Monday Entry: Larry Sultan

http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/4aa/4aa422.htm

Monday Entry: Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson, one of the most influential contemporary photographers, was born in 1962 and received his BA from SUNY Purchase, and his MFA from Yale University. He is well known for his cinematic tableaux, many of which were extravagant productions. He deftly moves between shooting scenes on location and photographing in a soundstage at MASS MoCA. Whether inside the studio or out, his control over the details in his imagery is absolute. The lighting is bold and exquisite, as are the colors in his saturated scenes. He began by constructing dioramas for museums, and as his creativity grew, the set-ups became increasingly macabre and bizarre; in one set of images, he made a life-size cast of one of his legs, and placed the severed limb in the fabricated environment. Crewdson's Twilight series has gained an enormous amount of recognition for the stories it suggests and the tension in each image. Just like the series title implies, these scenes are set in that fertile time just before evening begins.

In an interview with Aperture Magazine, Crewdson reveals that he finds most of his inspiration while swimming. This bit of information stood out to me as quite intriguing. When I look at my own thinking process, many of the ideas I have tend to come to me while I'm in water as well. I do most of my creative thinking while in the shower, and have visited the local swimming pool for inspiration when I feel frustrated. Perhaps it is just the relaxing nature of water that allows the mind to focus, or it could be a subconscious link to the womb, a place for ideas to come to fruition.

http://www.luhringaugustine.com

http://www.aperture.org/crewdson/

http://www.gagosian.com/artists/gregory-crewdson/

Monday Entry: Christian Vogt

Swiss photographer Christian Vogt was born in 1946 and studied at the Basel Design School. He is known for his diverse body of work; he can easily transform, creating imagery in many different modes. Having worked steadily since the late 1960s, Vogt has acquired attention for numerous series, including 1994-1995's Idem Diversum, which is made of several, full-scale portraits of subjects with their eyes closed. The restricting black borders are reminiscent of the walls of a coffin. His more recent work was created outside of the photo studio and is surprisingly fresh for someone who has been working in the medium as long as Vogt has. Since Last Summer, Vogt's 2003 collection of color work, is rife with bizarre photographs, which appear formally sound, yet spontaneous at the same time. The landscapes and figural scenes are set at dusk, which almost becomes a character itself. This collection was an experiment for the artist, he was not attempting to build a series, rather just photographing what he observed during long summer evenings. Moving on, he returned to the practice of creating series in 2004 with Viewings, a more detached and cerebral group of images focused on the tension between interior spaces and the worlds that lie beyond their windows.

Vogt's photography from 2003-2004 resonates strongly with me. I love the mischievous and dark qualities in Since Last Summer; one longs for the events that immediately led to the scenes caught on film. The sobriety of his compositions in his 2004 series of interiors is as unnerving as it is fascinating. Everything is balanced, and the colors almost form bands, as in color field paintings.


http://www.christianvogt.com

http://www.schaden.com/book/VogChrPho03785.html

http://www.webjournal.ch/article.php?article_id=1015

Monday Entry: Katherine Wolkoff

Katherine Wolkoff's body of work is surprisingly diverse, deftly moving from one subject matter to the next. She was born in 1976 in Indiana, studied American History at Barnard College, and graduated with an MFA in Photography from Yale in 2003. In 2007, the artist revealed her series of deer beds, which are simple impressions made by the animals in grass fields. Much like her silhouettes of birds and people, this series of photos engages the viewer, inviting him to imagine the details of the animal, given just the outline. There is a great sense of motion and unease in these pictures, for the animals would have had to be startled away from these habitats relatively quickly before the photos were taken, in order for the beds to be intact. Her silhouettes are equally intriguing; in a way, they are working against the audience's immediate needs while exercising their creativity. Wolkoff allows the colorful plumage of the birds and the facial features of her human models to be superimposed on these silhouettes. We end up seeing just what we want to see in the end. She has moved on to a series of images of New Orleans, after being razed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

I am a great proponent of work that suggests more than it actually shows to the viewer. Absence can be extremely powerful when handled as wisely as Wolkoff has shown. Her deer beds are deceptively simple and carry with them a great deal of possibility.






