Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 12

Photos: Through a Fence

Untitled (Through a Fence) Stephan P. Ferreira
Stopped near a noisy machine shop to shoot some photos through their fence. The fence forced me to look close and got me thinking about shapes of light. I thought less about taking photographs and more about looking. The muffled and repetitive clanking nearby was sort of meditative.

Untitled (Through a Fence) Stephan P. Ferreira
Many more at the Flickr page.

Saturday, February 5

Riches of the City: Adolphe Braun

Untitled c. 1853-55 Adolphe Braun (via Tout Cici Est Magnifique)
Riches of the City: Portland Collects is up now at the Portland Art Museum through May 22nd. The exhibit, taking it's title from the museum's founder and long time patron, C.E.S. Wood, is a terrific celebration of collecting in Portland. The show includes valuable works from Asian Art to Contemporary and demonstrates that there is a lot of great art tucked away in Portland.

Untitled c.1853-55 Adolphe Braun (via Tout Cici Est Magnifique)
While there are great examples of why exhibits of this scope can be lousy, this exhibit is not one of them (Things I love: The Many Collections of William I. Koch at the MFA, Boston in 2005 was a good example of a collector's show turned "museum-owed-me-one" spectacle. It featured among a smattering of art: trophies, a large collection of Magnums and even larger wine vessels (already opened) and even two sailboats installed into the front lawn).

It is the stronger, lesser seen work hanging in Riches that made it enjoyable.Among those pieces was a great Adolphe Braun photograph lent by Stu Levy.

The untitled photograph(not featured here, but very similar)has an aged sepia glow that, along with it's mundane subject matter of a tabletop bouquet and date of around 1855, would be easily dismissed simply as an early photographic study.

Looking closer and minding the eerie, narrow focus and clumsiness of the image (never mind the unusual, truncated composition) it's apparent that the flowers are wilted, dying.

Tuesday, November 2

What Am I Looking At?: Figurative Paintings That Aren't

Two Paintings by Roger White (via Rachel Uffner Gallery)
When you see something you like, you know it immediately. But knowing what it is you're enjoying is always harder to define. Many of the paintings I've been thinking about lately reflect that feeling pretty literally. These are images about image making and they are influencing my own decisions about paint.

The paintings I'm thinking about might articulate some sort of tangible space but with non-objective shapes. They do not quite fall within Abstraction.I thought the paintings of Roger White work this way. White's paintings are comprised of non-objective and organic forms making up patterns. But in some of the paintings the patterns deviate and sometimes the abstract forms feel reminiscent of actual objects, like a hat, lampshade or folded something. But the forms never materialize beyond that and ultimately we're left looking at only the relationships of a painting process.

Saturday, October 16

Feeling Butterflies Again



I took a short walk through the Portland Art Museum the other night. Just enough time to make some notes for a longer visit. I was stunned by the Mark Grotjahn installation. I usually have a hard time relating to work dominated by hard-edged, geometric forms. I like what a friend calls, "a way in" or some sort of broken spot (this is actually a point in my own work that I consciously see lacking).

Weibes Kleid Martina Sauter 2010 (via Ambach and Rice)
Stuhl Und Sessel Martina Sauter 2010
But these have it: as you walk closer, those large black shapes become made up of smaller shapes and marks. A natural noise of colored marks are around and outside those giant abstract butterfly wings. They appear almost hurriedly rubbed. As you step back and you begin to read the larger scale again, these images become tied to a representational sort of emotion. Poetic. The video above, courtesy of the Gagosian, shows some of this.

And these kind of noisy marks dwarfed in scale by the abstract, black, wings are like marks I am also trying to play with. Those marks in Grotjahn's pieces are contained within the larger fog of smudges and movement becoming a general tone. It's always exciting to see something your thinking about reflected in a completely different kind of work. Perhaps a piece of art you wouldn't even have ordinarily enjoyed. And even better, is if that work is doing it even better somehow - teaching you something.

