This Family of La Antigua in Winchester

Announcing my solo show at the Griffin Museum’s Aberjona River Gallery in Winchester, MA. The most exciting part for me is that I’m going to do a “Senior Sunday” artist talk on Sunday, December 6, at 3 PM. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk in depth about my work, especially because this particular series feels so personal to me and I have a lot to say about it. If you can make it to that, you’ll get an update on the family I photographed (people always ask me about Ana and Julio and how they’re doing) and I may show some images that haven’t been seen before.

Click the image for more information.

Caffeine is a photographer’s best friend

You would think by reading our blog that Caleb’s work is really taking off and meanwhile I have disappeared from the face of the photo world. Not entirely true (about me), but close. I’ve been working a lot at my day jobs, which are almost all photo-related, but I haven’t been doing a lot of promoting my own work. The reality of having bills and day job get in the way of my photographic career is a big theme for me right now. But it’s not the worst problem to have. I used to worry about it more until a gallery owner who showed my work last year told me “You can’t make your work and do it well if you can’t pay the bills, so make sure you take care of yourself too”. I am actually working on 2 different projects. One is going very slowly. The other one is coming along relatively steadily but I haven’t told anyone about it yet — mostly because it’s the kind of project I expect to work on for a long, long time before it comes to anything.

But there’s good news! I have a solo show coming up at the Griffin Museum’s Aberjona River Gallery in Winchester, MA. The show will run November 12 to January 10, with both an opening and an artist talk in early December. I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve been swamped with work, but I’ll post details shortly.

The Fall of Photo

I feel like I start each entry these days with “So, I’ve been busy and haven’t posted in a while…”, which is basically true. But this season is going to be the Fall of Photo , I swear!

I started a new day job a few weeks ago, as Recruitment Coordinator at the New England School of Photography — which is where I went to school and also work part-time with Caleb in the Digital Lab. It’s been a great start and I’m excited about working to get folks interested in the school and the program. It’s fall college fair season, so I’ve been traveling around and talking to a lot of high school students. One student told me recently that her school needed to use their darkroom for storage space, so they don’t offer a photography class anymore. Heartbreaking!

I also participated in Jamaica Plain Open Studios — a weekend-long event in my neighborhood in which over 200 artists open their studios or join group spaces to show and sell their work. I sold a few small prints and talked to many, many people. It was energizing but also a little exhausting.

After working hard this summer on promoting my previous work, I feel a serious and impatient desire to spend more time making new work.

Also, have I mentioned that I finished the redesign of my website?

Fierce photographers you need to check out

Dulce Pinzón first came onto my radar with her Superheroes series, in which she photographed Mexican immigrant workers in NYC who send money home to their family, dressed as superheroes, in an effort to redefine the post-9/11 definition of “hero”.

Her new work called People I Like is equally interesting to look at and also has a cultural/political agenda. I think it’s fabulous. From her website:

I am photographing divas, rock stars, partygoers, drama queens and artists, people that fascinate me, all of them Latinos. They are part of what I believe to be a breakthrough in the Latino cultural scene of New York City.

They are all injecting the city with fresh, interesting and chic elements through their art making. I am adding universal stereotypes to their already existing alter egos creating a time-encapsulated portrait.

© Dulce Pinzón

I cannot stop looking at Maisie Crow’s series called Love Me, which is incredibly moving. Definitely check it out, as well as everything else on her site. She was recently named the winner of the 2009 Ian Parry Scholarship. Good call!

© Maisie Crow

Also, I interviewed Allison Pharmakis on this blog last summer, and now Vice Magazine has interviewed her. If you haven’t checked out her work yet, you’re missing out!

© Allison Pharmakis

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?

Ribalta, you had me at “social contract”

Over at Foto8 there’s a great interview you should read called Jorge Ribalta on Documentary and Democracy. I think what he says is incredibly important and timely, and it would do all of us documentary folks some good to consider the place of this type of work in the context of our own era. Reading it spurned a number of thoughts for me on these subjects.