http://www.wipnyc.org/blog/katherine-wolkoff.html

http://katherinewolkoff.com/

www.point-mag.com/pdf/Point-KatherineWolkoff.pdf

Monday Entry: Candida Hofer

Candida Hofer, who was born in Eberswalde, Germany in 1944, is one of the many acclaimed artists who have learned the traditions of the deadpan aesthetic while studying with the great Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf. Like her fellow peers, Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, and Thomas Ruff, Hofer maintains a cool, detached mood throughout her work. She is known for her exquisite deadpan photographs of public spaces and institutions, which are eerily devoid of people. She has photographic collections of libraries, offices, theaters and more locations. Absence and ambience are her two central concepts; time passes in these public locations and the lighting shifts, and the viewer is reminded of haunted spaces where once life flourished. She is interested in the formal qualities of these spaces, yet it is not the design of the locations alone that draws the viewer's attention; in a good number of these scenes, there are hints that people have just left or will be returning soon.

I am aiming towards this direction with my current series. I love the cool quality of light in these interiors. The absence that I was hinting at with the first part of this year's series is quieter in my new work, but no less apparent, I feel. Hofer's series is similar to my own, in terms of the angles and locations, yet I want to put more emphasis on individual objects and incorporate dramatic lighting.


http://www.renabranstengallery.com/hofer.html

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E3DA173AF936A25753C1A9629C8B63

http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/hfer_candida.php

Monday Entry: Katrin Freisager

Freisager was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1960, and has studied photography in Berlin, Paris, and New York. Her artwork often centers around the themes of suspension, ambiguity, and the tension between fiction and reality. The majority of her photographs feature young women, uniformly attired in tan stockings and underwear. There faces are not often revealed, and they are taking part in actions and activities that seem foreign to the viewer. A strange sense of alienation and foreboding pervades her imagery. The scenes are nearly monochromatic. In Freisager's untitled series from 2002, several limbs from various hosts combine hauntingly to create one abstract form. Her photographs are related to painting, and often look like figural studies for a later work.

I love her restricted palette and emphasis on form. Because of the limited color range, the shadows appear deeper, playing a stronger role. The images featuring groups of models are more interesting to me than the earlier ones with one solitary subject. The purpose behind their interactions is withheld from the audience, a concept that I find intriguing.


http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_7_39/ai_75761343

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/untitled/

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980CE2D81F39F930A25755C0A9659C8B63

Monday Entry: Olivier Christinat

Christinat's artwork builds upon the examination of truth in the medium of photography, which I have been researching recently.He is a native of Switzerland, yet was born in France in 1963, and studied photography at the School of the Arts in Lausanne from 1980-1984. He has shifted between various styles, he has an extensive body of female nudes with neutral backgrounds, but I find his staged group scenes the most enigmatic and fascinating. His series Evenements, which was created between 1999 to 2002, depict groups of men and women, all dressed in dark suits and dresses and posed in such a way to recall famous political photographs. One of the images shows a group of six women gathered around the body of man laid out on a table. This tableaux is based upon a photograph of a Spanish family's wake during the Francisco Franco regime taken by W.Eugene Smith. It is fascinating to look at all of the various gestures displayed by the models in his images. Once he takes the figures from these politically charged photographs and removes them from their context, the interest level soars. The uniformity of their costuming is juxtaposed with the individuality in their gestures.

I first became aware of Olivier Christinat while my current series was still in its gestation period, one year ago. I was immediately drawn to the positioning of his figures and intrigued by the limited color palette he employs. The facial expressions are an integral part of the photographs, and I intend to incorporate more faces into my series.


