Pause, to Begin is pleased to announce that the book produced as a part of our competition will be published by Booksmart Studio in Rochester, NY. Susan and I have had the great pleasure of working with Eric Kunsman, the founder of Booksmart Studio, when we produced the catalogue to OX: CIAS Senior Show 2007. We know our second experience will be just as wonderful.

With the wonderful help of Booksmart Studio we will be publishing three different versions of the catalogue.

1. The Catalogue Edition, which consists of a hard cover book.
2. The Deluxe Catalogue Edition, the Catalogue Edition with a slip cover and it will be editioned.
3. The Limited Fine Art Edition Book, it will consist of a higher quality paper printed on a better printer than the previous two, and will be hand sewn. It will also include a print with it from an image within the book.

Booksmart Studio also has a gallery space called Gallery Kunstler. The Pause, to Begin Exhibition will visit there at a yet to be determined time because we are still currently working on having the exhibition travel. Stay Tuned.

Check out Booksmart Studio here.
Apply to Pause, to Begin here by April 1, 2008. We need applicants to make this a reality, so step up to the plate and apply now!

The Pause, to Begin competition is open to everyone from any country. Unfortunately, we will only be able to physically visit those selected photographers from North America. If your work is selected and you live outside of North America we will still publish and display your photographs with the North American photographers. Hopefully in later editions of Pause, to Begin we will be able to travel farther.

As blogging favors go, I emailed Shane Lavalette to ask that he post about Pause, to Begin, and he quickly did so. Now I am posting about Remain in Light, something similar to PTB in that it is publishing recent photography in a unique way.  It sounds like a great opportunity.

New print publication seeks submissions of recent photography work for first volume. The final selection of sixteen photographs will each be printed on separate cards and presented unbound in a specially created slipcase.      

Shane is co-editing Remain in Light with Karly Wildenhaus.
The Application deadline is March 1, 2008.
See how to apply here.

The process of making photographs can be a confusing one. I often try to explore with my camera, look at contact sheets and then revise what or how I am photographing.  This has frequently led to the development of a formula for making photographs.  I tend to operate within constraints and try to make something grow out of that by looking at subtle differences.

The problem with a formula arises when I  find one that works with what I am trying to do. At that point, I begin to ignore other photographable moments. Is it a problem when the artistic process becomes repetitive and selective? Is it the same as learning to focus on a project?

I look at many photographers that have well known work and many of them seem to have a formula for how they go about creating. I wonder how they get to that point. Is the idea there from the beginning, or does it develop from making work? I have come to realize that everyone uses some kind of formula either in how they see, or how they work. Sometimes, the formula is hidden in the work, but it is there nonetheless. A photographer may use their formula to get to a point where they can randomly create; in other words, their process is still formulaic.

I think formulas only truly present themselves when a photographer begins to work on a series. This is because if your goal was to only make a single image that was to always be by itself there would be no use for formula. You can make any one photograph and have it stand on its own. The formula is created when a photographer tries to make the next image in a body of work. How does one create a series that is void of formula and is only created off of pure moments of inspiration? The very notion of a series embraces the concept of using formula to establish consistency within the body of work.

Undoubtedly, formulas help us to create aspects of our images. The danger in them comes when it is the only thing allowing us to create, making each new photograph more of a regurgitation of the previous image. Your formula must allow for some wiggle room.

I believe that one of art’s purposes is to challenge our very notion of aesthetics.

The following is what I typically think when I look at photography.  I consider the aesthetics, maybe too much, but I consider them and constantly question them.  Almost everyone, myself included, reuses known successful aesthetics in their work.  It seems that photography today is less innovative visually and more conceptually innovative than it has ever been.  There is nobody that needs to prove that color photography is artistic, or that a point and shoot camera is.  All of these types of arguments have been made.  I wonder where we are going to push the aesthetics of photography.

It is no secret that some other more popular blogs than this one show work that is confined to a specific aesthetic or two.  In other words, a great deal of the work posted on other blogs looks quite similar to the post they made last week.  As a young photographer and co-founder of Pause, to Begin, I am much more interested in seeing aesthetics pushed to a unique level, or viewing something that challenges the way I see, than I am interested in seeing the same types of things over and over again.  Perhaps, you can consider this post part 1 of commonly found aesthetics: the landscape, cityscape, anything not portraiture.