Although I am greatly inspired by fairly traditional post-war documentary and street photography, I think it’s pretty clear that this time period is long gone and the work that those of us create today needs to have some serious thought behind it, based on what it can and should accomplish in our various social and political situations. I also think the idea of photographic “realism” needs a major overhaul. Someone reminded me recently that many don’t believe documentary has a place in fine art, and I couldn’t believe more differently. While I still feel like an outsider to the art world and am just beginning to really understand it, I feel strongly that the idea of “straight” documentary photography actually being realism is a bit naive both today and 60 years ago, although definitely more today.

With every form of or attempt at either art or documentation, there are choices to be made. When there are choices to be made, there is always creativity. Whenever I document a subject, I am aware that my work is very much about my own experience with the subject. I can’t help it. I have 100s of choices to make in creating and editing that work, which are always guided by my own opinions, creativity, comfort, goals, etc, whether I think about it at the time or not, and whether I deny it later or not.

I don’t think the growing accessibility and standardization of digital photography has changed the realist integrity of documentary photography as much as people attribute to it. Then again, I did just say that realism is just an ideal that can’t be accurately applied, anyway. But digital is, basically, just another tool. My best darkroom learning experience ended with the realization that I can change the entire composition of my image by the way I print it. I can dodge and burn away the focal point and create an entirely new one. I can hide insignificant details in shadows that I create. There are a myriad of possibilities here.

What the world of digital has done is made some of these choices easier and more accessible, of course on a much grander scale and in a very short period of time. I think that in a way and for this reason, it’s become a scapegoat. Possibly because we yearn for some kind of document that seems wholly “legitimate”, non-manipulated, apolitical, and void of any kind of cultural or social impressions. Maybe because we want ourselves to be documented in such a way. Maybe because we think our own integrity as image-makers relies on these ideals, because of the value that has been placed on them.  Maybe because we create societal institutions that we infuse with some of the same ideals (courts, police, schools, etc), that prove over and over again that it just doesn’t work this way. But does that mean we shouldn’t still attempt to document, and that documentary photography can’t possibly have similar affects on the world as it did year ago? No, I don’t think so. I think we just need to be real about expectations and changing social conditions. I don’t necessarily have the answers, but I think about these things often.

Ribalta says “The idea that, ‘after Photoshop, photography is dead in the realist-indexical sense’ is a belief that I find both theoretically unproductive and, on a political level, potentially reactionary or anti-democratic in some way. Its effect is to erase the documentary power of photography, which is precisely the political potential to link art to transformative radical politics.” I agree with him. And certainly there are many ways for art and document to work together and be productive and useful to all camps and various needs in the ways of art and storytelling as well as indexing and creating proof.

Randy’s toys, © Steph Plourde-Simard

Where I’m at

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a substantive update on what I’ve been up to and what I’ve been working on. It’s pretty much all about time right now. I’m working 4-5 part-time jobs, and although most weeks I work over 40 hours, there are often weeks where I work less because I’m not needed that much by my employers. On any given day right now I’m either an administrative assistant, an artist/photographer’s assistant, a web designer, a bookkeeper, a digital photography lab assistant, or a laborer. It’s nice to not be bored, but some weeks I barely make it. I’m spending money right now to make prints, buy frames for small shows, and submit work, but I’m not getting any financial returns yet. I dream of selling a couple prints right now, not only to help cover some of these costs, but for a symbolic sign of hope.

When I finished school and set out to become a photographer, I went back and forth between wanting one full-time job or various part-time ones. I had to weigh things like money, flexible schedules, and time off to do my own work. I still weigh these two options on a regular basis, over and over again. I’m sure this is a phase that many artists go through, that may actually last a very long time for me. It’s really fine, I’ve committed to it. But I look forward to someday having the options and/or means to have the work I do to pay the bills be determined by the needs or demands of my photography career, rather than the other way around.