http://expositions.bnf.fr/face/rencon/chris/index.htm

http://www.pascalpolar.be/repartistes/christinat/christinat.html

www.gdvs.com

Monday Entry: Peter Garfield

Peter Garfield's artwork centers on the fine line between fiction and reality. Born in Stanford, Connecticut in 1961, Garfield studied photography at Dartmouth and received his MFA from Pratt Institiute in 1987. He is best known for his fantastic Mobile Homes series, which feature haphazard looking images of houses falling from the sky. The artist wanted a tabloid-like appearance to the pictures, and used blur to obscure their artificiality. The photographs are absurd and surprisingly convincing. He created the images by dangling small, detailed models of houses in front of his lens. The model houses are in various states of destruction, which suggests the deterioration of family life.Garfield continued this charade by writing an interview in which he reveals that his process involves the dropping of actual houses. Intrigued by his ability to blur fiction and reality, the artist staged mock-documentary photographs of the creation of this series. In one image, which was digitally manipulated, a helicopter lifts a full-sized house miles into the air, prepared to drop its cargo at a moment's notice. With the same humorous approach, Garfield filled galleries with color-coded garbage for his series, Four Seasons. In the exhibit, he matched garbage with seasonal colors, and analyzed what we as a country consume and dispose of. I love his incendiary sense of humor and the steps that he followed to mask the artificiality of his Mobile Homes series.



http://www.petergarfield.net/index.shtml

http://www.pierogi2000.com/flatfile/garfieldp.html

http://chiefmag.com/issues/4/features/Peter-Garfield/

Monday Entry: Trinidad Carrillo

Peruvian artist Trinidad Carrillo was born in Cusco in 1975 and spent a good deal of her young life living in Sweden. She recently received her MFA from the School of Photography at Gothenburg University in 2006. Her series "Braiding" reflects an intertwining of reality and dreams and also refers to the inclusion of both documentary photos and staged shots in the series. She has, in a sense, lead two lives, because of her frequent trips between Peru and Sweden. Her photos, whether documentary or staged always feature her close friends and relatives. Each image draws from her personal memories and stories from her life, which leads the viewer to involve himself in unraveling the meanings.

Carrillo and I have a great deal in common, when it comes to image-making. The artist keeps stories in mind while envisioning her scenes, and does not often share those tales with her audience; she does not do all of the work for the viewer. When she presents her photographs, they are printed large and a typical presentation features scenes taken at numerous locations. Her artwork is lively, imaginative and intelligent. Carrillo prefers to shoot with film, because she loves the uncertainty involved with the medium. Scenes shot at night can appear very differently on film than they do in person.


http://www.trinidadcarrillo.com

http://www.revolvergaleria.com

http://www.kopenhagen.dk/interviews/interviews/interview_trinidad_carrillo/

Monday Entry: Salla Tykka

I am increasingly impressed with the artists who have emerged from Helsinki' Academy of Fine Arts. Each time I research the school I am met with the work of intriguing new artists such as Salla Tykka, who graduated from there in 2003. Tykka works in film, video, and still photography, and her film stills are taught and fascinating on their own. She is best known for a trilogy of short 35mm films, Lasso, Thriller, and Cave, which she created between 2000 and 2003, each dealing with the maturation of a young woman, and rites of passage. While the subject matter is familiar, Tykka's imagery is striking. In her 2006 work entitled Zoo, which was influenced by Alfred Hitchcock, a narrative of a young woman ambling around a zoo is intercut with footage of male athletes competing in a round of underwater rugby. The two disparate story lines come together in the end, finding the heroine submersing herself in a pool of water. Inquisitive heroines often find tragic ends in her work.

Looking at Tykka's film stills has made me interested in re-examining the short films I made last year, in hopes of isolating single frames for presentation. Distilling an entire narrative down into one image is what interests me most in photography, and I have never approached it from her angle before.



http://www.sallatykka.com/

http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/28/salla_tykka_trilogy.html

http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/28/salla_tykka_trilogy.html

Monday Entry: Rebecca Sittler

With an excellent sense of humor, Nebraska native Rebecca Sittler looks to the history of painting for her compositions. Sittler, who received her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art, juxtaposes bizarre arrangements of everyday objects with domestic settings, which creates a surreal and startling effect. In her series, "A Spectacle and Nothing Strange", the artist plays with our conceptions of where food, such as potatoes, marshmallows, and sandwiches, should be found around the house and inverts them. She creates similar scenes with non-food related objects in the same series. Her color palette is soothing and controlled, even if the scene's content is ridiculous. One particular image, which is titled "Momento Mori" finds a pile of used muffin wrappers heaped on a plate, with a plastic electric candle in the background. In this photo, Sittler uses two common symbols found in classic paintings, the momento mori, which could be an arrangement of fruit, flowers, or even a skull, which represents the inevitability of death, and the single lit candle, a symbol of God's presence. The contemporary setting and irreverence of the modern objects within a formal context are intriguingly uncouth.

