Nothing, what’s new with you?

Once again, I’ve slacked on the blog front. Then again this kind of thing happens when I’m busy, and being busy is great for me, so I don’t actually feel badly about it. Here’s a brief update on what I’ve been doing.

I was named as a finalist for the Artadia Awards. I was thrilled. I participated in the second round, which was a studio visit with curators from around the country. In the end I was not chosen as one of the grant awardees, but it was quite the experience to have gone through and I did learn a lot. I’m really glad it happened and it was an honor to be chosen as a finalist along with many really talented artists.

I started a new project. I’ll hopefully be working on it for a long time, and it’s going well so far, which is exciting. It’s good to have something new to do that’s also meaningful and accessible. And by accessible I mean that it’s not happening far away, and my subjects are basically right in front of my face, all the time. I have plenty to shoot and it almost feels easy. Almost.

I’ve finally re-designed my website. My current site works fairly well with my documentary images, but I never felt that it did justice to my platinum/palladium prints. In fact, I think they look awful on it. I’m learning that it’s tough to accurately represent work that is very much about a final handmade print, on the web. They’re about to look much better on the new site, although I’d still love to hear from others who deal with this issue and any suggestions you may have, because I’m still not completely happy with it. The new site should launch sometime this week, once I hear back from the company that provides my current template.

Also, I have a solo show coming up in the Boston area this November. Details to come very soon.

Otherwise I’ve been consumed by my day jobs and trying to enjoy the summer before it’s gone. But who isn’t, right?

Artadia update

The whole Artadia experience was amazing and stressful and exciting— I never expected to be selected.  But then I was and I spent a lot of time thinking about my work and what to say about it, a lot of time waiting, and when the time for my studio visit came it flew by and I was left to wait again.  I found out last Monday afternoon that I was one of the 7 awardees.  Incredible.  It didn’t seem possible.  I had some amazing competition.  And while this has been a fantastic experience (one that will continue as Artadia continues to promote the winners’ work), I realize that even though the judges saw potential in me and saw fit to reward that potential, I know I’m only just beginning and have so far to go.  My goal is the moon and I’ve only just learned how to sit up.  Next is learning how to crawl.  And I know this will always be what it is like— always being able to see where I cannot yet reach, but I want so much to see what I will make next.  I guess I just have to make it.

Also, I recently received an awesome shout out by one of the Photolucida Critical Mass pre-screen judges’ blogs:

http://artmostfierce.blogspot.com/2009/08/artmostfierces-photolucida-critical_3339.html

Illness, Death, and Photography

I’ve been meaning to post about this since I read Richard Renaldi’s post on Illness and Photography a while ago.  I was re-reminded while talking to a friend about her fiance photographing her ill father, and then again when I received a lot of photographs I purchased on ebay, from which I assembled this series:

[click to enlarge]

I find the progression from L to R, as well as the similarities between the hospital bed and the coffin haunting.  I don’t find post-mortem photography that fascinating by itself but when paired with images of the person shortly before their passing, I can’t take my eyes away.

The pictures made me think a lot about questions and feelings I have about my own mother’s death.  I have almost no photographs of her from the last 2 years of her life.  I wanted to photograph her but felt as though it would be an invasion of her privacy, something I did not have the right to do even as I took care of her and loved her and went through chemo visits and hospital stays with her.  I’m not sure what my motivation would have been for photographing— to remember?  to process what I was experiencing?  And maybe this is a larger question about motivations for doing documentary photography, too, but I was left with so many other questions for which I still do not have answers, questions that Richard asked in his post:

Did I have a right to photograph my sick mother when she was weakened and unaware of my camera? Was the experience that I was going through in the hospital[...] mine to capture however I choose? If I were a writer and wrote a story or in my journal about that experience would [other people] have that same defensive reaction?

Or rather, what does it say about what photography is and how it functions that these questions weigh so heavy on my and others’ minds in the first place?