Skott Chandler or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog

You've Got Another Thing Coming

2011-04-04T07:02:00.001-06:00

A little preview of what is to come!

This is my Private Life. Come and get me Out of Here!

2011-02-13T11:32:00.005-07:00

Here is a sample of what I'm going to be doing for my thesis....After some thought, progressing away from the Dead Time Experiments is probably a good move. I might revisit the idea in the future, but right now the project has progressed to this.

I'm uploading it big so you can get a close look at it.

I still don't have a title for this work, but it's about voyeurism, surveillance, scopophilia (from Greek "love of looking", is deriving pleasure from looking), the idea of privacy, and how we interact with interior space.

I'm open for title suggestions, so bring them on!

I am also looking for folks (in Savannah for now) to let me invade their home life to photograph it for a hour or so.

It Don't Matter if you're Black or White

2010-12-04T17:23:00.009-07:00

Back in good ol' Cedar City Utah for the winter break! SCAD really got their moneys worth out of all of the students working on the Documenting Sham Shui Po book. I do miss a lot of things about Hong Kong, but it is nice to be home.

It really was a great experience getting to work with Steve Aishman and Yoav Horesh. They are both incredibly talented artist and professors. I consider myself extremely lucky to have had the opportunity to work as closely with them as I did.

The quarter flew by, but it was one of the most important quarters of my school career. Just the scholarship for the book project was enough, however my 45 hour MFA candidacy review was ultimately more significant. Until recently I have been struggling with getting a cohesive concept that I was happy with conceptually and visually, that didn't feel forced. The work in the last post was the artistic break I had been searching for...The 6 photographs I had made up to that point (I made 7 in total while in Hong Kong) and my strange concept, got me passed the review with higher ratings than I expected.

Here are the most recent 3 images from the Dead Time Experiments.

Joseph, Study Room

Rebecca, Admin Office

Sam, Bad Room

This work has a long way to go and I have a great professor for my Photo Arts critique class winter quarter, so that should help push the progress of project. I know for sure I need to make the locations more significant. I recently invested in and 8x10 field camera for this project so I can have better quality negatives with the option of making large prints for a show and more intimate platinum contact prints that will just look cool.

As I said, I'm back in Cedar until after Christmas. It's been a lot of fun to catch up with my friends who are graduating and go to their BFA shows! I'm so excited about the work that they are making! SUU is become a creative breeding ground for photographers that I'm proud to be a part of.

Now that my artistic pickle has ended (knock on wood), or maybe the fact that I have had some downtime to think, I came up with a project that I can continue each time I come back to Cedar City. I don't have a title for it, but I have been going out to the farms surrounding the city after dark, setting up my camera and photographing the animals using a high-powered spotlight. Here are some images from my Sheep session the other night....I try to find farms away from houses so I don't anger an armed farmer who doesn't understand what I am doing.

Until next time...Here are the Sheep!

I Take Pictures, Photographic Pictures, Bright Light, Dark Room, Bright Light, Dark Room

2010-10-15T07:00:00.009-06:00

I am half way through the quarter here in Hong Kong. I have been incredibly busy here because my mind, body and soul belongs to Savannah College of Art and Design....I would love to post some of the large format work that I have been making for the documentation of the Sham Shui Po district, here in Hong Kong. But again, SCAD owns it and i cannot release any of it t it until the book is published. This means you get to wait....sorry

On the other hand, I have been working on my personal work! Though most of my time is monopolized by the Book Project, I still do have my 45 hour (or half way to thesis) review at the end of this quarter. I have to have work to be reviewed at review, so I have been working on a new idea. The Unusual & Unexplained project is on a rest...a lengthy rest that could mean they are done, but who knows. To give these new images some context, they are inspired by two books I read. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, which I read a couple years ago, and Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk, that I read just before moving to Hong Kong. I have always thought about the idea of people's interactions with interiors and how they can feel bigger and more significant than they actually are and the idea of the room as a stage to act out personal dramas of everyday life. For the project, I start by finding a room, big or small, that the volunteer has not seen and is unfamiliar with. I make them leave all phones or things to pass the time, then I leave the volunteer in the room with a small flashlight, at night with all lights off, for one hour. I have a 4x5 camera positioned in the room (normally in the most uninteresting area that I don't think they will explore) open for the entire time to map out, or more track, the time they spend in the room. At the end of the hour I release them from the room and ask them to write about their experience. Anything that influenced their thoughts or actions during their time in the room. I eventually plan on pairing the writings with the photographs in the gallery or in a book. As for now I haven't scanned their text, but here are the first four images, one of them being a self portrait. I did this to myself so I would know what I was asking my volunteers to do for me. Just to note, I am not a misogynist who enjoys locking women away....It just happened that the first people to accept my request for volunteers were women.

These should be seen bigger so you can see where people show up and other fun intricacies....but you have too look at them small...because this is the internet.

Self Portrait, Courtroom No. 1

Michelle, Duct Room #326

Charlotte, Storage Room #103

Jessie, Pau Room

Sing it Back to Me

2010-08-20T22:37:00.006-06:00

One thing that I have been learning and understand more and more as I progress as an artist has been how much the language that accompanys the art greatly shape the viewer's perception and understanding of what you have created.

A few months back I signed up to meet and have my work critiqued by some amazing gallery curators and photography critics. In the first meeting as I was self consciously reciting the story behind the Bedscapes, the curator commented about how much my story added to images that she was already taken with. She then inquired if I had an artist statement to accompany the work that encompassed the story I had just told her. Half lying, I said that I did. As if to challenge my lie, she asked for me to email her a link to the images...along with a copy of the artist statement. Biking home, I attempted, but could vaguely recall what I had written for my BFA exhibit of the images. That night I sifted through the abundance of text documents in hopes of tracking down that long orphaned document. After reading the first paragraph I slapped myself in the forehead and wished I had never found the feral words that were so uncouthly forced upon the page....Yet that vial text served as an inspiration for a rewrite. If not for the curator, to personally redeem my embarrasses that this text hung in public, pride.

