Garry Winogrand remembered

We received this wonderful email from Jon Reis this week about lessons learned from Garry Winogrand:

“I had an occasion to visit Rockport, Massachusetts, recently with my wife, Dede Hatch, who was delivering some artwork to a local gallery. I remembered that in 1976 when I was 27 years old I was in the same seaside town where I did an intensive week-long Garry Winogrand workshop. Then, the ten or twelve students all had their Leica’s in their hands and everyone wanted to watch him work the peak summer tourist onslaught. How DID he make such consistently interesting photos? . . . What was the secret to his vision?

One of the many truisms he spoke was to ‘shoot pictures that had not been made before.’ Garry used to say ‘If you seen a photo before, don’t take it again.’ Like the other students I snapped a few of Garry himself at rest not far from Rockport Motif #1. (Now that he is gone I wish I had shot more.)

At night during the photo critique of the day’s take one student asked ‘What made Atget such a great photographer?’ The wise-cracking Winogrand shot back, ‘Why, it is where he stood!’

Being in Rockport again 34 years later, I had fun recreating the pose with the help of Dede. Tree is doing well!”

Jon’s exhibition, By the Way: Two Decades of America Observed 1973-1993, is on view at the Robert B. Menschel Photography Gallery at Syracuse University until December 2010. His generous gifts to the Light Work Collection include over 100 pieces.

Dean Kessmann at Conner Contemporary Art

2009 Light Work Artist-in-Residence Dean Kessmann is currently exhibiting Art as Paper as Potential at Conner Contemporary Art in Washington, D.C. This is his fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. It will run through May 8.

Art as Paper as Potential investigates ideas of tactility as well as the multiple references, implications, and meanings that can be drawn from the sight of a blazing white sheet of paper. Kessmann’s work plays with this idea of a “blank” surface that may have been erased of content or be as yet untouched. The exhibition is staged in three parts with a 21-foot long light box piece, split into three sections, at its center. The center panel of this piece, which is titled Intersecting Data: Light/Dark, is shown here. Read more about this elegant suite of work at Kessmann’s website.

Images from Art as Paper as Potential, along with an essay by Tim Wride, will be featured in The Light Work Annual 2010, Contact Sheet 157, which will be published in July 2010.

Light Work Annual Student Invitational

Light Work is pleased to announce the results of the Light Work Annual Student Invitational, featuring photography students at Syracuse University. Jason Houston from Orion Magazine served as our juror to select a Best of Show winner: Varvara Mikushkina, a junior in SU’s Transmedia Program.  Houston also selected four Honorable Mentions: Elif Yoney (first year graduate student), Erin Geideman (freshman), Hannah Nast (freshman), and Rose Cromwell (freshman). Over thirty students from the College of Visual and Performing Arts and the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication submitted excellent work to the invitational. The exhibition will be presented on Light Work’s flat panel screen from April 1 through May 29, 2010. Congratulations to the winners, and our thanks to all participants and our juror.

Juror’s statement by Jason Houston:

It is difficult to select ‘the best’ from such a diverse series of images. There are sports images that captured the peak of action, emotional and intimate documentary portraits, creative fictional scenarios, poetic landscapes, and thought provoking fine art images. Photographs are made for so many different reasons and in so many different contexts. Still, a good photograph will always be a good photograph.

The images I chose as Best of Show and for Honorable Mention transcend their genre and hold up without context. They show technical skill and creative vision, but also, and more importantly, go beyond the literal retelling of what is happening around us. They interpret. They help us see and they show us something new about the world.

For Best of Show I selected the portrait of the man drinking from a tea cup made by Varvara Mikushkina. It has the wonderful feeling of being both deliberate and natural. The fundamentals such as great color, composition, and lighting are balanced by the spontaneous moment captured by Varvara’s camera—a moment that engages us, yet promises only to introduce us to the subject’s character. The intimacy makes it feel familiar, but we are kept ever so slightly off balance by the opposing tilts of the head and the cup, and by his partly covered expression. We are left to wonder about his mood and seek the source of his gaze. We explore the image for clues, drawn in to where we notice details such as the tentatively balanced spoon on his thumb or the slightly skewed art on the wall above his head. It is an image you want to look at.

