Fusselman - KEN SCHLES : Invisible City / Night Walk

Ken Schles, with images full of texture and honesty, was a real joy to experience. His photographs turn the snapshot into its ideal - stopping moments in time filled with real people - giving them meaning with nostalgia, joy, or sorrow.

Is this funny, or is it very very sad? Did he wake her, or did he take the shot and leave? The responsibilities of photographers capturing real life seem very great to me; a respect for the subject and a transfer of its honesty. Or maybe none of that - maybe sometimes simply being the hand that solidifies the moment, without any message or opinion.

These are my favorite photos - the ones that depict natural emotion and social interactions of daily life. His images are full of energy, humanity, and realism. They make me excited to live a life; they give meaning to photographing it. All we have are the spheres around us to pull from - all we can give is what we have seen. Ken Schles made a darkroom in his shitty New York apartment and got started seeing things.

And this girl. C'mon, Schles, you're killin' me.

Brit Warakomski - Andrew Borowiec's Provence

I really enjoyed Andrew Borowiec’s Provence exhibition at Sasha Wolf Gallery.  He perfectly captures the stillness and mood of solitude, just by taking photos of what is right in front of him. 

I had looked up some of his previous work, and found that a lot of it consists of daytime photographs documenting middle America. They are in stark contrast to the photographs in Provence.  I was especially impressed by the amount of sharp detail captured in the building’s texture, and each image uses a wide range of grays.

In response to his work, I attempted to photograph night scenes around rural sections of New Jersey.  It was a learning experience.  Stacking a pile of books as a replacement for a tripod will not give you the results you want, but I was working with what I had. 

Reuben Cox // Hannah Pigeon 02

"Topical Songs" is Reuben Cox's attempt to take photographic techniques and combine them with more organic forms. For example, this hornet's nest is covered in cyanotype to attain the right color, and explore with texture.

Domestecia 2

While all of the pieces generally dealt with themes involving nature, there was a lot of experimentation involving medium and color. For example, the following photo is an archival inkjet print composed of negative images in which the color has been altered.

Girl Problems

Cox also experimented with collaging, painting, and shadow boxes. Here, he uses gouache on top of an inkjet print. 

Rain on the Sun Roof (Santa Barbara Craft Fair)

While I think the show definitely had a great underlying theme of studying artificial versus organic, the variation in medium, color, and subject was distracting. That is why I decided to focus in on one aspect of his show. I took his experimentation with color and interest in using process that incorporates photography without actually being a photograph, and I made CMYK silk screen prints. My prints also focus on organic versus artificial, but I chose to focus in on very specific small details within an urban setting. It shows the way that nature can conquer any setting. CMYK printing done by hand allows for controlled, yet experimental color. The attention to small details allows my viewers to notice the colors more as well as construct their own narrative or theme based on the combination of images. The whole show was a bit of a sensory overload, but it had some great moments. I wanted to conduct my own study based on the good parts of it.

The Definition of Force

The Guy

Brit Warakomski - Response to Magnificent Obsessions

Matthew Sleeth is a visual artist and photographer from Melboune, Australia.  His exhibit at Claire Oliver Gallery entitled Magnificent Obsessions is comprised of  multiple series of photographs depicting objects that could be considered mundane or uninteresting to an average viewer. Sleeth positions the photographs in grid form, in an attempt to enforce the idea of collection, or repetition.

I can’t say that I either enjoyed his exhibit, or hated it…but I do enjoy collecting and sorting, I just never thought to put the idea into photographs.I think that most of Sleet's work seen that day would be better suited in an artist book, or some sort of publication, not necessarily a gallery setting.

New York Lights

Abandonded Umbrellas

In response, I searched for found light in and around my neighborhood.It wasn’t really on purpose, and I found it interesting to see what I became drawn to. Once I started taking  the photos, I found it enjoyable to search for a specific thing. Once I noticed something, there always seemed to be an abundance of it when I started looking for more. 

Emily Gilmore- Ken Kitano

24 Guards, Tiananman Square in Beijing, 2009

Ken Kitano 

"our face- prayers" 

Pace/Macgill Gallery

32 East 57th street, 9th floor, New York

Ken Kitano has created 133 portraits that are "our faces" and each portrait connects to the relativism of prayer practice. He asserts that the idea of a prayer can be extended past religion. His portraits of Muslims directly relate to their daily prayer routine; however, his portraits of people from Hiroshima relates to praying for consolation after the trauma of the atomic bombs. In his more recent work, Kitano photographed protesters in Hong Kong, in which case, their non-violent protesting was a form of silent prayer.

 39 People Floating Lanterns Down the River Motoyasu
 in Memory of Atomic Bomb Victims
 on August 6, 2004, Hiroshima

Ken Kitano has been working on "our face" since 1999. He uses long exposures while shooting, and he layers the film strips of different people when he prints. So, each portrait can contain as many as 30 different faces layered on top each other. This process of layering blurs each subject's individual identity and emphasizes Kitano's ideal of spiritual unity.

23 Female in Burqa,Dhaka, Bangladesh

Kitano was born in Tokyo in 1968, studied at Nihon University's College of Industrial Technology, and became a freelance photographer in 1993.

images provided by http://www.japanexposures.com/2010/02/05/ken-kitano-gallery/

Julia Cornelius 02

B. Ingrid Olsen // Relics and Rectangles

Simone Subal Gallery

B. Ingrid Olsen places a photo inside of a photo in her work Relics and Rectangles. This creates a “two-tiered mise en abyme”, a French term for a smaller identical image inside a larger one. This also refers to the abyss created when holding two mirrors up to each other.

I like the mise en abyme and the idea of two infinite objects staring at each other. Often the eye is closely photographed and compared to space. Recently, I’ve been casting glass rocks with aluminum inclusions. The bubbles suspended in the glass reminded me of space. I decided to mimic Olsen’s matted photo mise en abyme with the actual representation of someone staring into an object that could almost stare back in its infiniteness.

Julia Cornelius 01

Mike Slack // Alphabetology

Aperture Gallery

In Alphabetology, Mike Slack recreates the alphabet through Polaroids of shadows and objects. In an interview with Believer magazine, Slack explains that he’s referencing primitive times: “Didn’t most alphabets evolve out of simple pictures drawn from everyday life? […] Over time, picture-types start to repeat and accumulate into a kind of language.” I found this interesting (and I’m a sucker for Polaroids) so I bought myself a camera and took photos of things I don’t think twice about photographing with my phone camera.

Mike Slack considers his language to be “things” and “nature”. After analyzing my own personal photos, I realized that my “picture-types” can be divided into “horizons” and “things”…. especially burgers.