There is an awful lot of large format color photography in the contemporary art world, and I see some trends that can look more like bad habits.  Now, to make myself perfectly clear, this post is not directed at anyone nor is it intended to suggest that I do not enjoy some of the large format color photography out there.  I both enjoy a healthy amount of such photography and the purpose of this is to inspire at least one person to try and push themselves to do new things.Here are some examples of work by photographers that I believe have helped to create the influx of large format color photography today.  The examples are of well known, older work because I think they help to explain why people may try to replicate their style.

Stephen Shore:

Joel Sternfeld:

Mitch Epstein:

Let us examine the photographs.

All of three these images are successful in part because they have wonderful depth, and they are extremely structured photographs.  The other important element in each of these images is the use of color and the palate.

In Shore’s photograph, the amount of rusty oranges and reds with bits of green throughout the frame keep the photograph active in a still frame.  Each of the colors exist in all three planes in the photograph.  The depth is enhanced because of the color that is so perfectly coincidental.  Even the light, which is fairly typical, plays an important role; it creates a shadow that seems to bring attention to the open car door.

In Sternfeld’s image, which was taken in my hometown of McLean, VA, has more of an intellectual depth created by the subject matter.  Once the fireman is spotted picking pumpkins a great deal of irony becomes the focus of the photograph and your eye goes back and forth between the fire and the fireman.  That said, the rotting orange pumpkins in the foreground, the pumpkin stand, and the fire in the background allow for a visual flow to make the photograph complete.  The photographic depth is quite similar to the actual depth at the pumpkin stand.

Finally, Epstein’s photograph is of essentially a flat field, yet with the use of the reflection in the window and the oranges against the blue, he creates five planes for your eye to go though starting with the oranges, the blue curtain, the car, skyline, and the sky.  Some of these elements actually sit on the same plane but because of the color, shape, and light these elements separate and sit individually.  Here the photographic depth is much greater than the actual depth.

Again, the color of the three photographs helps to make the images as powerful as they are.  One of the main culprits of boring color photography that seems to be everywhere these days is that fact that the color has nothing to do with the image.  In other words it is ignored.  In the cases that color is not ignored there are sometimes other problems.  Some are, the lack of form, the over use of space as a compositional tool, and the lack of depth.

According to Jay Maisel, a former student of Josef Albers, Albers said that color and form compete against each other.  This means that to make a photograph in color as opposed to black and white one must compose differently because you cannot use form and color simultaneously, they will counteract.  Edward Weston discovered form in black and white.  If you only photograph color, however, you might get something like Pete Turner.  He became famous for  doing just that, but thankfully some of his photographs still have depth while maintaining the sense of color.  I particularly enjoy this image of his from Times Square.

Perhaps Alber’s various “Homage to the Square” paintings are the perfect example of how to deal with the problem of form versus color.  Do you focus on the squares or colors more?  In most cases, I believe your eyes must choose one to see first.

Using space to compose seems like an easy way to get around the problem of form versus color because adding relatively empty space to the frame automatically minimizes the visual effect of the subject and it’s form.  More space often means more color and less form (Turner did this many photographs).  This stagey tends to quiet the photograph, unless the color itself is so powerful that it is loud (Turner, again).

If you are making an already quite photograph and you quiet even more by adding space it is probably going to reach a point where it becomes boring.  Joel Meyerowitz’s Cape Light photographs are quiet and use a lot of space to excentuate wonderful color.  His career long method of “pulling back” from his color street photography to ultimately Cape Light and Bay/Sky did quiet his photographs, but it did not make them boring.  It makes you notice something else.  So the tactic can work, but one must be aware of what it does.

Perhaps everyone should ask themselves as Tod Papageroge asks his students, “Why Color?”With all of the above in my head as I look at color photography, I wonder if I can ever look past the aesthetics and just focus on the concept, the thought, what the image is about.  The answer is yes, but the concept looks much better if the aesthetics are pristine as well.  Perhaps photography is lacking a certain number of brilliant visual thinkers to go along with the sophisticated image making you read about.  I hear about and read of wonderful ideas in photography every day online, but how often do you see a wonderful new photograph online that is as awesome as the idea?  I feel like this does not happen nearly enough.