Tonight I was looking at the Bedscapes on my flickr account. I remembered that after sending the text to the curator, I had copied and pasted it into the description for the flickr set and forgotten about it again. Now this blog is my was to finnish my penance for hanging the now seemingly, uneducated statment on the gallery wall next to work that wasn't deserving of the shameful text. I do have to credit my good friend Angie Smith for cleaning up my sloppy grammar and punctuation on most everything I have ever written...including the Bedscape statement.

Bedscapes:

The idea behind this series comes from a childhood memory of when I would spend the weekend at my Grandmother’s house. Every morning I woke to a unique early morning light. As I lay in my bed with my head still on my pillow, I would look out across the bed as that light transformed the sheets into a strange and surreal landscape. This was my secret world, I would never tell anyone about it. Lying there I would decide what type of landscape I had created in my sleep that past night. In the summers the thin sheets created vast oceans with waves, in the winter my heavy blanks made monstrous mountains and deep valleys. I never saw this world anywhere else but here, in this room, at this house.

Many years passed, and so did my Grandmother. Shortly after her death, my sister’s family stayed in the house while waiting for their home to be built. When my sister and her family moved out, my mother asked me if I would like to move in and take care of my Grandmother’s home. I accepted.

Moving my things into the home I unconsciously placed my bed in the same spot, in the same room that I had slept in as a child. That first night I slept better than I had for a long time. As morning came I could feel the sun warming my face. I opened my eyes. The lost memories of this unique landscape returned.

Time passed and it was apparent that I needed to capture this phenomenon I had been seeing every morning. It did not work. It looked nothing like what I was seeing when I woke up. After many failed attempts, I was still not ready to give up. I knew that there was something more I needed to do to make this work.

Finally I decided to not just attempt to capture what was there when I woke, but to build what I wanted to see. Progressing that idea, I concluded that I could create replicas of well-known landscapes out of my blankets, sheets, pillows and other items from my bedroom. My thinking was that if I photographed them with black and white film, from the right angle, and with the right light, I could give the landscape a sense of place, and create an illusion that these photographs were not just of my bed.

I spent numerous hours researching places I felt viewers would connect with; then I began constructing these places. At night in my bedroom, I spent hours propping up pillows and getting the wrinkles and folds to lay just right, then adjusting the light and camera to best sell the illusion that these photographs of my bed were more than just the bed.

I hope the images in the series provoke and interaction — getting up close enough to see the texture of the sheets and moving far enough away to see the full illusion of the constructed landscape as well as to share something from my childhood I kept to myself until now.

The Apollo Programme Was a Hoax

2010-07-22T15:07:00.006-06:00

Rummaging through some old glass slide photographs at the Paris Market today here in Savannah, I happened upon an image that I could not refuse to purchase. After laying slide after slide on the light table with the hot sun from the window in my face, my eyes widened in awe of the image on the glass of this particular slide. It was the lunar surface. Knowing that most of these slides are dated in the 18 & 1900s, I scooped it back up, investigating it for the date. Looking at the slide made me think if technology in those centuries could make such an amazing image of the surface of the moon. Unfortunately it did not have a date, but written in cursive on the side was "Lunar Appeniues. Nas". I bought the slide and two other images, one an old tintype of a victorian type set up, the other of a woman in a wheel chair from 1920ish who had a dental infection. I proceeded home, excited about my purchases and blissfully unaware of what my "Lunar Appeniues" really was.

Back at the apartment I decided to scan the slides and tintype in order to get a better look (or at least a bigger look because my scanner is dying) at the images. On the tintype of the woman, someone long ago had scratched a crude gold necklace around the neck of her blouse. The one of the woman with dental infection was an amazingly sharp and well exposed photograph, that is quite creepy because of the way the woman is returning the camera's gaze. Lastly I scanned the Lunar Appeniues. When the scan opened in photoshop it looked a little weird. Not technically weird, more surrealist weird. As is was staring at the scan, making some corrections to the image, Shannon enquired if I would be disappointed if it was a fake. "No! It would make it even better if it was a fake!" ran out of my mouth before I even thought about answering. Retrieving the slide from the bed of the scanner I turned it over, again noticing the handwritten text. As contemporary culture has trained me, I Googled "Lunar Appeniues". Did I mean lunar Apennines? Sure, I guess I did... Who am I to question the almighty search engine? I clicked to view images and there on the first row was the exact image on my slide. "Could this be worth a lot of money?" was my initial thought...then I remembered that most of these slides were labeled with the names of colleges, so that thought left as fast as it came. The image linked me to a page with the image as well as the photographer and what the image was made for. here is what the description read:

THE LUNAR APENNINES, ARCHEMEDES PLATE IX

Woodburytype
from The Moon: Considered as A Planet, A World, and a Satellite 1874
Image: 20 cm x 16 cm

James Nasmyth (b. 1808) was a Scottish engineer and inventor, and an instrumental figure in the early development of steam-powered machine tools of modern industry. Nasmyth’s contribution to the history of early photography in itself is notable. An amateur astronomer, he built refracting telescopes to observe the moon--drawing, photographing and notating its surface in incredible detail. Using these notes, together with James Carpenter, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, they constructed large-scale plaster models of the lunar surface then carefully lit and photographed them. The resulting photographs of these moon reconstructions were eventually published in 1874 in The Moon: Considered a Planet, a World, and a Satellite, one of the most beguiling photobooks of the 19th century for its curious amalgam of pedagogical simulation, theatricality, and debatable scientific study. Their stated aim was to educate the eye with a close examination of the moon to understand its true nature. In their desire to demonstrate the widely held theory that the moon was still volcanically active, they made their famous photographic analogy comparing the contrasting effect of the rapidly cooling lunar surface with a wrinkled hand and shriveled apple. It is also significant as one of the first books to be illustrated by the Woodburytype photo-mechanical process. Developed in 1864 and used until 1900, it proved to be the only commercial printing method that successfully replicated the details of a photograph. Without the interference of a screen, woodburytypes produce true middle values.