Image: Varvara Mikushkina, Deda and Tea, 2009, pigmented inkjet print, 16 x 20″

Jennifer Wilkey wins Inaugural Lucie Scholarship

Syracuse artist Jennifer Wilkey is the 2010 recipient of the Lucie Foundation’s Scholarship Professional Grant. This new grant includes a cash award of $5,000 plus a one-week workshop at the Maine Media Workshops. The grant will go toward completing her project and preparing for an exhibition of the work in Syracuse.

Wilkey is recognized for her series that records the life of her brother, who is developmentally disabled. Wilkey eloquently documents his day-to-day activities and discoveries, as well as his relationship with their mother, a constant presence in his life.

The artist holds an MFA in Fine Art Photography from Syracuse University as well as a BS in Anthropology and BFA from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. In 2010 her work will be exhibited at Project Basho in Philadelphia in addition to other venues.

Congratulations, Jennifer, for this well-deserved honor.

[Image: Jennifer Wilkey, James in the Kitchen, 2008]

Stephen Chalmers: Unmarked

This Thursday, April 1, Light Work will host an opening reception for Stephen Chalmers: Unmarked, which will be on view in the main gallery until May 29, 2010. This series of work features seemingly innocuous landscapes that also happen to be places where the bodies of murder victims were found. This switch, while initially shocking, proves thought provoking as the beauty of the scenes gives way to knowing that something terrible happened at these sites. Chalmers, who is a trained social worker, former emergency medical technician, and professor, interweaves themes of violence and death, remembrance and transedence in this unique series of work.

The artist will be present for the opening from 5-7pm, so please stop by if you’re in the area. Contact Sheet 156 is published concurrently with the exhibition and will be the first issue you receive if you subscribe today.

Stephen Chalmers: Unmarked
March 22-May 29, 2010
Gallery reception: April 1, 5-7pm

Scott Conarroe in PDN's 30

Former Light Work Artist-in-Residence Scott Conarroe is featured as one of PDN’s 30 for 2010. This yearly list highlights a select group of the best up-and-coming photographic artists as determined by a prestigious panel of industry taste makers.

Check out PDN’s online gallery plus a short interview with Conarroe about making his work, traveling non-stop, and being represented by Stephen Bulger Gallery.

The interview, written up by Debra Klomp Ching, features a shout out to Light Work: When asked his greatest challenge, Conarroe responds, ““I managed to get an MFA without bothering to spend any time on the computer. I did a residency at Light Work/Community Darkrooms and they made me competent in the digital lab.”

For more information about the Light Work residency program, please click here. We are continuously looking at applications throughout the year.

Still time for JGS Photo and Video Contest

Joy of Giving Something, Inc. (JGS) is accepting submissions to their quarterly, juried photography and video contest through March 31. Separate categories exist for artists and students. The contest was established to encourage photographers and videographers to share their unique artistic perspective. It is part of the Forward Thinking Museum, which is committed to providing access to engaging works of art for a wide audience and to fostering the creation of new art that is informed by the “forward thinking” mind.

The jurors for the artist level photography awards are: Willis E. Hartshorn (International Center of Photography), Karen Sinsheimer (Santa Barbara Museum of Art), and Kai McBride (Columbia University and Queens College). The full list of jurors or the list of previous winners is available online. JGS recently awarded its Annual $15,000 Artist Award to Marion Poussier, winner of the fourth quarter award in 2009.

Image: Marion Poussier, untitled, 2004, from the series One Summer

Another satisfied artist

We received this note from an artist who recently made the transition to digital printing here at Light Work/Community Darkrooms. This is exactly the place to make that change and have it be fun. Read on to hear about Michelle’s experience in her own words.

“. . . I hope to be back in Syracuse next weekend or early the following week. I haven’t felt this excited in a long time! I basically came up to Syracuse with a vague notion of wanting to make a tightly edited portfolio of ten to twelve 16 x 20 prints. The images are from a project I’ve been working on for the past ten years—a mix of medium and large format film.