I was reminded of the Sally Mann documentary What Remains recently when I was discussing museums and galleries with fellow Pause, to Begin blogger Susan.  We had both just seen the Edward Hopper exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.  As you might expect, it was a crowded show, but it was well put together containing not only the greatest hits, but also a majority of his successful earlier work.

Discussing the exhibit afterwards, I realized that since this collection of nearly every important painting Hopper made in his life was in an established museum it was bound to tell many of the holiday gallery goers that Hopper is a definitive, masterful painter of the 20th Century. That sentence may sound overly obvious, but my point is as soon as a work of art is displayed in a museum, opposed to a gallery, it has been decided by at least one person (the curator) that such artwork is of a quality that it is to be shown in an arena that is geared towards the masses, not simply the art community. Museums are also more of an educational space than a gallery. Museums inform us about things ranging from art to insects to dinosaurs. Galleries mostly show us popular art that can sell, and if the artwork in a gallery is not know to be popular then it still most likely looks contemporary. In other words nothing overly new and strange.

Hopper’s most famous paintings look an awful lot like photography created within the last several years. From color palates to composition and themes, visually a Gregory Crewdson photograph looks a lot like a Hopper painting. Clearly, Hopper has served as an influence to photographers beyond just Crewdson, but he is perhaps the most famous example. I think it is safe to say the Crewdson was educated in part by looking at Hopper’s paintings.

Somehow all of this reminded me of Sally Mann and one sentence that she said in the film. As she reflected on the whole process of the What Remains opening being canceled at the last minuet by Pace/McGill Gallery and instead opening at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., Mann said something about how in a way it worked out better because the show was now more accessible to her friends, and the Corcoran was showing the work because of it’s artistic merit not it’s salability. Mann also went on to speculate that Pace/McGill canceled her show because they thought that they could not sell her work.

Sally Mann was at a point in her career where she no longer needed a Chelsea Gallery opening to solidify her place in the contemporary photography art world, after all she is still represented by the Gagosian Gallery.

All of this brought to mind some of what I consider to be the most influential photography to young photographers today. The likes of Stephen Shore and William Eggleston come to mind, and they both had early prominent exhibitions at the Met and MoMA respectively. Their photographs are now iconic, just as Mann’s photographs are. To be shown in a gallery is wonderful, especially since there are some amazing galleries that only show the very best work, but to be exhibited in a museum is a testament to the artist’s place in their generation as one of the most important artists of the era.

This morning’s NPR Morning Edition broadcast included a brief segment called “Library of Congress Looks for Help on Photo Labels.” Although I was not fortunate enough to catch the show live, NPR’s incredible podcasting allowed me the opportunity to listen in this afternoon to learn more about a recent web-based photography project that invites everyone to participate in writing a collective history of the United States.

In the last few weeks, the Library of Congress has posted over 3,000 photographs from their collection — all of which reside in the public domain — on the popular photo-sharing site, Flickr. The photographs are primarily from two distinct eras of American history:
1. black and white news photographs from the 1910’s
2. government sponsored photographs from the 1930’s and 1940’s

The project is described as an effort to better caption photographs in the collection with the help of the masses. Flickr’s accessibility and user-friendly interface allows the viewer to comment on every photograph — whether to note a location in the image, provide a name, project about photographic materials, or even banter with other Flickr users.

It is interesting that the morning broadcast noted that “having these photographs mingle with everyday snapshots brings an institution like the Library of Congress off of it’s perceived pedestal”. I wonder, should we be worried about bringing institutions off of their ‘pedestals’ when the proliferation of photographic imagery is already so pervasive? I understand that the Library of Congress is trying to bring their photography collection to the masses. Additionally, I fully support the philosophy promoted by photo-sharing websites like Flickr because they are excellent forums for sharing work, getting feedback and exploring new ideas.

My hesitation lies not in the decision to share the photographs — after all, we are lawfully allowed to view and use the images. I do, however, question the mission of the project. The user comments I read on the Library of Congress’s Flickr page were simple musings about the photographs — in the handful of images I browsed, none had any useful or biographical comments attached.

