I love this image for its paradox: Why is the girl prancing in a cape in an area marked dangerous? Why are the 'scary things' so pretty in color in such an ugly, industrial-looking area?
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Several months back, before my year got crazy and I got way too far behind on the writing here, I saw this image by Emack on Instagram. I was immediately taken by how beautiful this work was. Emack, like many others, has been photographing her daughter for almost a decade. With the inclusion of her nieces as well, it resulted in the long-term project, Cousins, which has received a significant amount of attention, well-deserved, in my opinion.
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I saw this image by Alon Goldsmith online the same day as the horrific pronouncement came from the Supreme Court. As he is the father of two daughters, I imagine he wonders about their future as women in this country.
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A “One Eighty” is a term used in skateboarding where you spin on the skateboard one hundred and eighty degrees to face the opposite direction. As a young teenager, my after-school time was spent obsessively perfecting One Eighties, Three Sixties, Handstands, and Slalom Maneuvers, in the parking lots of nearby factories. Although I am no longer a skater, I’m still very drawn to skateboarding and the environment where skateboarding occurs. These places become a sacred space for physical expression, communal support, and in my eyes, a type of meditation.
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June has arrived and hopefully, in the next month, we’ll see some sunshine in Portland. And when this elusive sun stretches its rays into our atmosphere, my friend Heidi Kirkpatrick will have Potassium ferricyanide and Ferric ammonium citrate on hand, ready to make more beautiful cyanotypes.
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Thankfully, in the age of digital, there are still photographers experimenting in the darkroom and Jane Olin is one of those folks. Olin has a long history with the community of photography and has studied with some of the biggest influencers in the craft and now has become one herself. We first published some of Olin’s work, Thirteen Crows, in The Matter of Light (Diffusion, Volume VI) and I believe that was my first introduction to her. Thankfully, Ann Jastrab reintroduced us by way of her newest series, Intimate Conversations where Olin has expanded on her darkroom experimentation by creating spontaneous happy accidents with darkroom chemistry and light.
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With a tendency to learn by herself, either from online classes or books, Amy's curiosity will cause her to take a deep dive into whatever topic interests her. Her initial foray into photography began digitally, but later the lure of the darkroom took hold. In addition to traditional gelatin silver printing, lith printing, cyanotypes, lumen printing, and even chemigrams became much enamored processes full of opportunity and found places in various bodies of work. In addition, an instinctual way of actively photographing, mixed with a bit of serendipity, results in imagery she then reflects upon later in order to make her final photographs: "When I try to think and plan the image, I am rarely happy with the results. I need 'the magic' of the unknown to be part of the process."
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I saw this image, Period of Existence, in the FRAMES Magazine Facebook group many months back. It caught my eye because the artist, Stephen Schneiderman, noted that he made this image in the darkroom in the early '90s. No Photoshop.
I was familiar with Schneiderman's much more recent, digitally composited work from his FB posts. But until he posted this image, I had no idea that he had taken a workshop with Jerry Uelsmann. Or, more impressive, Schneiderman had a letter written to him by Uelsmann congratulating him on his technical prowess.
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Photographs and photography are a massive part of Carpenter's family story. Her family has been involved with photography since the 1930s; her mother, father, uncle, and grandfather were photographers. These images are from a series where Carpenter explored family stories, especially those related to the fallibility of memory and the fragility of the brain. She once thought she would tell this story in writing, but it seemed more fitting to make images given the family's ties to photography.
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During the 26 months I have curated this feature, I've not written about an artist more than once. That's not because I like their work any less, but instead, I choose to keep showing a wide variety of great work by many living artists at all levels of their careers. Then this image crossed my path on Facebook, and in the current state of the American Experiment, I decided to break my own rule. Shane Balkowitsch is a master of creating flawless surface wet plate collodions. But that is not why I am showing you this image. It's the content. Because following the leak of the Roe document from the Supreme Court last week, several things happened in the U.S. at the state level.
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This image floated through my Facebook timeline a few months ago, and I was immediately smitten. I love the mixed media, the tissue paper, and the messiness. The wax is balled up and crinkled in places. There are tears, ridges, small pieces of text. The image catches me and makes me wonder what is happening with the women.
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So what is the story in this image, entitled Self-Portrait with Murphy (1990), besides being a hilarious photo? In my version in my head, I doubted we would ever know. And that is part of what makes it great for me: it left me with more questions than answers: Was it empathy for the cat? Absurdity? Strictly a photo set up? Was Gordon having a bad hair day? Is the attire part of the setup? Is (non-headdress) clothing his usual attire or an outfit chosen for the photo? Why is there money in the floral arrangement? Does he wear this "hat" often?
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With this series, Jonas Yip has shown us something different than we usually find in this style of photographic imagery. No lens created any part of the image. These works come only from a combination of ambient light and his hands as he explores the materiality of the emulsion and the boundaries of photographic processes.
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Weston makes “fun” images. Candy colored, with engaging characters, they make me laugh. But they go beyond that. They also make me think.
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The photos in this series begin as silver halide prints, but that is just a starting point for the final images Kauffmann creates.
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Leibrand is employed as a research scientist who works on developing an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven tool for health care quality measurement in Medicaid populations. This image reflects her concerns about how scientific data is sometimes used and manipulated.
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Traumatic events weave themselves into our identity and journey. Norah experiments with depicting visceral experiences of emotional states and memories. Childhood and intergenerational trauma live within my body and mind in a cyclical process of death, liminal space, and rebirth. Yet, my vivid reality is unseen by others. Moments of despair and hope, fear and peace, defeat and triumph, pass unmarked to the outside world.
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unendingly, an albatross was created using both gum and platinum-palladium processes. However, Angel often uses additional hand-applied paint when she wants a specific color to come forward, which was the case with this work. To do this, she paints into particular areas of the gum coloring to achieve her desired color in a specific spot. She also stated that using a base of platinum/palladium brings "a more polished look" to gum prints, which she said often can appear "raw."
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On January 9, 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs stood on the stage and did what he had always done best throughout his career. He gave us something we never knew we needed or wanted, but that shortly thereafter would wonder how we ever lived without it. For on that day, he introduced us to the first iPhone.