From the book of Cy Twombly Photographs 1951-2007 (via Rare Autumn)
Semi-Related: Via Another Bouncing Ball, Regina Hackett links to some beautiful re appropriated photographs of Martina Sauter. Read her press release. These images change the original meanings of the used photographs - but what I like most, is how they also change the meaning of the surface texture of walls, furniture and film texture. They remind me of Cy Twombly's photographs (which I only have seen through this awesome book). I've always enjoyed the way they exist as something documented and yet with a new life of their own - the camera adding it's own emotional texture.

Tuesday, September 21

Finds

Walked by this colored-steel yard today. It's one of those places I've walked by countless times. But something about the season, time of day, the light affects whether I see it. These sorts of things can feel incredibly random. Or, is it about whatever I am fixated on? How many things did I walk by for the umpteenth time today and not see?

I disciplined myself and went to the studio today. But didn't feel focused until I was in the bookstore. It's almost like I spend any given day finding the best activity I am suited for. Sometimes the bookstore is a place I have to visit many times to be focused (I will even stray towards certain aisles depending on the light and start there - where I feel right. If it's Downtown Powell's this usually means near the windows. If it's Hawthorne, it usually is directly down the center).

Haven't been following the Oregonian's Art section recently. But browsed today and liked this on Stephanie Snyder. Her curating philosophy:
Yes, but I don't believe in being didactic or dogmatic. I appreciate what Roberta (Smith) observed about the "overeducation movement" happening at a lot of museums. She was talking about the Brooklyn Museum where the walls are colored, and there are video monitors and wall text everywhere. I don't believe in doing that to viewers. You educate by curating good shows and allowing viewers to have a quiet experience with art.
And also, a new Amsterdamn-centric (refreshing!) list-blog about painters, A Thousand Living Painters, has lots of interesting work including these great paintings by Albert Zwann. His paintings feel a bit like backgrounds to Neo Rauch. He's using the same sorts of old-print colors, but really playing with architecturally crisp shapes and otherwise messy figurative spots.

Thursday, August 26

After School

Tonight the sun was setting hard as it does in August. I made a point to head back to a Southeast area school I stand by each morning. The schoolyard wasn't deserted, but it was closed up for the day. The building appeared like most public buildings tend to look like when not in use: dilapidated or worn - really used up. It was eerie to be facing these stark, but warm walls with kids laughter and shadows darting around.
More on the Flickr. Now it's off to far Southern Oregon. See also: Holiday Road.

Thursday, July 15

Something Else

Yesterday I documented and sleeved some other things I've been puttering around with at the studio. These are collaged or cut snapshots. Some of the cities or buildings are random vintage postcards. But the other ones are from Kelsey's family albums. Some of the interiors have led me to think about the positive cut image as one abstract painted shape. Many more after the jump. Click to make larger.

Thursday, July 8

Cinematic

Got out and about with the Tibbles Family a few days ago. Super hot day. We didn't actually want to accomplish anything, and spent more time stopping for tacos in St. Johns than actually hiking.
More photos from our Sauvie Island, Oak Island walk on my Flickr. It was so darn bright. The digital camera likes to make things too clear and clean colored. I intentionally underexposed my shots and desaturated them. I later muddied them back up with more reds.

I thought afterward that these appeared very cinematic. It's not often I have people in my photos! I have been thinking alot about this particular photo lately. And have been trying to duplicate the focus and color. Something still and quick about it that I like.

Monday, July 5

"Hurting the Cause of Reality"



Years ago I was first introduced to Goddard's Band of Outsiders. Although today I feel oppositely, then it was a new language to me and it made me sleepy. But still my friend tried to explain how Goddard intentionally used editing to interrupt the fictional narrative on screen. In the dancing scene above, music is cut out (probably very simply by using the player's mute switch - Goddard was very resourceful in his production. Like even using a wheelchair) and narration dubbed in, while you can still hear the shuffles and snaps of the actors themselves.

