinking a lot about how we like to know the details about murder (real or fiction) and dead people (whether we know the victims or not) and at the same time don't like to talk about death and dying but feel like we must ritually memorialize dead flesh when people we've known leave us alone to face life without them. Human beings are amazing ... walking and talking and thinking and making up stories and everything else.   

Renewal 2010 - 2011

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.  ~Leonardo Da Vinci

Woman At Gravesite with Stripe 2009 -2011

All say, "How hard it is that we have to die" - a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.  ~Mark Twain

Cemetery Bullseye 2011

God pours life into death and death into life without a drop being spilled.  ~Author Unknown

 

Processing Time Based Art

This work was produced by using computer programming code and a method called Processing. I found it on Vimeo and then went to the Processing.org website to learn more about how this is done. What I found out is that the images are created by writing code which I find fascinating. Such beauty developed through typing sequences of numbers and symbols. I do realize that this is what is happening with everything that is digital but the Processing Code and the act of writing it to make images appears to be very accessible to artists and designers whose primary interest is not programming. I find this whole thing amazing in a way that feels very familiar. I want to know wmore about this Processing thing.

 

Singing Man

Still from a set of street videos I'm working on ..... a little of this and a little of that

The Work of Paola Ventura

 
This afternoon I was introduced to the work of Paola Ventura a miniaturist and photographer whose  photographs are both subtle, beautiful  and haunting in nature. Here is a link to his work. Please enjoy. paolaventura.com

 

 

Ken Jacobs

When I was in college Ken Jacobs  was one of my professors. At the same time Nicholas Ray was teaching in the film department as well which of course was an unlikely match in such a small department as the one at SUNY Binghamton. In the end I got attracted to glitz that surround Nick and strayed away from the courses taught by Ken which I regret to this day.

But nonetheless I still remember sitting in Ken's classes, which were held in a large lecture hall, watching movies of all different types from the avant-garde films of Jack Smith and Stan Brakhage to hollywood films like Nick Ray's Lusty Men. It was those classes with Ken that created my interest in film and though I strayed off into a rather bumpy career in television I have never forgotten what his insights led me to believe about filmmaking and the world we live in. Last night I watched an interview with Ken Jacobs on Youtube talking about his films and filmmaking and I was reinvigorated. I hope you enjoy it too.     

Center for Fine Art Photography

UPDATE

I recently found out that the CENTER FORWARD 2011 show that includes one of my conceptual composites, now up at the Center for Fine Art Photography will be traveling to the Denver Colorado Airport in early July and will be there through August.

I recently got an email telling me that I have been included in a show at the Center for Fine Art Photography entitled CENTER FORWARD; a survey of new and current trends in photography. The show opens on May 6th in the centers main gallery in Fort Collins Colorado, so I have to send them a framed print of the picture and consider myself fortunate to be selected from over 2600 images from around the world, ... but it's hard to get really excited with everything that's going on in the world. I also have to include a statement about the photograph and what I have to say about why I made it and what it means to me is even more troubling. So what do I get from showing the work? Is showing the work, no more and no less ... I do wish I was happy about it all right now but I'm not. Maybe I will feel better later.

This is the piece the juror chose:

Untitled 2010

The following is a notice about a show I am very excited to be a part of. The curator for the show is video artist and curator Jefferson Pinder. The show opens in in late June at the Greater Reston Arts Center. More about the show as the opening date approaches.    BITE is an All Media Juried Exhibition Reception: Saturday, June 25th   Selected Artists Kristina Bilonick and Carolina Mayorga, Ed Bisese, Wendy Cook , Justyne D. Fischer, Lee Gainer, Grin Goh, Charlie C. Hahn, Linda Hesh, Jackie Levine, Scott T. Mallory, Ashley McClenon, Rob Parrish, Kari K. Scott, Charles Sessoms, Alan J. Simensky, Gwynneth VanLaven and Wilmer Wilson IV