I do have some things to look forward to in the near future. One of my platinum/palladium pinhole images was chosen for the Photographic Resource Center’s annual benefit auction. I’m participating in Jamaica Plain Open Studios in late September. And I have a solo show coming up in the Boston area this winter [more details to come]. I’m also keeping up with submitting work regularly and I had a portfolio review recently with Leslie Brown from the PRC, who gave me a lot of great suggestions for how to promote my work. I had an opening earlier this month for my small show at Dame in Jamaica Plain, where I got to talk to people about prints that rarely see the light of day, and I met a lot of other local photographers and artists. I’m looking forward to a closing event there as well, just days before my studio visit from Artadia.

I was floored and surprised by a phone call from Artadia last week informing me that I made the short-list of 15 finalists for this cycle of awards in Boston. I am so excited-beyond-belief to have my work taken this seriously and actually considered for funding. Being a finalist has been incredibly validating and encouraging, and if nothing comes of it in terms of receiving a grant, that’s OK, because so much has come of it in terms of my attitude and confidence and motivation. Although I can’t imagine what $3,000 or $15,000 would do in terms of allowing me to continue some of my projects and start new ones. I definitely wouldn’t mind having to work out a budget for that!

© Steph Plourde-Simard

The myth of neutrality

I don’t believe in the notion of the objective photographer, that somehow a photo is balanced and you’re dispassionate. I don’t think that would have value. That’s like a security camera. –Nina Berman

There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice. Objectivity doesn’t mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing. –Christiane Amanpour

I’ve been meaning to write about the idea of neutrality and objectivity in photography for some time now. I know that many photographers — most often photojournalists — strive to be [or seem] objective in their work. I know this is often driven by how the media has operated for decades, and that there’s been a demand for images that seem neutral. I say “seem” for a reason here.

Just to put it out there in case anyone is confused, I do not at all try to be objective or neutral, in either my life or my images. I do take sides. You can call me one-sided and I would consider it a compliment, because that means to me that you see what I and my work are about, and that I did a good job. I was driven to photography as another way to speak, to comment, to illustrate a point, to agree or disagree, to discuss, and to question. I don’t always have a fine-tuned point with what I photograph, but I rarely ever find myself in any situation where I don’t know or haven’t decided yet what I think about it. And I do believe that shows in my images, at least the most successful ones. And I’m glad that it does.

We are at a point where the age-old assumption that a white male Supreme Court judge can interpret the law and make rulings in an un-biased, objective, neutral way, and can do this better than a Latina woman, is finally coming to a head and being challenged. We are also at a point where printed news sources are flailing, and looking to more accessible, user-driven sources, full of opinion and bias based on the experiences of the content providers, for assistance. In a newspaper the other day I read an article that a year ago would have quoted individuals with names to add a bit of opinion into the facts. But this article solely quoted Twitter users. While I am a huge fan of “citizen journalism” and more accessible ways to speak up in the world, including through social networking, because it can call attention to issues and communities often ignored by mainstream or corporate media, I wonder what will be lost by never leaving the computer desk to gather anecdotal information anymore. I wonder if what this perceived benefit to news is would also be accomplished by replacing newspaper images with stock photography. That thought scares the crap out of me, and not just as a photographer.

Some of the photographers I admire the most are the ones who take sides. I think this can be done in a myriad of ways. I wonder if information, imagery, storytelling and news can all benefit from celebrating and honoring [and at the most basic, admitting] bias and opinion, rather than denying it.

It’s the Final Countdown!

We are so excited and happy to announce that not one, but both of us, Caleb and Steph, are among the 15 finalists in Boston for grants from Artadia: The Fund for Art and Dialogue. The news came out officially today, and we’re really honored to be included. You can read more below, as both of us are pretty excited beyond words. We’ll each post in the next few days about what this means for us personally and update you on the process. We are now preparing to go through the second round, which involves a studio visit with jurors who will decide which 7 of the 15 finalists to fund.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 8, 2009

SHORT-LIST OF 15 FINALISTS ANNOUNCED FOR ARTADIA AWARDS 2009 BOSTON

New York, NY—The exceptional range of artists living and working in Boston was evident as three internationally prominent jurors selected the 15 Finalists for the second cycle of Artadia Awards 2009 Boston. Jurors Sanford Biggers (artist, New York), Dan Cameron (Founding Director, Chief Curator, Prospect New Orleans), and Randi Hopkins (Associate Curator, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston) named the finalists out of the nearly 600 applications received for the second cycle of Artadia Awards in Boston.