Or, like later, mirrored in Terantino's Pulp Fiction diner dance scene, the narrative already being laid out is interrupted by this very theatric, but almost separate moment. Goddard's ruthless editing also makes his films look intentionally mismatched, with movements jerky or missing. A good example of such editing and (at first take, obnoxious) use of on and off music is the driving scene in Breathless. There's a fictional story being constructed here like any movie, but Goddard is also trying to make that more real by reminding us of how strange it is that these two people are probably driving the same route over and over; pretending.

Goddard would famously edit together documentary like footage (long before this sort of Docu-reality became popular) of his actors on breaks or having a cigarette. And these would be written in, usually on the spot, into the movies story (this is not a post of Goddard's filmmaking prowess, but I will make one more aside: he was also infamous for changing his script daily, even making it up each morning to keep his actors and producers confused).

We're being reminded that these are movies. Artiface. And yet somehow these interruptions make other things feel more real.

When Art Observed posted this story of a found Velazquez painting (above), the chipped and old surface of the painting got me thinking again of interruptions and our sensation of reality. What sorts of imperfections were a part of image making (whether intentional or uncontrollable) that changed the image's narrative and impression on us?

Thursday, June 17

More Interesting than Words: Rodney Graham Light Boxes

Via, Art Observed: 303 Gallery in NY has Rodney Graham's light box photo's on display. Photographs in light boxes are akin to viewing them on a computer screen. They are both interesting and viable ways of exhibiting but really make the image appear entirely different. A light box has that illuminated glow. Graham's images would not appear as ghostly as they do if they were printed.

Wednesday, May 12

Here's the Real Thing

Even if I still take out my scarf every other day...it's getting close to summer. Didn't much feel like being behind my studio windows today. Took a long walk. I guess I just wanted to hear the sounds of everything. More on the Flickr page.

Thursday, May 6

There is Some Painting Out There

 
Some things to see the first half of this month:

- Jessica Hirsch's Folk Feng Shui
 - House Arrest at Worksound.
- The work of MFA students from the University of Oregon, Brightly Colored Party.
 

- Natascha Snellman at Fourteen Thirty.
- Cut Ups by Gus Van Sant at PDX Contemporary
- Oil paintings of Barbara Sternberger at Leach.
- The 2D works of Leiv Fagereng, Sarah Horowitz & Alfred Harris at Froelick.

See also PORT's First Friday Picks.

Monday, April 19

When a Chair is Not a Chair

Salesmen Sample Cabinet 2006 Roy McMakin (via James Harris Gallery)
 I never thought much of artist Roy McMakin. But that was my own fault. A lack of investigating what he was about. Allowing this one poor monograph my store had for eons determine his whole artistic identity for me.
Roy McMakin (via James Harris Gallery)
But the other day, I ordered and had a good look at When a Chair is Not a Chair. I was caught by furniture and designs which were fragmented. Where he actually introduced fragments of other colors and shapes into these beautifully made pieces.

And then I found his Eight Photographs of an Angel Wing Begonia series (of which I cannot find reproduced anywhere except the book).  Here is another version, done much simpler. They are around 30"+ in size and comprised of neatly layered photographs of the Begonias. The single clay pot they're planted in are in one piece, while the plant itself becomes fragmented and twisted.

The closest thing I could find in his (apparently) extensive photography work was the images here. Sometimes they're photographs of his furniture. And sometimes they are photographs of other objects, drawings, etc.  It's become so interesting to me to figure out how this artist takes apart his own work. And how maybe by playing with these objects in a cubist sort of fashion, the photographs have since informed his work. Just like the craftsmanship of his furniture making has informed his photography.

A Green Dresser 2006 Roy McMakin (via James Harris Gallery)
Watch Awaken  2008 Les Rogers (via Les Rogers)
As I write this, I do not have anything rather important to say about McMakin that hasn't already been said. And I really haven't even done more than drool, at dozens of separate special moments, with those images in the book. At first I wanted to make all these comparisons to Cubism (check), David Hockney's photo collages and my own work.

But after a vain search for those images, I realized it was simpler: I was  responding to those photographs of the begonias, with a distorted literal and figurative language because it drew attention to how something is made. Like good paintings and how they are about painting. The comparisons then are more like Maureen Gallace or Les Rogers (two new favorites that come to mind). Where-in a figurative subject is only the vehicle for getting you to look at how it is made.