So it was a fake! I love the photo even more now! It remindes me of the Apollo Prophecies by Kahn & Selesnick and most of the work of VIk Muniz. James Nasmyth and James Carpenter were avaent-garde and they didn't even know it!

Again my conditioning kicked in and I went to Amazon to see if I could get my hands on their book The Moon: Considered as A Planet, A World, and a Satellite and of course I can. Google even has a full copy of it online here. The photographs in the book are incredible and the 1800s "science" theory is as good as a sci-fi novel!

Finding this is really helping fuel my mind, giving me a breadth of new ideas for photographs. We all know how much I love constructing false realities and places...so there is no way all this could not have primed the metaphorical pump deep within my mind. Ironically, earlier today, as I sat pondering the future of my art while living in Hong Kong and mindlessly scrolling through the recommended items on Google Reader, I stumbled upon a video of the UFO's in China that shut down the airport. Finding a fake lunar surface from the 1800s + Hong Kong + UFO's in China = lethal concoction stirring in my brain for this coming quarter. Now all I need to do is ponder all this for a while and see where it leads me.

Funny how things like this happen.

This is what is on the slide I bought today

Here are some images from the online copy of The Moon: Considered as A Planet, A World, and a Satellite

My Work Featured in The Velvet Cell Magazine

2010-06-18T20:19:00.001-06:00

Check it out!

Turn and Face the Strange Ch-Ch-Changes

2010-05-28T13:38:00.003-06:00

Well, I have made it half way through the MFA program here at SCAD. I feel great about my progress and have some big news! A couple weeks ago I was informed by the Dept. Chair, that I was selected as one of three current MFA photo students (Greer Muldowney and Charlotte Shuber, some of my best friends in the program are the other two), to be given a full ride scholarship for the coming fall quarter...But there was a catch. It was at the new SCAD campus...in Hong Kong. Needless to say we are all pumped to be given this opportunity. While we are there, we are creating photographs for a book that is going to be published to promote the new campus. The work we make will also be exhibited around galleries in Hong Kong, also to promote the campus. So as of mid September Shannon and I will be living it up in the Sham Shui Po district in Hong Kong until november.

Hong Kong scholarship aside, this was still a really great quarter. I can honestly say that I learned more about photography, as well as my self as an artist, this quarter than I have in my entire life. Articles I read in my Issues in Contemporary Photography course were mind blowing and really made me investigate how I create and view photographs. I also feel that class has helped provide me with information and knowledge that I can use to better inform my work.

In Alternative Processes, I learned how to print in platinum & palladium, a medium that not only gives you the greatest tonal range available, but will exist for as long as the paper can survive.

In Photo Arts I work on progressing my video project. Conceptually it came a long way, but I still don't feel it is something that I can turn into a thesis show. On a good note, the videos have helped me work out of my slump. While doing them I came up with an idea that I am going to begin working on this summer. I feel like it could be one of the best projects I have imagined up, and if I can execute it properly, I think I will have an amazing MFA thesis project on my hands.

Here are the last two videos of the quarter. I will most likely, camera permitting, keep making this work. Though It will take a back seat to the new idea.

Voodoo Ritual from Skott Chandler on Vimeo.

Bloody Mary from Skott Chandler on Vimeo.

Quit Complaining Brother, No One Lives Forever!

2010-05-08T11:25:00.006-06:00

Ahhh the séance...This was a really fun video to do, I even printed off instructions on how to conduct a séance so we could be as authentic as possible. Here is the link if you want to do your own!

Séance How To

I might lighten this video up a little because there is a cross on the door behind the table that was lost when I "set the mood". But my slowly dying monitor could be the real reason I can't see it...

Enjoy?

Séance Summoning of a Spirit from Skott Chandler on Vimeo.

There is Definitely, Definitely, Definitely no Logic to Human Behaviour

2010-04-23T07:37:00.002-06:00

Here is the latest of the Myths & Legends films. It is a Snipe Hunt...For those of you only familiar with it from the movie Up, here is a wikipedia explanation:
A snipe hunt, a form of wild-goose chase that is also known as a fool's errand, is a type of practical joke that involves experienced people making fun of credulous newcomers by giving them an impossible or imaginary task. The origin of the term is a practical joke where inexperienced campers are told about a bird or animal called the snipe as well as a usually preposterous method of catching it, such as running around the woods carrying a bag or making strange noises.

Ah, brings back so many memories of boy scouts...except there are not so many stupid misquotes in Utah.

Snipe Hunt from Skott Chandler on Vimeo.

Come Closer and See, See into the Trees, Find the Girl while you can...

2010-04-20T16:23:00.003-06:00

Really!? Have I really found a way to use song lyrics in my last 6 post?...That is just nucking futs! or just a way too in-depth knowledge of random songs.

Here are some fun photos I made when Shannon and I went hiking at Priest Landing out on Skidaway Island. I was using some Zone System techniques I learned in b&w craft the past quarter...I got some really good images for one roll of film...I think I have another roll somewhere....So if I find it I'll post them as well.

If you want to see them bigger click them and go to large file size. There are also some more at flickr.com/photos/skott

...SHOUT!...SHOUT!...SHOUT! SHOUT AT THE DEVIL!!!

2010-04-19T14:26:00.002-06:00

So I guess I'm letting the iceberg project melt for this quarter... I'll put it in my moleskin with my project pool and save it for later, when I have a more cohesive environment for creating them.