Sometimes it is difficult for me to seriously consider a photograph when it is presented in a web-based forum. (There is something about the computer that still seems very intangible to me. I would imagine that this notion also has a lot to do with why I cannot read much more than five or six paragraphs on a computer monitor at a time.) The new project championed by the Library of Congress and Flickr will recontextualize every single photograph added to the online collection. Perhaps this will be a good thing because it will, indeed, bring the photographs to the masses. I want to suggest, however, that this new project may also further remove photography from any position as a social document, a recognized fine art, or a historical artifact. With digital technology confusing the definition of photography in the twenty-first century so much so already, this project is simply confusing boundaries even more.

Critiques aside, I will admit that the photographs are fascinating. I have included some of my favorites below. Check out the rest of them here: The Library of Congress’ Photos

I thought I was alone as I prepared to make my first blog post last week, but I was not.  I found out shortly after Susan made her first post that she encountered the same thing.  Then when I spoke to David, it was happening to him too!

We all had STAGE FRIGHT for our first blog post. Do any other bloggers get this?

This guy has a different kind of stage fright.

Then I found this, which has some valuable lessons.

I have assigned watching the above video as homework for all of us Pause, to Begin bloggers. Maybe it will help us pick up the pace. If I were a reader of this blog I would be getting ready for some sweet posting next week. If you are lucky, this will turn into a video blog too.

“My work is about your seeing. There is a rich tradition in painting of work about light, but it is not light – it is the record of seeing. My material is light, and it is responsive to your seeing.”
- James Turrell

I recently had the fortunate opportunity to see James Turrell’s light installation called “Gap” from the “Tiny Town” Series at the Albright Knox in Buffalo, NY.  After walking through a zig-zag light trap, the viewer enters a very dimly-lit room and is confronted by a massive blue rectangle on the wall.  At first sight the rectangle looks like a projection — similar to the beginning of a digital slide lecture in art history class — but the viewer soon recognizes that there is no projector in the room.  The blue rectangle is actually a hole in the wall — so evenly lit that the viewer is deceived until he or she puts her hand into it.

Turrell’s installation work intends to transform a space so that the viewer walks away with much more than visual memory.  Standing in the darkened room at the Albright Knox, I could feel the work.  I could interact with it.  I could touch it (the negative space, that is).  Turrell’s work is notoriously about experience.

Art21 cites Turrell’s work as having the capacity to prompt “greater self-awareness through a similar discipline of silent contemplation, patience, and meditation. His ethereal installations enlist the common properties of light to communicate feelings of transcendence and the Divine.”

It is interesting that installation art promotes the joy of seeing while at the same time, celebrating feeling.  The relationship between the viewer and the artist is so essential — without one component there would be no art at all.

Photographers always talk about the difference between SEEING and LOOKING.  Further, the act of photographing is often an experience that — although difficult to articulate to the nonphotographer — is something that transcends time and rational thought.  To photograph is to focus (no pun intended) and see the world in a different way.  I wonder if it is possible to share the experience of photographing with our photographs.  How can we articulate to the viewer what it feels like to make a successful picture.

I am fascinated by Turrell’s work because it allows the viewer to experience art making first hand.  I was INSIDE of Turrell’s work because he chose to share it with me and all of the other patrons at the Albright Knox.

With that said…who wants to go see the Roden Crater with me?

“Your typical artist is a mule.”

That is what Garry Winogrand said about the work ethic of a successful artist.

This is the only Winogrand photograph that I can find that comes close to being a mule. It’s a horse at the rodeo, and mules are half horse and half donkey.

The most interesting work that I have ever seen in a critique was a byproduct of hard work more than a perfect idea. Usually, such photographs were interesting because the photographer was still discovering what they were looking at; there was something to discuss. There have been critiques where someone has a wonderful idea, and they squarely execute it, leaving little room to comment on anything more than the idea. The idea may sound good but the work was totally expected, and therefore not especially interesting. It is at this precise moment a great idea looses it’s sense of intrigue. I believe that a great idea becomes better when it leaves room for discovery and visual thought.

I enjoy Garry Winogrand for a few reasons. One main reason is that he simply went out and photographed everyday. I am sure there were plenty of days that Winogrand didn’t discover anything with his photographs, he didn’t even develop over 2,500 rolls. He did, however, work more than any photographer I can think of. He also made a great deal of interesting photographs in his life without planning any of them.

I am confident that everyone reading this blog can learn from Winogrand, even if it is just the value of hard work. I should probably be making photographs right now instead of blogging about making photographs.