December 2008 Archives

Edger Thomson Works, Braddock, PA 2008

The above image was just accepted into the ONWARD 09' competition run by the lovely people at Project Basho in Philadelphia.  Here is a list of accepted photographers at the the Onward Blog. Interestingly enough, last years competition contained quite a few of us Fjordians. 

I am very fortunate to be included in this years list. There are some great photographers including a classmate of mine and a Drexel alum that I run into in various parts of Philadelphia on my bike.
   

I contributed an image from my United Kingdom series to Wassenaar (an extension of the  We Can't Paint network).  The photograph is part of a group show titled Domesticity Redux dealing with the relationship between photography and the extremely familiar. 

Since I tend to use the home as subject so often, I tend to think that photographs of domesticity are partially rendered as self-portraits tied into a formal understanding of photography.  What triggers me to make a photograph is usually the color and light.  Building bodies of work then introduces larger implications about façades, the layering the meaning and my personal reservations about living in America are enhanced.  These photographers attempt to realize interiors in exactly that light.  The series is introduced as such: 

  ...one cannot deny, let alone forget, that these photographers are working against our own ideas of domesticity. Comfort, pain, happiness and loss, emotions which are all "familial" to what makes one human, can be hard to convey when our image memory is so tied to a subjective model of the vernacular. If anything, the most successful domestic photographs allow us to reflect, discover and challenge our own history, declaring the subject of "home" as one of the most important tasks a photographer can undertake.

Please take a few moments to view the images made by some great, young photographers here.