Cape Cod, Early September 2008 Maureen Gallace (via Whitney)

Sunday, April 11

Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

Hanna 2010 Ryan McGinley (via Art Observed)
There is a great Ryan McGinley exhibit up at Team Gallery in NY called Everybody Knows This is Nowhere. Also some great images and linsks at Art Observed.
 

Larson F 2010 Ryan McGinley (via Art Observed)
I'm not sure I really like nude photography. Even those classic nude landscape-like photos by Weston made me feel weird. But I do love the expressions, the candid faces and the blurry features mixed with other crisp limbs.

McGinley says,"... I sort of approach using the studio camera like a candid camera. And it would be insane to shoot as much as I did on film because for each portrait: I shot between 1,500 and 2,000 photos." Unbelievable. But it doesn't seem all that strange to me, considering the way I've learned to take photos - or sketch a line - is to make many of them. Sketching that way is a very traditional way of doing it. The photography habits though - maybe more a product of digital technology. Would Weston be doing his any differently? I think, with exceptions,
photographers have always bracketed shots. But today I think digital has changed that.

And it's changed what you apparently can capture. And what becomes candid. That's something that's just occurred to me - things can be captured faster. Things you may only think you have seen you now see. Like a weird way your Uncle might roll his eyes - and now you can see that forever, alien-like. It's almost another level of realism - this split second gesture, caught in all it's detail.

Polaroid by Andy Warhol c. 1970's 
I have been using those kinds of things in my paintings alot. I really liked that first image above, with the dark shape of hair - and the slightest blurring of shapes and different sharpnesses in the face.

I've also been stuck on this memory of an airport somewhere - where the sun was setting into the terminal. And I sat facing the crowd of people squinting. I am stuck on all the expressions with this creamy lit skin and deep red shadows under noses and in folds. But I haven't been able to be fast enough to capture it with a camera.

Also semi-related in Portland: Scarecrow at Reed.




Sunday, April 4

April is the Cruellest Month

Untitled Jake Arcularius (via Nationale)
April is the cruelest month. Check out work by local photographers, Jake Arcularius, Jacques Barruel, Olivia Bolles, Mimi Dutra, Ty Ennis, Nialls Fallon, Liz Haley, William Skip Haswell, Tamar Monhait,  Zachary Reno, Norm Sajovie, Anna Shelton, John Voves, and Kersti Werdal at Nationale through April.


Fairchild-Dornier 328JET William Skip Haswell (via Nationale)
Visit Nationale for images from this exhibit.  Also some photographers will be discussing their process on Monday April 5th at 7pm! Thanks to HomeSchool for the heads up.

Saturday, April 3

Representing Response

Untitled 2010 Stephan P. Ferreira
I have been trying to find ways to capture my direct experience using photography. The immediate and emotional responses are different than the resulting image. I've zoomed in our out. The camera has framed it away from everything else. And sometimes it's that everything else that created the experience. I'm left with something the camera saw but not my reaction.
Untitled 2010 Stephan P. Ferreira

 I have the same disconnect sometimes with paintings. Where did everything that exists inbetween go? Perhaps the resulting image is  strong, but they don't exist very long for me when I can identify how much unlike they are to the way I remember something.

Sometimes the figurative or the identifiable things in the photos tend to make me believe the images less. This is often why I avoid words - or things I recognize to begin with. But then later when looking at the image I've seen I've also removed all context.

I took the photo of those cabinets at a large office furniture warehouse. There was a man struggling with a bunch of metal racks in the pit of the store. Metal noise and grunting. And these stacked fixtures appeared to be just cold, stiff and quiet. The same reaction you might have if hearing an argument through the wall.

There is an entire process - and in the case of walking: there is the physicality of it, perhaps the sunlight or a chill, maybe getting lost and then finally reacting. The journey to finding the photo. I'm still trying to find out how I represent my initial response.
Untitled 2010 Stephan P. Ferreira