It looks like the tentatively titled Myths and Legends video project, is what all my professors love and want me to pursue (even the one I though would hate it ended up really liking them). And I'm okay with that. I don't know why I was attempting to start something entirely new this quarter...this was something Shannon picked out to me one night when I was complaining about my work sucking. And she was right, I shouldn't give up on them.

Looking at all the videos, the Devil at the Crossroads has the most narrative. It was suggested today that I try to make more like that one because it is a strong film. So, if anyone has any myths, legends or other weird stories I can look into, link me to them so I can check them out.

The Devil at the Cross Roads from Skott Chandler on Vimeo.

Video Killed the Radio Star

2010-04-07T19:25:00.004-06:00

I was looking through blogs on my google reader and saw a still from this video....You can imagine the WTF!?! moment that I had. I once had someone who did video tell me that you could do the exact effect that I was doing with my Photocubism with video....until today I had never seen it done.

But hey, I did everything done in the video first! And without the frame rate of film. Not to be vain but, I think that this video was inspired by my work ;)

And because this blog is on the topic of video....I have been confronted by professors and peers encourage me to continue and progress my Myths and Legends video project. So you can most likely expect to see more of those. if you haven't seen the current ones, please proceed to this link ---> http://vimeo.com/skottchandler/videos

Vital Signs - Midnight Juggernauts from midnight juggernauts on Vimeo.

What's Cooler than Being Cool...ICE COLD!

2010-04-02T11:44:00.002-06:00

So I am starting a new project...dealing with ice and Antarctica. None of these images are final images, they are test for two things, sculpting medium and the choice between color and b&w.

So i'm looking for your opinion...color or b&w?

Playdough

Plastic Bag

Hit Me With Your Best Shot

2010-03-09T19:16:00.003-07:00

AHHHHHHhhhhhh......So I feel that these are progressing very nicely. I am finding ways to make them more painterly. It should be fun to experiment with these and the coming semester.

In the Midnight Hour I Cry More! More! More!

2010-03-03T00:04:00.003-07:00

I am still experimenting with the process I discovered last week. I find the paradox of using a computer to make such expressive and gestural shapes seen in cubist, futurist and surrealist painting to be a great concept. Another great concept is using the computer to deconstruct and reconstruct the reality that is the photographs, and manipulate them into this unique imagery....well, that is enough theorizing for one blog. Here are the images.

In the Corner of the Room

Torso on Bed

A Few More New Images.

2010-02-27T11:52:00.002-07:00

This process is great. Every time you do it you get a different result. When you change the order of the layered images around the next time you run it the image will change greatly.

Here are the two newest ones.

Head on the Door

The Kiss

Finally...Some Creativity....

2010-02-25T20:13:00.003-07:00

Today in my Color Craft class we learned a technique to reduce noise my merging a lot of the same image together. Because the noise patter is random, this process averages out the photos and BAM! no more noise...I was freaked out by how it worked, when the surrealist painter in the back of my head said. "Wow, you could really F*@# with photographs of people if you did this in the right way with the right images." Then the rusty cogs that have been jammed since my exodus from Utah were lubricated, and began to move. I have been playing with this process ever since class and I have to say...I'm pretty happy with what it's creating. The concept of averaging out the images and getting the "Median Portrait" is incredibly fascinating and has a lot of avenues I can explore. And to think, I was debating about not going to that class today because it was another lecture on reducing noise...

Skott Median Portrait Test 1

Skott Median Portrait Test 2

Shannon Median Portrait Test

Median Child Skott & Shannon

Shannon, Removal of Jacket

Videos Are Coming Online!

2010-02-21T10:58:00.001-07:00

Visit vimeo.com/skottchandler to see some of the other videos. I'm preparing the other ones, so they should be up soon.

Here is my latest one

Sea Serpent from Skott Chandler on Vimeo.

More Film Stills

2010-01-26T19:23:00.004-07:00

This still is from "The Jersey Devil"

I am still waiting for some editing software...but I might go to the film department and see if I can use their computers that have final cut. Maybe I should take a film class so I can learn more about filming techniques and the editing software.

You can click it to view bigger

Samples of New Work

2010-01-21T07:26:00.005-07:00

So I am FINALLY making some new work that I like and that also feels more like me.

The projected is titled "Myths and Legends". For this project I am making short films about a specific myth or legend...I'm still in the process of learning how the 5D Mark II video works, but I'm getting the hang of it. I have found that lighting for filming is different then for a regular photo. The lights need to be a lot brighter, even if you are making it look dark.

Anyway, here are two stills I pulled from "The Devil at the Crossroads" and "The Incubus" (not the band) films. I will post some films when I get them ready....

And If anyone has Final Cut and would like to donate it to my cause... please feel free to do so!

Yeah, I've Done the Magazine thing

2009-12-02T20:59:00.004-07:00

I never got to see the physical magazine, but I stumbled across this the other day and laughed. I had totally forgotten about it.

Amazing Street Art

2009-11-29T09:43:00.000-07:00

I love these street sculptures in NYC by Joshua Allen Harris. Check them out.

Some Fun Photographs

2009-11-28T10:46:00.001-07:00

Stumbled upon these while looking at dornob.com today. I thought they were special enough to share

These first ones are the work of photographer Markus Georg (www.markusgeorg.com)...Maybe i'm drawn to them because the echo what I was doing ith my Bedscape photos. His site is all auf Deutsch, but it's easy to navigate.

9/11 In New York

Stonehengege

The Matterhorn

Photographer James D. Griffioen (www.jamesgriffioen.net) did such a better job than I did showing the overgrowth that can happen to anything left alone for too long.

These are from his Feral Houses series.

