I am heading to beautiful Seattle and will be offering a seminar and and all-day workshop in conjunction with Photographic Center Northwest and Crista Dix at WallSpace. These two programs are designed for working photographers with an eye toward art. If it is time to jump-start your understanding of where you are and where you want to be in the art world, here is your chance.

The Seminar: Introduction to Critical Looking: A Seminar for Thinking Photographers will be held at PCNW on Saturday, May 22nd from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm.

The Workshop: Critical Looking: The Art of Conscious Creativity will be held at PCNW on Sunday, May 23rd from 11:00 am to 4:30 pm. Enrollment is limited to 15.

Advanced Registration is available through PCNW or Crista. See you there!

I have held my reactions to Assembly: Eight Emerging Photographers from Southern California (curated by “the curatorial team of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art”) until last in my Fotofest posts because it is a show that troubles me on quite a few levels and I wanted time to think about it. I came to realize that it was not the work included in the show that bothered me, but the show as an extension of what is now termed “curatorial practice.”

I may as well get the title out of the way first by simply asking, “’Emerging’ from what?” This is a picky beginning, I know, but from a curatorial perspective it is important since the use of the term implies the curators are touting their ability to foretell the future. It is a sensibility born more from a marketing than an institutional perspective. The museum imprimatur and curatorial gravitas attached to this show advances the work of these eight artists as embodying the fully realized expressions of the direction(s) of photography in Southern California. Because of who they are, and where they work, the curatorial team cannot run away from the implication that their selections explicitly annoint these artists and the work they are creating as both important and worthy of watching as it matures. My most troubling question, therefore, is that as museum curators, at what point is the “team” blatantly contributing to the directions of artistic production instead of thoughtfully commenting upon them?

Next, I am troubled by the exhibition’s curatorial strategy that seems to stem from the “team’s” contention that the most intellectually challenging debates surrounding the making of art in Southern California are being held in the graduate art programs that ring the region. While their supposition may be true to the extent that this is where one might easily access such conversations, the LACMA curators make the fatal assumption that those between whom these discussions are being held (i.e. the recent graduate students who populate this show) have sufficient maturity, visual confidence, and intellectual prowess to make work that embodies and extends these ideas. Unfortunately, the curatorial selections for the exhibition prove this not to be the case. The exhibition is riddled with a student sensibility…even to the point of including thesis show work. Glimmers of insight seem too quickly doused by inclusions that at some turns are pedantic and at others merely petulant.

By putting this work forward in the context of an internationally attended festival showcasing contemporary U.S. photowork, the curators have rendered no service to their audience…or to their artists. As a baby museum curator I was rightly counseled that graduate work was not to be mined for collection or exhibition since there are just too many variables that enter into the creative mix. A graduate student’s creative process is one that is bolstered by artificial supports and shaped by the constant interjections of a resident creative community. I have learned that an artist’s true voice and work will only begin to coalesce after the scaffolding of a graduate program have been kicked away and a few projects have come and gone. It is then that the real work of being an artist begins. As “Team LACMA’s” efforts at Fotofest attest, a curator forgets this at his/her peril.

This is the first Fotofest at which I have been able to take in all of the exhibitions with the attention and seriousness that they deserve. Previously, I have been a portfolio reviewer at the Meeting Place and by the time the day was over and we were trooped over for an opening of an exhibition, I couldn’t approach the show with a critical eye if my life depended on it. Working the Meeting Place on a more ad hoc basis this year has let me really look at the festival’s exhibition program, and suffice to say that the experience has been a revelation.

Natasha Egan from the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago has mounted a wonderfully cohesive show at the Winter Street Studios: The Road to Nowhere? With a palpable sense of curatorial restraint, Natasha offers a show that challenges and rewards. She has chosen work that is pointed without being didactic, metaphoric without being obtuse, and accessible without being easy. If there were only one reason to see the show it would surely be the haunting and melancholy 3-channel video piece by Greg Stimac that features three white Ford Mustangs aggressively confronting the viewer with horns blaring until one by one, as batteries drain, the horns weaken and lapse into silence.

Medianation: Performing for the Screen has a lot to overcome: it is split between 3 venues, it is W-A-A-AY out there conceptually (by traditional Fotofest standards), and it is filled with artists whose last inclination is to be known as a photographer. In spite of these factors—or in some cases because of them—the show is smart, visually savvy, and a refreshing departure for this festival. Gilbert Vacario, curator at the Des Moines Art Center has pulled together a group of works that are elegant, gritty, thoughtful, whimsical, political and personal, and, somehow they coalesce into a show that is mostly rewarding, and always provocative. This is a show that needs to be experienced as if a single-day pilgrimage going from venue to venue. Somehow, driving, time, and distance become part of the fabric of the exhibition and contribute to the overall experience in a substantive way. Trust me…take the trek.

