Respect for the Medium of Photography

I spent the last two weeks getting my act together for the Fotofest Meeting Place portfolio review in Houston. After procrastinating for months I finally made my travel arrangements and I put together handouts for my reviewers. But I’ve mostly been thinking about my photographs and how I will present them during reviews.

I’m taking my photography in a new direction. The change is primarily a result of studying at the San Francisco Studio School. When I plunged into photography three years ago, the postmodern conceptual approach that dominates fine art photography was a major influence on my work. Since I enrolled at the Studio School last fall, my work has been increasingly driven by formal considerations as I learned visual criteria for evaluating images. More importantly, I’m allowing more of myself and my feelings to be present in my work as I consider how I can contribute to the medium of photography.

This explains why I renamed the blog “Sincereity and Photography.” I made a conscious decision to reject irony as I bring my work closer and become personally invested. I will be more generous with what I share here on the blog and I will talk more about the changes in my photographic practice in future posts.

Back to Fotofest… Until Saturday, I was unsure how I would present my new work. I knew I would bring prints, but I was missing the enthusiasm I had when I presented a book dummy for Mountain As Monument at previous reviews. For me, the book is “the thing” and I don’t get as excited about prints. It’s not that I don’t appreciate a nice print, I just feel like it’s an excerpt. On Saturday I realized that I needed to make a new book.

I wrote down my ideas and quickly created a layout in InDesign. Even though I’m not working with a pre-defined concept, the book needed a structure which evolved into a three part narrative. I had a blast sequencing the images and designing the book.

The cover is inspired by American Photographs by Walker Evans who is a recent influence. I’ve also been waiting for a chance to use Bembo typeface. Maybe it’s overused but I love it. Because the book has 80 pages, I’m not envisioning this as a handmade artist book. Perhaps this will be my first foray into self-publishing a commercially printed book.

I finished the book layout Sunday night and uploaded it to Blurb for printing. I have a love/hate relationship with Blurb. It is amazing to get a presentable book dummy in a week but I’ve had terrible experiences with their quality control. I’m hoping to have a copy before my reviews start.

I’m ready for Fotofest, but more importantly, I can’t wait to see what happens with this book and where photography will lead me in the upcoming years.

On Thursday, February 11 two potentially interesting photography talks are happening in San Francisco. Unfortunately I’ll be in class so I will miss them both.

Lisa Sutcliffe, the knowledgeable Assistant Curator of Photography at SFMOMA, is presenting a “One on One” talk on a photograph by Jim Goldberg. She will speak in depth about his photograph “The Orchard”. You can see the photograph and read some of her thoughts about it on the SFMOMA blog. Meet in the Haas Atrium at SFMOMA on Thursday at 6:30pm. Event details.

Miki Johnson from liveBooks is giving a talk about photobooks at the Apple Store in San Francisco. The subject of the talk is “What Will Photobooks Look Like in 2020?” The talk starts at 7pm. The APA SF blog has more information.