These make me I think I need to start making Bedscapes again. I was looking through my prints and think there are some I could edit out. Also looking at my negs and there are a lot that I need to revisit.

Thanksgiving

2009-11-25T17:40:00.006-07:00

This is Shannon and my first Thanksgiving as Mr. & Mrs. and also our first one away from our families. We are eating with some friends here in Savannah....it's going be very non traditional...but incredibly epic. As far as I know right now it will be consisting of turkey sandwiches, 5lbs of snow crab legs as well as some tasty pumpkin chiffon, a recipe that Shannon got from her grandma, and whatever else is prepared by Daniel and Ellen.

Anyway HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Here are some things to help get you in the Thanksgiving mood

Short Film "The Big Empty"

2009-10-25T21:39:00.003-06:00

Here is the story behind this short film.

Robert Redford is staying at the hotel where I work while he is in Savannah filming his new movie. Tonight two of the guys from engineering went up to his room to hook up a Blue Ray player to his T.V. They needed a disk to check the player and there were two laying next to the T.V...One was still in the wrapper so they didn't want to take it out. The other was this short film...

The guys from engenering came down from his room and came to me and said "Scott, you seem like you are into weird movies. Have you ever seen something called the Big Empty with Selma Blair?" I said I wasn't familiar with it and asked why. The proceeded to tell me in the short part that they saw while testing the player, a gynecologist gets sucked up Selma Blair's vagina then comes back out all dusty and excited about what he discovered in there...Needles to say this was weird enough that I immediately got online and researched the film for them.

At first I was only finding some other films with the same title. Then thanks to IMDB.com I finally found what they were talking about. Shortly after that I found the full video on youtube and we watched the first 5 or 10 minutes there at work. The two of them were acting like it was the weirdest thing that they had ever seen, but after that 10 minuets I thought it was filmed very well and was a intriguing story. When I got home from work Shannon and I sat and watched the entire film (it's only about 20 minutes long) and it was actually quite a well done and interesting short film. I am posting it here so anyone who is interested can check it out. I looked on Netflix for it and it wasn't there. That must mean its pretty obscure and hard to find because Netflix has always had almost everything, even the most random and obscure movies, that I want to see.

So here it is. Enjoy it and thank Robert Redford for bringing it to my attention accidentally through the engineering guys

Alt Processes

2009-10-21T18:33:00.004-06:00

UPDATE FROM PICTUREVILLE
FROM THE BOOK OF ALTERNATIVE PHOTOGRAPHIC PROCESSES: 2ND EDITION

Update From Pictureville: 2007

About the time I wrote the introduction to the first edition of this book, there was a dynamic, and metaphorical, image-making community I called Pictureville. Pictureville consisted of several quite compatible neighborhoods, each with a different approach to decoration, structure, content, and expression, but universally committed to similar ways of seeing and being. They were, in ways that their aesthetic and political leaders would never comprehend, bipartisan and appreciative of the differences between them. They were, in a charming way, compatible.

One of the neighborhoods in Pictureville was committed to tradition and was quite pragmatic in regards to its syntax and philosophical convictions. Sure... there was a lot of political yammering about content and context, but in the end the intentions were compatible ... that is until the emperor’s new photographers moved in and began talking about pictures that no one else could see.

This traditionalist neighborhood was split into two parts, based on stylistic beliefs, and was referred to as Upper and Lower Normal. All of the dwellings had white walls... but you always knew which neighborhood you were in by whether there were mirrors, or windows, in the window frames. Both Upper and Lower Normal were constantly damp and smelled like used Rapid Fixer... reminding me of the stench coming from the sidewalk vents in front of the Ferranti-Dege camera store in Harvard Square. I had grown up in this neighborhood, loved it dearly, and the smell, although unpleasant, was comforting and reassuring. People in this community wore analog watches with hands on them.

Pictureville also had a modern digital neighborhood... that seemed to have materialized out of thin air. One day the birds were singing and the wind was making those romantic wind noises in the trees... the next it was all paved, cabled, and wired. There had been rumors that a development like this was coming but no one had expected it to develop as quickly as it had. Those who had just moved in called this new part of town “The Future”.

In The Future, all of the dwellings were in perpetual states of renovation... even those that had just been built. Apple wood and adobe were the accepted building materials and the neighborhood was always crowded with visiting, and very young, specialists brought in to assist in the repairs, upgrades, and reconstruction projects. You had no choice really... upgrades were required if you wanted to live in The Future. People in this community had watches with digits that blinked. This fact led one of the residents from Upper Normal, on Bath Road, I believe, to ask how the children in this neighborhood would ever learn the meaning of clockwise and counter clockwise.

The oldest section in Pictureville was Alternative Town. This section was populated by a snappy, but friendly, group of “old salts.” The structures in this part of Pictureville were made of paper, tin, egg whites, iron, silver, and, in the most elegant part of town, noble metals such as gold, platinum, and palladium. Oddly, most of the dwellings featured dark outlined edges that appeared to be unconcerned with staying in the lines of the house construction.

The inhabitants of this neighborhood enjoyed the eclectic nature of nature... and seemed most comfortable mixing, and appropriating, the visual elements of both their neighbors, and the other neighborhoods of Pictureville. The people in this community didn’t wear watches... but some had sundials on the front lawn.

It seemed that it happened without warning. The residents of the Upper and Lower Normal neighborhoods began to have trouble finding building materials to fix their homes. This, because more and more of the traditionalist building suppliers had stopped producing those materials in favor of those better suited to The Future... the modern, digitally dedicated, neighborhood.

At the same time, the traditionalists were rapidly being seduced by the alluring songs of the Sirens, the digital daughters of Achelous whose singing had lured many an “old salt” onto the proverbial rocks. Their tunes were seductive and it wasn’t long before

the traditionalists were convinced that the loss of their old materials wasn’t that tragic. Who, they asked, wouldn’t jump at the chance to trade in their stinky labs for the antiseptic cleanliness of the desktop... and the pure dependable beauty of binary code strings over delicate negative films.