Whatever was Splendid: New American Photographs is housed at Fotofest’s Headquarters and curated by Aaron Schuman, founder of SeeSaw Magazine. While more uneven than the other two shows, it showcases well known work by Hank Willis Thomas and Todd Hido; Greg Stimac is again represented in this show with video and still work; but, the stand-out of this group effort is certainly the video piece Killcam (2008) by Richard Mosse which supports his still work. Mosse’s video features scenes of wounded vets from the current Iraqi/Afghan war playing Iraqi war-themed video games interspersed with actual targeted kill documentations from the same war. The effect is arresting, troubling, and incredibly effective.

Bravo, Wendy and Fred, for taking the risk of reinvigorating the festival with new voices, diverse sensibilities, and expanding parameters! Even when the results are not completely resolved, the conversations and ideas you have nurtured are mightily appreciated.

I am in Houston. It is the third week (out of four!) of portfolio reviews in the International Meeting Place. There are shows all over the city. YIKES.

Over the next few days I will be driving throughout the city, seeing as many shows I can while still attempting to look at work at the Meeting Place. I am not an “official” reviewer this time around at the Meeting Place, but do a tremendous amount of “over the shoulder” work…that is to say I stand behind folks who are showing their portfolios to others, looking and listening, and if interested arrange to talk to the artist more after they are done with their presentation. This allows me the freedom of dipping in and out of only those sessions that interest me as well as giving me the opportunity to see so much more work than if I were on the official “20-minute treadmill.” (Thank you, Fred, Wendy, and Martha) Occasionally, I will catch up with an artist whose work I have reviewed in the past which lends a “homecoming” atmosphere to the process.

On a different track, and one that hold particular appeal to me as an EX-museum curator, are the opportunities to take in the exhibitions that have been mounted as the adhesive to bond the festival together. Like any set of festival exhibitions, the tend to address broad issues or open-ended themes…and like any set of festival exhibitions they purport to be very current. I saw three shows yesterday and will take in that many again today. I will be posting my thoughts about them here as the week goes on and after I have had a chance to think about what I have seen.

Stay tuned….

Every now and again we get reminded why we do what we do.
I have always been energized by meeting with smart artists…I spent two hours with the collaborative team of Louviere and Vanessa and am BUZZING! They are smart, understand the importance of process, and are constantly prodding themselves to pursue IDEAS! Incredibly refreshing, no? Our conversation was wide-ranging and candid. Jeff and Vanessa may not always hit the mark with their work, but they consistently challenge themselves and the media they employ. I can’t wait to see what direction they take next and talk with them again.

I was cleaning out the rafters in my parents’ garage last evening in preparation for a long-overdue estate sale. So there I was on a ladder, sweaty, sneezing from the dust, when I spied their artificial christmas tree. It was lurking in three sections: disassembled, but having lost none of its power to elicit memory and guilt. The memories were of the long successions of mid-December forays to rescue it for its season in the spotlight; the guilt tied to a certain essay that I wrote but could never submit.

So, you may ask, what’s the connection between the hoarded essay and the three clumps of faux-foliage in by parents’ garage? The essay centered around a set of photographs by Meg Madison that traced the trajectories of the evergreen symbols of Yuletide AFTER the presents have been opened, AFTER they have been stripped of their finery, and AFTER they have morphed from the center of attention to an object of contention vis-à-vis their disposal–a project of Meg’s I always admired. It was the timing of the written piece that contributed to the huge emotional overlays that paralyzed its release: Meg was dealing with critical health issues and coincidentally, I was dealing with the recent loss of my mother from similar issues and the slow, though immanently fatal, decline of my father.

As a result of my chance encounter in the rafters, therefore, I have resurrected the essay from its archived-file tomb (it being almost Easter, after all) and am in the process of re-reading it. I may change a couple of things, though I doubt it. It is time to let it go. So with profound apologies to Meg for a tardiness that has taken on archeological dimensions, I will be posting it here in the near future: one more unforeseen dimension of the upcoming Estate Sale.

Earlier this week, the LA Times ran a story under the headline: “Did David Burdeny copy Sze Tsung Leong’s photographs?” After reading the article, not only did I not care…but I was convinced that the REAL headline should have read: “New York Dealer Protects Artist’s Brand.”