While my work is quite different from Rebecca Sittler's in terms of content, I appreciate her sly and surreal sense of humor. I attempt to bring a similar bizarre quality to my photographs that catches the viewer off guard. My favorite type of image is one that makes the viewer unsure whether he should laugh or remain unsettled.



http://www.artslant.com/global/artists/show/6525-rebecca-sittler

http://www.rebeccasittler.com/

http://www.florida-arts.org/grants/fellowship/2006/sittler/

Monday Entry: Birthe Piontek

This week's artist, Birthe Piontek was born in Leer, Germany in 1976. She studied language and German literature as an undergraduate, and went on to obtain her Master's in Communication Design and Photography in 2004 from the University of Duisburg-Essen. Her current work, which is titled, Sub Rosa studies the vulnerability of youth versus the experience and hardship found inevitably in adulthood. Piontek's series is a combination of staged portraits and still lifes, which work together to hint at a narrative. Her work is both visually striking and familiar; perhaps her imagery is recognizable because it taps into our own memories of that transition to adolescence. Piontek sights Anna Gaskell, Jeff Wall, and Philip-Lorca diCorcia as influences, and their affect on her work can be clearly detected. Her image of a milk bottle emptying its contents on a staircase is especially Gaskell-esque. The lighting on the bottles is quite ethereal and the picture is riven with deep shadows.

Like the artists' work that has impacted her, Piontek's photographs caught my eye immediately. Her visual storytelling techniques are refined and subtle. The subjects in her portraits do not seem to fit into a specific time period, which is especially intriguing. I admire the seamless manner in which she arranges portraits and still lifes together to express her narratives. It may be that I am just attached to Gaskell, Wall, and diCorcia's artwork, but I find her photographs fascinating.

http://www.photoeye.com/gallery/forms2/statement.cfm?id=195568

http://www.charlesguice.com/artists_bp.html


http://www.jenbekman.com/

Monday Entry: David Levinthal

American photographer David Levinthal was born in San Francisco, California in 1949. He studied studio art at Stanford before receiving his Master's Degree in Photography from Yale in 1973. Levinthal's family was very wealthy and well respected, and allowed him to explore his interest in the arts fully. He is known for his saturated images of figurines shot with an extremely shallow depth of field. The artist constructs environments for the pre-made figures he collects and photographs them with a 20"x 24" Polaroid camera. Although he does not create the figurines, he does repaint them builds backgrounds for the tableaux.
In Hitler Moves East, his first series to feature toys, Levinthal collaborated with cartoonist Gary Trudeau on recreations of Germany's invasion of Russia in the winter of 1941. He was able turn this successful series into an entire book. Growing up Jewish, the artist had a painful link to the second world war, and he has explored this in multiple series dealing with German soldiers and concentration camps. His photographs explore concepts such as voyeurism, Jewish identity, and the re-creation of events. He has had great success with his recreation of inherently American scenes which feature baseball legends and western heroes in the form of plastic figurines.

Levinthal employs intensely saturated colors to dramatic effect. I am drawn to the richness of his color palettes as well as the depth in his shadows. As I continue with my series of tableaux, I intend to experiment with shallow depths of field, a hallmark of Levinthal's photography; he wisely uses focus to draw attention to certain areas in the images and to mask some aspects of his fabricated backgrounds. His artwork is a sophisticated extension of what, I am sure is the way many artists began to be interested in photography and compostion as a children, by filming scenarios created with toys.


www.davidlevinthal.com/index.html

http://www.connercontemporary.com/artists/david-levinthal/

http://www.davidlevinthal.com/article_artinamerica.html