And here we are. Pictureville is different now. The smelly neighborhood that I grew up in is shrinking rapidly and getting quainter by the minute. The digital neighborhood is looking a lot like Las Vegas... or L.A. ... or Mexico City... and the like, when one flies over them at night searching for a place to land. You know what I mean... like the neighborhood is so big now that you’ll never be able to find its true center.

Oddly enough, Alternative Town is also growing. Once it was clear that only two neighborhoods might survive in Pictureville, many inhabitants from the Upper and Lower Normal communities began to move in. They also began making their own materials and adapting their unique traditions, in a very anti-iconoclastic way, to the cherished parts of Alternative Town... and appropriating the useful elements they had found in The Future. For many, the health and well-being of Alternative Town was nothing less than a battle for the very soul of Pictureville. (I hear bagpipes.)

Reality is not as dire as this allegory. True, all the cherished family albums recently burned onto CD’s are doomed. All it will take is a decent solar storm, like the one that occurred in 1859, and 17 hours and 40 minutes later it’s likely that every hard drive on the receiving end of that solar flare will have instantly become a good doorstop. As I tell my students, if you have an image that means a lot to your family it would be an excellent idea to make a version of it using an alternative process with a noble metal.

Another thing I tell my students ... the future of photography is in its past.

© Christopher James – 2007 www.christopherjames-studio.com

JERRY SPANOLI:

I think the daguerreotype process is often mistakenly looked at as an antiquated method. In the 19th century no theoretical understanding of it was ever developed. It was purely a practical and commercial thing. I think the daguerreotype was abandoned before it was even understood. So what we have now is a medium that for all intents and purposes is brand new. And updating this, I think there's a similarity to the daguerreotype surface and an LCD screen that is going to become more intriguing over time. LCD screens have some of the same mechanical relationships to light that a daguerreotype does, except that with an LCD screen you have a moving matrix of color particles with light being forced through them. What you have there is a very active optical surface. With a daguerreotype being similar to that, I think that in the future, with people becoming more and more habituated to seeing their images in LCD screens and less on paper, that when they look at daguerreotypes they're actually going to resonate stronger with them. That's because they are going to recognize the liveliness of the daguerreotype surface and they are going to see how dead an actual photograph really is as an object. The main reason I'm interested in the daguerreotype is it's the medium that gets me the closest to the representation of the world within the camera.

And I hate the idea of people thinking I'm doing antique processes. You get people who say 'Do you do portraits?' And I say, 'Yeah.' And they say, "So do you provide the costumes or do I have to bring them?'

VIDEOS:

Joel-Peter Witkin on Art:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rQmnz_3ToM

Sunday morning Jerry Spagnoli on Daguerrotypes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GG6wD8J8JQ

Sally Mann about why she shoots wet plate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o62-YMQHeoI&feature=PlayList&p=70282F502D66CEFA&index=2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Khn5GN9cHWA

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/mann/clip2.html#

PHOTOGRAPHERS LINKS:
http://www.photogravure.com/key_examples/contemporary_osterburg.html

http://www.thedaglab.com/daguerreotype-process-details/wet-plate-collodion-process/

http://www.stephenberkman.com/

http://photoblog.statesman.com/artist-chuck-close

http://www.amoa.org/site/DocServer/Chuck_Close_GalleryGuide.pdf?docID=7102

http://www.savepolaroid.com/

http://theimpossibleproject.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Polaroid-One600-Classic-Instant-Camera/dp/B0001MB7RW/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1256174649&sr=8-4

FUN IMAGES :) &hearts &spades

An Old Idea...Worth Revisiting?

2009-10-08T12:21:00.002-06:00

So these are some old images I just found deep in my hard drive... I called "Two Seconds of Television" they were a study of how much information is flashed at us when we watch t.v. might this be an idea worth revisiting?... who knows...but it sure made some interesting imagery.

Fishing for Some Inspiration

2009-10-01T14:17:00.005-06:00

My creativity is (in my opinion) at an all time low...fabulous timing right? It's as if everyone around me is producing some sort of work and there I am shooting a landscape I hate...but for some reason i'm making it look better and nicer than I really see it and it's really not my style of photography whatsoever...almost like someone else is photographing through me...examples below.

See I told you they are really not me, but right now what is me?....So today in an attempt to pull myself out of my creative drought, I've been googling photographers I really like so I can copy some techniques or get some sort of idea for a new project or process. I'm really drawn to the technique and slightly disturbing photos of Gary Schneider. His work always gives me the "why didn't I think of this" comment in my head...So tonight I am going to attempt some images that use his exposure techneque in an attempt to create imagery that one would see in painting....or with the less exciting art of photoshop photomanipulation...Here are some of Schneider's images...can you imagine these printed larger than life in a dark gallery? Amazing...So if you have any artist of any medium I should look at link me to them!!!! DO IT NOW!!!!!!

New Project and Some Old Film...

2009-09-21T08:29:00.005-06:00

Well, I'm finally in school and had to come up with a new project after being idealess for months. My new project is tentatively called "The Suffocating South." I'll be making photographs about how the climate in the South causes the vegetation to overtake man and man made objects. Places around the outskirts of the city where I find signs of humans, to in the city where roots break apart sidewalks vines grow into and out of buildings. This is a place where humans are trying to coexist with nature, but nature seems to destroy and attempt to force its way to reclaim what was once it's own....

Here are some old photos. One from the SPE trip to Ouray and the other of Shannon at sunrise on Tybee Island....Enjoy?