I have never seen a photograph printed larger than 8 x 10. I think I just wanted to see what these images looked like big. I do have a darkroom at home that I could have used, but I often find it difficult to stay focused when I am at home with so many distractions. . . .

Last Monday, I spent close to ten hours printing in the artist’s [black-and-white] darkroom. I have been printing for thirty years. I couldn’t even begin to calculate how many hours of my life I’ve spent in the dark, hovering over trays of chemicals. By the end of the day I was exhausted and frustrated. I couldn’t face the thought of spending another minute printing in the darkroom. By late Monday evening, I had made up my mind: my [traditional black-and-white] printing days were over.

I’ll admit, the Imacon scanner was intimidating. The process of creating a proper scan and then prepping the file for printing in Photoshop felt overwhelming. On Wednesday, I learned that most of the scans I had done the previous day weren’t very good. I had clipped both the shadows and the highlights. I felt like crying and calling my mother to come pick me up, which wouldn’t have been practical as she lives in Florida. [Digital Lab Manager] John Mannion just smiled and said, “It would be easy to give up right about now. Go back in there and get a proper histogram.”

Wax on, wax off, Grasshopper. I dialed up James, one of the Light Work mentors. It took him all of ten minutes to materialize. I’ve waited much longer for pizza delivery. He held my hand through two or three scans. Everyone helped with Photoshop suggestions. [Customer Service Manager] Vern Burnett even got me to re-think one of my images, which changed the way I ultimately cropped it. By Friday, I felt like I was finally getting the hang of it: producing scans that preserved all of the detail in the highlights and shadows, at least where the detail was relevant. I was making nice files in Photoshop using adjustment layers.

The highlight of the week was attending Rachel Herman‘s opening reception [for Imp of Love]. I connected with her and her work immediately. We spoke at length. DC has no shortage of photographers, but most of the photographers I know essentially wear one hat: the wedding photographers shoot weddings for the sake of booking more weddings; the newspaper and wire photographers shoot for their respective employers; the commercial photographers are working for ad agencies and corporate clients. I know very few photographers whose work-for-hire is used as a means to an end. I often feel like I’m working in isolation.

This past week was transformative. It literally changed my life. I’ve learned a new set of skills and an entirely new way of working. Light Work for me is like an oasis!

Sincerely,
Michelle

Local reaction to Soldiers by Suzanne Opton


Over the weekend, a local Fox affiliate in Washington D.C. ran this video piece with an accompanying story about Suzanne Opton’s Soldier series. As with its other installations, the work is causing various reactions, all of them welcome by the artist.

Soldier Billboard Project in Washington, D.C.

Images from Suzanne Opton’s series Soldier will appear on billboards in six Metrorail stations throughout Washington D.C. from March 9 to April 4, 2010.

The Soldier Billboard Project features portraits of American soldiers between tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Click here to read about various reactions to the series, which has been on a two-year tour to cities including Denver, Houston, Atlanta, and Miami, among others.

The series has generated considerable controversy in some venues, including CBS Outdoor’s decision to pull Opton’s billboards in Minneapolis-St. Paul during the Republican National Convention there in 2008.

Light Work has enjoyed working with Opton since 2005 when she was an Artist-in-Residence here in Syracuse. Light Work held the exhibition Soldier in 2006. As part of the exhibition, images from the series appeared on five billboards throughout Syracuse, which extended the work into the community where it could be seen by the general public. Contact Sheet 136 celebrates the series and the exhibition.

Opton continues to work with Light Work/Community Darkrooms by realizing prints with Digital Lab Manager John Mannion and his assistant Carrie Mondore up through today.

Three works from Solider are in the Light Work Collection, which you can view and read about here. A black-and-white image from this series, Soldier Conklin: 272 days in Iraq, 2006, is also available in the Light Work store; your purchase goes directly back into our programming that supports emerging and under-recognized artists.

Images: Above, left: Soldier Birkholz, 353 Days in Iraq, 205 Days in Afghanistan. Right: Billboards in Syracuse initiated by Light Work in conjunction with the exhibition Soldier, 2006.