I diligently read the article which trotted out all the Journalism 101 tropes of setting up adversarial diatribes and sprinkling a few well-placed contextual and historical markers. I had hopes of ultimately encountering an objective point of view….and I am still hoping for that. Given the prominent space devoted to the article one might wonder why there was never any revelation, at the very least, of who had what to gain in all of the exchanges that were cited. Additionally, at what point does the writer and publisher of the article owe it to the reader to reveal whatever relationships they may have with the principals; in other words, how did they know there was a “story,” at all?

We may never know the answer to the latter. But, please, allow me to shed some light on the former:

What does the gallerist in Vancouver have to gain by Mr. Burdeny’s “show?” Sales come to mind…and this article in which she bulldoggedly stands up for her artist’s aesthetic integrity will do nothing if not bring a show that should have passed without notice more notoriety than it deserves, and thereby, perhaps, drive sales. Though it could certainly backfire: her clientele may catch on that she is pushing them to buy “art” that may be little more than technically proficient imagemaking. Did anyone check out the gallery website to see what her exhibition schedule looked like and who was being shown besides Mr. Burdeny? Enough said.

How about Mr. Burdeny? What did he have to gain? Well, he got the show, didn’t he? Again the backfire: Did anyone go on his website to see what else he has been making? YIKES! Mr. Burdeny may be a very competent technician making very nice images…but his work seems clearly about the view and not about IDEAS (from whomever they may come).

And Mr. Leong? Interestingly enough, as the aggrieved party he may come out of this looking the best and may also have the most to gain…if one were to quantify the punitive damages he may reap through the legal efforts of his Canadian attorney and the investigative research provided by Mr. Milo, or, more likely, an assistant.

So of the major players, this leaves only Mr. Milo. What could he possibly have to gain from the publication of an article on the front page of the Sunday Arts section in a major U.S. market that presents his artist as the supposed wronged party whose ideas have been usurped, his livelihood threatened…and his institutional affiliations and pedigree highlighted . Can you say advertising? Does anyone really think that the sale of pretty pictures in British Columbia will adversely impact Mr. Leong’s market as the writer teasingly suggests?  Sure, Mr. Milo may lose a “decorator” sale, but let’s be serious: those sales would never have been realized on the basis of a serious collecting decision, anyway. Mr. Milo has been successful in hawking Mr. Leong’s work to a few big collections and alot of little ones…how big are Mr. Leong’s editions, anyway? From the “evidence” cited by the writer, sounds like what really is at stake is a pissing contest between dealers with Mr. Milo (who is winning, by the way) more interested in protecting his income than his artist’s intellectual integrity.

All that said (and I feel so much better for having gotten it all off my chest), I guess the true reason this rant has kept my fingers moving is that the article, which is passing as Arts Coverage is more like a petulant first half of what may be a new television series: “Law & Order: SBA (selling bad art).” Shame on you, Ms. Arts Editor!

Stay tuned for my take on the real issues of this soap-opera, and what their implications may be.

I was fortunate enough to have been asked (thank you, Debra Weiss) to be the subject of an interview by Jeff Sedlik and his class at Art Center in Pasadena last night. Jeff moderates a class that brings together disparate voices and personalities from all across PhotoLand in an effort to give a very broad perspective to his students about their career path potentials in a post-artschool reality. It was a nice evening (after all what’s NOT nice about being given the opportunity to pontificate in front of captive audience.) I must say that I am still a little freaked out that the session was video’d. I tend to tell the truth when asked a question, so here’s hoping that video does not find it’s way onto YouTube…there will be no shortage of seemingly defamed artists and exhibitors!

I am sitting on a plane after having seen a group of exhibitions over the past few days and got to thinking that if I did not step onto my soapbox and rail at the cultural winds I would never be able to sleep for the rest of the flight. So at the risk of coming off like the Andy Rooney of the photo world, I would like to vent about the current state of exhibitions….not so much about WHAT is being shown (though that may be the fodder for subsequent missives), but more about HOW things are being shown. Continue Reading »

My Grandfather died when I was three. I have always logically understood that my memories of him were at the very best, shadowy. I do, however have images of him in my head…bald-headed, in a scratchy brown suit, carrying a hat, standing very tall, and a very proud look on his face. My memories of him are not of the smell of his skin or the taste of his breath. I cannot recall the sound of his voice or the way his hands felt as he held me–though I am told he often did. If I ever had any recollection of my grandfather or of any of the incidents and personalities that populated my toddler years they were quickly superceded by the pictorial traces which existed as our family photographs. Images that were recorded by my mother’s cameras escalated from mnemonic devices into the actual substance of what I remembered. Continue Reading »