Xia Xiaowan

2009-09-06T09:22:00.006-06:00

I stumbled upon one of Xia Xiaowan's paintings last night and was in such awe that I had to track down more of his work. I think the images explain it well enough on their own.

This is an amazing concept and technique. I'm wondering if there would be a way to apply it to photography? I'm going to have to ponder it of a while. My initial though is the collodion process...

Cool Air

2009-08-30T15:13:00.002-06:00

This photo is a happy accident...but says so much about how I feel about Savannah.

"23 Astonishing Examples of Light Painting"

2009-08-28T19:15:00.005-06:00

I googeled myself today and found this....I wish people would contact you and let you know when they put you in stuff like this...I didn't even submit the photo...But hey, i'm not going to complain

Here is the link to the article and some screen shots.

Sugimoto Can Never Fail Me

2009-08-22T11:37:00.007-06:00

I was looking for prints of Hiroshi Sugimoto's work today (because one day I would like a nice big print) and stumbled upon the Fraenkel Gallery that represents him as well as many other photographers. There I found this new series from Sugimoto and was again blown away by his ideas what he creates with the photographic medium.

Sugimoto's work has everything I feel photography as a fine art should have. Not only is his work conceptually strong, but he creates a visually stimulating image that can stand by its self without depending on an elaborate explanation of the meaning by the artist. That is something that I feel is being lost in photography today. It is as if many contemporary photographers have forgotten that they use a visual medium because so much of there work is based more so in the conceptual than the visual aspect of the medium.

Sugimoto will always serve as a reminder for me to take the time and create a strong concept with equally strong, or stronger photographic images to accompany it.

Bedscapes Thus Far

2009-06-19T07:17:00.002-06:00

I really want to do more of these....but I can't....Where I'm living in Savannah is not cohesive to them...and also I don't have my blue sheet that did %80 of them...it kinda makes me sad.

Today I was looking at what I have done so far...and I guess I do really like them more than I thought I did

I really need to update this

2009-05-14T22:21:00.001-06:00

So here it is!

I will now try to do this once a week!....I hope

Its Been Awhile....

2008-11-23T15:14:00.006-07:00

When I read this in my book today I just had to write it down...so i'm posting it here

"Remember that the truth is in the details. No matter how you see the world or what style it imposes on your work as an artist, the truth is in the details. Of course the devils there, too - everyone says so - but maybe truth and the devil are words for the same thing. It could be, you know."
~ From "Duma Key" by Stephen King

Here is a new photograph from a project i'm working on for my Grad School portfolio. The project is called "Bedscapes" a;; of the images are of famous landscapes remade on my bed with my sheets and pillows.

Enjoy

Anal Club!?!

2008-08-07T20:57:00.004-06:00

I took this while we were driving to Venice Beach in California.

At first I couldn't believe my eyes...Then I saw there was a dark blue C in front of the anal....Talk about bad signage....

Thought it was funny enough to share =)

Remember When Art Took Talent?

2008-07-09T02:12:00.002-06:00

Now a days everyone with a point and shoot camera from wal-mart is a photographer and sketches on lined note book paper of naked anime girls with big boobs is popular art....What is the deal?

Why does every good artist on flickr, deviant art or any other site like them, have little or no views and no comments?

Why are blurry photos of boobs popular....especially when they are in black & white? (i know... it make them more "artsy", right?)

This isn't art...This is a battle of who can stay online the longest, adding and commenting other half ass art to get people to look at their half ass art....even calling it art might be stretching it....

How about people stop typing and start working, experimenting, and pushing their medium!?

This isn't directed to anyone specific. It is just a pathetic rant after looking at the DD's (deviant art's elite selections of the day) and the Popular work of Flickr and other art sharing sites....but, if you read this and feel guilty.....hmmmmm.....check yourself.....

Much love and no hard feelings...

Go to Hell

2008-06-30T01:02:00.002-06:00

This is a great video that my brother showed me a while ago, I thought it would be fun to post it along with some new photography that I have done.

So here it the video "Go to Hell" by David Ford

I have been working on a adaptor to do more of my Photo Cubism photos, but while that is still in production I have been doing some light paintings.

So here is some that I like. I hope you enjoy them.

p.s. I am having my wisdom teeth out tomorrow morning....or later today now that I see the clock...maybe i'll do a series while I am in the hazy disarray state from being knocked out....we'll i'm off to pull the dark slide on my hasselblad! it will be the last thing on my mind when I get home!

My Grandmother is an ALIEN!

2008-04-28T16:55:00.004-06:00

These are just for fun to get the moneys worth out of the mask

To see them bigger click on them then select all sizes above the photo

Pinhole Photography Day!

2008-04-27T18:43:00.000-06:00

its pinhole photography day! so i made a pinhole camera out of an old shoe box and 2 sheets of ilford fp4....i have never done the pinhole thing before so this was my very first attempt...i over exposed a bit and moved the box when i took the tape on and off the hole...it was still fun though

Prom Night slasher brings disaster

2008-04-24T23:53:00.004-06:00

People who know me know that i have an unhealthy obsession with horror movies....Normally the more violence in the movie the better. My brother and myself have a saying that goes "there are horror movies we like cuz they are good...and horror movies we like cuz they are not so good....Prom Night falls into the latter category.

I know that this is normally my photo blog, but I had to write a movie review for my news writing class and thought that it would be fun to post here.

Thanks to Angie for being the best spelling and grammar check in the world! no lie...so here is my review of the remake of Prom Night.

P.S. I have some amazing photos that I just got back from the lab....They will be in my next post ;)

~Prom Night slasher brings disaster~

Intent on an entertaining evening, Angie, my movie-going accomplice, and I ventured into a theater crammed with teens and pre-teens for the opening night of the remake of Prom Night.

