San Francisco has a new photography gallery. My friend Gwen Lafage has opened Carte Blanche gallery at 973 Valencia St. in the Mission, selling prints and photobooks.
The official opening is Thursday, December 15 from 6 to 9pm. If you’re in San Francisco you should stop by to welcome her to the neighborhood.
Sunday, the final day of the PiY exhibition in Nogent-sur-Marne, outside of Paris.
Gérard from Maison d’Art Bernard Anthonioz. He made us lunch. He is such a generous and thoughtful person.
It was raining so the books were displayed inside.
I went for a walk in the rain…
And met these nice women who were looking for the exhibition.
Heading back to the hotel after the show wrapped up.
It was crazy to see this elevated train track, like something out of a Kertész photograph.
We went to Paris for dinner and some final drinks. Next morning, it was time for me to go back to San Francisco.
These photos are from Saturday, when the PiY exhibition really started.
Visitors start to arrive. The books were displayed in the garden behind Maison d’art Bernard Anthonioz in Nogent-sur-Marne.
Adam and Robert from Preston is my Paris.
Gérard from Maison d’art Bernard Anthonioz and Adam share a laugh.
Set up for dinner in the garden. Gérard is an incredible cook and he spoiled us with delicious food the entire weekend.
Gérard, Maxwell Anderson, and Anne Schwalbe.
Maxwell thanks Laurence Vecten (and Gérard) for their hospitality and for bringing us together in such an amazing place…
And Anne presents Laurence with portraits we made earlier as a token of our appreciation.
As the evening progresses, Hannah Darabi keeps a candle lit.
Dinner by candle light in a French garden. It was something out of a film.
Laughter and heartfelt conversation with new friends. It’s hard to think of a better way to end the day.
On to my second day in France for the Publish it Yourself exhibition.
Met up with Laurence Vecten at Maison d’Art Bernard Anthonioz (MABA) in Nogent-sur-Marne which is an art center that was hosting the PiY show.
Setting up a table in the garden behind the art center for lunch.
This is Gérard who is the director of the art center. He is an amazing cook.
He made a salad for lunch.
Anne Schwalbe, one of the photographers in the show.
Caroline, manager at the art center.
Caroline and Adam from Preston is my Paris.
Maxwell Anderson, another photographer in the exhibition.
Rémi Coignet (and in English), who is a photography journalist for Le Monde, and a friend.
Gérard in the garden.
A self publishing talk that evening with the folks from Boehm Kobayashi…
and Designer Frédéric Teschner, Laurence Vecten, and moderated by Rémi Coignet.
Then it’s time to head into Paris…
Hanging out at the train station.
We met up with Robert’s friend from college, I can’t remember his name at the moment.
Then back to Nogent-sur-Marne for some night photography.
Back at the hotel.
Anne suggested that we make something to give to Laurence and Gérard to thank them for their hospitality. Robert busted out his Polaroid passport camera and we made some portraits.
I just returned from Paris/Nogent-sur-Marne where I attended the second PiY self-published photobook exhibition. Here are some photos from the first day of my trip.
I went to Le Bal to meet up with some folks I met at PiY last year. It’s a bookstore and cafe, and I guess they have a gallery in back but that part was closed.
Laurence Vecten, the organizer of PiY.
Adam Murray, one half of Preston is my Paris.
I think this guy is the bookstore manager. He looks serious, I wouldn’t want him pointing at me.
The awesome American-style snacks for the opening at Le Bal — saltines and marshmallows! That’s a common meal over at the Beil residence.
Then a few of us went over to Aux Folies for a drink.
Robert Parkinson, the other half of Preston is my Paris. He’s not always this pinkish.
Thomas invited us over to his place for some wine.
So many gracious hosts in Paris.
Waiting for the train back to Nogent-sur-Marne.
The mean streets of Nogent.
No matter how late it is, there’s always time for photography.
Off to bed.
Before I became a photographer, I was a musician. I went to college for music, and one of the pieces I studied in class was 4’33″ by John Cage. About the piece, Wikipedia says:
the three movements of [4'33"] are performed without a single note being played. The content of the composition is meant to be perceived as the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed, rather than merely as four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence.
The piece is clever: have musicians sit quietly instead of playing music. The audience would begin to notice the sound of the air conditioning or water flowing through pipes. They would become aware of the quality of reverberations in an enclosed space as people nearby cough and clear their throats. Perhaps they would even question the differences between music and sound.
I was influenced by music that my professors deemed important, and the experimental music I wrote in college reflected those influences. I used software algorithms to modulate human input from MIDI controllers to create music that was unpredictable. It made for interesting conversations in my seminars but the compositions were awful to listen to.
But no matter how mind-blowingly clever 4’33″ was when it was composed in 1952, it didn’t move me in 1989. Yes, studying the piece affected my academic output, but its emotional impact could not compare to the joy I experienced listening to music by Vivaldi or Satie or Joy Division or the Talking Heads. It didn’t provide comfort by assuring me that there was a meaning for my existence.
Now close your eyes and imagine the experience of attending a performance of 4’33″. Could it mean as much to you as listening to Bach’s “Brandenburg Concertos” or Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” or even Radiohead’s “OK Computer”?
Close your eyes again and imagine some photographs, closeups of crumpled paper money in different denominations.
Yesterday, Joerg Colberg from Conscientious posted a link to a blog post by Michael Mazzeo with some photos from a new project by Will Steacy. The photos are closeups of the portraits of US presidents on wrinkled paper currency. About the photographs, Mazzeo writes “Will Steacy addresses the subject of debt at a time when our nation is on the cusp of financial crisis.”
When you looked at the images in Mazzeo’s post, was the experience of viewing Steacy’s photos more enriching than just imagining the wrinkled money? The photographs don’t satisfy me because the work does not go beyond Steacy having an idea to photograph crumpled bills.
There is no subtlety, there is no composition, there is no light, there is no feeling — there is no life. These attributes are important to me, and while I realize people have different priorities in art, I hope that more fine art photographers will understand that it is still relevant to value these qualities in their own work.
As a fine art photographer, you decide how to make photographs. You choose the types of projects to work on. You can reveal yourself in your work or you can hide behind irony and detachment. You can choose to make empty conceptual photographs that reject visual language and the history of visual art, or you can make work rich in feeling and meaning, work that isn’t easily summarized and sold with a two sentence blurb.
Walker Evans, William Eggleston, André Kertész, Henri Cartier-Bresson, W. Eugene Smith, Ray K. Metzker, Harry Callahan… the work of these photographers is personal, vital, reassuring. My photography may not be there yet, but I am confident that my heart is leading me in the right direction.