The 15 Finalists for the Artadia Awards 2009 Boston are: Claire Beckett, Cree Bruins, Ambreen Butt, Laura Chasman, Caleb Cole, Margo Cooper, Raul Gonzalez, Eric Gottesman, Wendy Jacob, Erik Levine, Steph Plourde-Simard, Nick Rodrigues, Amie Siegel, Suara Welitoff, and Joe Zane.

Peter Eleey (Visual Arts Curator, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis) and Rita Gonzalez (Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art) will join Randi Hopkins in Boston for the final jury studio visits later this month from Thursday, July 30 through Saturday, August 1, 2009. The jury will then select seven Artadia Awardees for two awards of $15,000 and five awards of $3,000. The list of seven Artadia Awardees will be announced by mid-August.

It’s a party

How did I forget to mention that I have a small show opening on Thursday evening? Oh wait, I know, it’s because I’ve been incredibly busy!

I’m showing images from 2 different series: 6 from Grounded, and 10 from new work so fresh it doesn’t really have a title yet. It all seems to fit nicely with the theme of the store, which sells vintage clothing and accessories, so I chose black and white and platinum/palladium images shot with large format pinhole cameras and Holgas.

The opening is part of Jamaica Plain First Thursdays. There will be punch, and hopefully you as well.

Also, Dame has a blog, and a big thanks Dany for having me! It’s great to show work in my own neighborhood (literally a couple blocks from home), and at an independent,  locally-owned business.

Embodiment

I keep meaning to post about Molly Landreth’s series Embodiment: a Portrait of Queer Life in America, but I want to say something more articulate than “this is awesome”. Really though, it’s pretty awesome. You need to check it out.

There’s something special and intriguing that happens when people document their own community. It doesn’t mean that the photographs are automatically better –of course skill is still a crucial part of image-making– but having the ability to really understand and experience a  subject, to have the foresight and and background and history to know about the nuances, tensions, and issues below the surface, brings a significant advantage to the storytelling.

I looked all over for something I read once that Nan Goldin said, about how you can really only photograph your own people. I couldn’t find it (please comment if you know the quote I’m talking about), but the message is related. I don’t think photographers delve into identity politics very often, but having dedicated my education pre-photography to race, class, gender, and sexuality, I can’t help but notice the strength that exists in work that attempts to portray a community either from within, or as an effort to really, truly honor the subjects.

Images © Molly Landreth

The second print I ever bought

Ron Cowie was an instructor of mine at NESOP. He’s fantastic, and aside from teaching me a lot about alternative processes, he has great ways of introducing the creative process into the classroom. I actually liked his class so much that I took it twice.

Right now Ron is having a very affordable print sale on his website. I just bought the image below and I’m really excited to find a place for it on my new and fairly empty apartment walls.

© Ron Cowie

Rejected (AKA: one down, many to go)

I am trying to change the way I view rejections. I’ve promised myself that I’ll flip the disappointment and start displaying them with pride (and humor). I should really feel the same way about them as I do my less-interesting photos: they need to happen in order for me to make the great ones. They’re just part of the equation. The more rejections I get and places I submit work, the closer I will get to something working out. That might sound odd, but I believe in it. If I’m not submitting work or getting rejected at all, then I have NO chance of success, right?

I don’t ever expect to win anything. I don’t think that’s the point of submissions and contests. I’ve started weighing them like this: “Am I willing and able to spend $XX for curator/gallerist/editor XX to see my work?”.

So here’s my first communication back from a submission since Caleb and I started the First to Fifty competition. Hooray?!