This movie went against my horror etiquette in many ways, but needing a good laugh, I surrendered my ethics and went. From the opening scene where we are introduced to the attractive, vulnerable teenage girl whose family was murdered by a lustful high school teacher, it was apparent that Prom Night was a typical “slasher” movie.

Echoing classic horror movie villains such as Freddy Kruger, Mike Myers and Jason Voorhees, we see flashbacks of the obsessive high school teacher invading on the young teen's home and slaughtering her family, then being put into a mental hospital for life. These scenes shocked our fellow movie-goers, but left Angie and I with a chuckle and vivid conception of what was to follow.

Following our teen and her friends to a prom that no one will ever attend unless they live in the world of MTV's Super Sweet Sixteen, the high school seniors check into a large suite — one that they must have saved up for during their entire high school career to afford — where the couples are intent on ending the evening with a “bang.” It's not a slasher film without a good share of sexual content — PG-13 sexual content in this case.

About this time, word gets to the girl's Aunt and Uncle whom she has been living with for a couple of years after her family's murder, that her old teacher has escaped from the mental facility. The teacher just happens to know that tonight is his female obsession's prom night. With a new shave and a haircut, the former teacher-turned-killer checks into a room down the hall from the girl and her friends.

The remainder of the movie follows the “slasher blueprint for terror” with no deviation. For example, at one point in the night we find one of the girl's friends being chased by the killer in the only trashy, under-repair section of the hotel.

Running through this construction area in high heels and a scandalous dress, the friend runs into what I like to call “horror movie plastic.” The plastic is foggy so you can only see blurry shapes through it, is hung from floor to ceiling, and, most importantly, there are always never-ending layers of it for the panicked victim get lost in.

Near the end of the scene, Angie leans over to me and says, “Wait, wait - there's going to be an artistic spray of blood on that horror movie plastic in about two seconds..." Sure enough, it happens: a nice, artistic crescent-moon shape of blood, followed by a flood of high-pitched shrieks from the young girls beside us.

Despite Prom Night's by-the-book slasher thrills, there were some very creative camera angles and compositions. The acting was fair, but the thrills were predictable. Prom Night is a good starter film for slasher movie newcomers, who I suppose are around the age of 12, or for people like Angie and myself who are simply in search of a good laugh and an enormous tub of movie theater buttery popcorn.

For genuine scares, however, one should stick to something directed by a true horror connoisseur like Rob Zombie, or simply rent one of the many 1980's classic slasher films and enjoy your evening of horror violence.

Every Safety Video Should Be Like This

2008-04-20T21:52:00.000-06:00

It's AWSOME!

The Science of Sleep

2008-04-16T20:37:00.005-06:00

Ya, I am ripping off a movie title....but it fits. My final assignment for my large format photography class was to make one image that represents me. I could not think of anything that would work...I'm a very random and weird person....So three nights before this "single image assignment" was do I had an idea. It was about how everything that you experience and see everyday is processed by your brain at night, resulting in dreams that can become very surreal and abstract. I also really love long exposures, they provide a large opportunity to create an environment or experience that can only be captured by the camera. I used this technique to create the surreal environment in the photo.

This is a self portrait. I did all the light painting except the light over me...I recruited Shannon (my girlfriend) to do that part. I uploaded the photo to Flickr yesterday. This morning when I got online I had a comment telling me that my photo was being featured on a web site linked here Film is not dead it just smells funny. You may have to scroll down to get to it. On Flickr it has become my most interesting photo.

So here it is, if you want to see it bigger go to this link My Flickr or click on the photo

Busy Semester New Work

2008-04-09T23:53:00.003-06:00

It's been a busy semester and I haven't had a lot of time to blog. So here is some of my new work from this semester.

I have been working on a new project called The Futuristic Past. The project is photos that have the look of 50's and 60's sci-fi. My reason for doing this is because I find it funny that when you take a photo of something one would think of as "futuristic" it immediately reminds them of a old Twilight Zone or Outer Limits episode they have seen.

A Robot Around the House

The Invasion

My Work on Display and in the Paper

2008-01-14T16:29:00.000-07:00

My photography work has been on disply at my school for about a month now. The gallery goes down on Wednesday so I dropped by today and took a picture of my work while it was still on the wall.

These are my 3 photos . They are all printed 28x30

This is a close up of the one that I sold. It's call "Performance with a Chair 2"

It was also in Todays newspaper! I love how big it got printed!

This makes me feel like my work got some pretty good attention here in town. Now all I need to do is find out how to get it into shows somewhere besides Cedar City....

But for now its all "cool beans"

1st Post!

2008-01-11T15:21:00.000-07:00

So here it is, my first official blog! I have started this because my photography professor told me I should be blogging about all the random things that I do or say. The more I post, the more you'll see what he means.

Lets start with this past Wednesday. It is the first week of the new semester of school. Between my classes I went to the University Journal (our school news paper) to visit my friend Angie. Angie was just hired to run the arts and entertainment part of the paper. She has found it is a little more stressful than she thought it would be. Entering the Journal it is quite apparent that she is stressed out of her mind. I ask if there is anything I can do that will cheer her up? a movie, lunch, a bottle of Jack, Marlboro Reds? You know how all news editors are in movies, smoking like chimneys, drinking like fish. All of my joking and she hardly cracks a smile. And Angie is normally a very happy person.

After my classes are over I go to lunch with my girlfriend Shannon who lives with Angie. I tell her about how stressed she is about her new job at the paper. We chat about what we could do to cheer her up. The first thing that pops into our heads is the roommate they just had move out. A annoying 20 year old who only showers on special occasion and DVRs the Hanna Montana show. Before the winter break the three of us joked about having a bloody Hanna Montana cake. We went to the store that night and couldn't find a cake with Hanna Montana on it.....so we improvised.

She laughed nice and hard.....then we ate.......

And yes, that is really a Hanna Montana doll that many little girls have beg their parents for.