That’s right February has 29 days this year!

That means you still have all day today to apply to Pause, to Begin and only pay $25.  After today you will have to pay $35.

Get those applications in, and enjoy the extra day that only comes every four years.

Most color photographs from decades ago have faded to a form that does not resemble the original color palate. These photographs still resemble their original form, but they are also clearly not the same. Old photographs tend to evoke a sense of memory or nostalgia, and it seems that people relate faded color to such a feeling. Photographs spawn memories from either their subject matter, the moment that was photographed, or the act of creating the photograph. You can read some different thoughts about photographing to remember here.

The advent of digital photography seemed to also coincide with the end of the inevitable fading of photographs. Here is this pristine medium that I can get rid of dust, save in the most loss-less file format, and have the exact way I photoshopped it until I die. That was until I was looking at Matt Bagwell’s digital diary. Matt is an important part of the PTB team as our Web Developer, so you might assume that he is good at building website code, but I was really impressed when I saw his own digital diary today.

As Matt says on the digital diary page:

Here are some digitally preserved memories (click to examine). They still have a tendency to fade over time, though.

To me, those two sentences make his impressive code more poignant and fascinating. I am curious to see how quickly they fade and disappear. It also wonderfully interesting to see someone create a digital replication of time passing by in such a clever manner. Congrats Bagwell.

You can check out Matt Bagwell’s main website here.

And, in case you were wondering, Matt did not tell me about this, I learned about it from Mat Thorne. As a general rule, I don’t usually post about our team or ourselves on this blog except to remind you of deadlines or give you some news about Pause, to Begin. This seemed like a perfect exception. Enjoy.

Call for EntriesNew 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.

Please submit 5-10 images (JPG, 72dpi) or an online portfolio along with your name, age and current city of residence to remaininlightphoto@gmail.com by March 1, 2008 to be considered for the first issue scheduled for release in late spring. The final images will be selected by co-editors Karly Wildenhaus (Chicago, IL) and Shane Lavalette (Boston, MA).

For more information, visit www.remaininlight.org

We are thrilled to announce that Cig Harvey will be our third Juror along with David and myself. David and I have both heard Cig speak about her work, and anyone else that has such an opportunity would agree that her energy and passion for photography is amazing. We know Cig will bring an unbelievable amount of knowledge and photographic experience to make the jurying process complete.

Below is one of Cig’s photographs from her series “You Look at Me Like an Emergency.”

About the series, from Cig Harvey’s website:

I have always been drawn to times of fragility and use photography to explore and legitimize moments of struggle, uncertainty and doubt. My previous work examined these flaws within myself. In the past my pictures were of me and about me.
This new portfolio, You Look at Me like an Emergency, examines the people and places that surround me, and my relationship to them. Instead of setting aside a time to make pictures, I am now photographing times that actually exist. There is a life being lived and I am in it. A life that is fascinating in its flaws, doubts and elations. There is a truth in these generously given portraits. These pictures show me that life can be as magical as fiction.

Many followers of fine-art photography world know that Ryan McGinley’s work has been received with mixed emotions.

What those politics might be, exactly, is hard to say, though the question arises in light of the apparently carefree spirit of Mr. McGinley’s pictures. The artist seems to understand this: his inclusion of a shot of a friend, speeding away from ground zero on a bike, his mouth covered by his shirt, carries a jolt of reality-check surprise. However the work develops, it is refreshing to encounter, as we seem to, artists operating to some extent outside the mainstream of the art world itself, where volatile energies — aesthetic and political — are too often stroked into craftsy, resistance-free acceptability.

read more here

You don’t need specific equipment to ape the look of McGinley or Larry Clark or Wolfgang Tillmans or Nan Goldin or Corinne Day or Leeta Harding. It’s just the commercial version of the prevailing snapshot aesthetic — off-kilter angles, high contrast images, on-camera flash, murky available light.

read more here

That being said, his recent video for the New York Times Magazine is without question simply beautiful.

Don’t forget that February 29th is the last day to apply to Pause, to Begin for only $25. After that you will have to pay $35. Get your applications in early! Apply at www.pausetobegin.com.

We have been very busy lately promoting the competition through arts organizations like ArtDeadline.com and inliquid.com. We want thank both of them publicly on this blog. They both have a wealth of information for the emerging artist.

Lastly, don’t forget that we have posters, post cards, and flyers that need distribution across the country. If you are willing to volunteer some time to help display the propaganda in your neighborhood please let us know, we will be more than happy to send you the posters and postcards. In return we will list you on our “donate” page as someone who has donated their time to help make Pause, to Begin what it is today. You will be in some pretty great company on the list!

Please forgive the brief break from insightful blogging for the seemingly shameless promotion, “real” blogging will resume shortly. We are currently putting all of our efforts into making Pause, to Begin the best it can be.

From the BBC:

In a statement, he accused China of not doing enough to pressure Sudan to end the “continuing human suffering” in the troubled western Darfur region.

At least 200,000 people have been killed and two million forced from their homes in the five-year conflict.

Beijing has not yet responded to the move, which correspondents say is its first big setback in staging the Games.

A source in the Beijing Olympic Committee said a response was being discussed at the highest levels but had not yet been made public.

But the BBC’s James Reynolds in Beijing says the decision will anger and worry the authorities there.

Since Beijing won the right to host the Games it has always tried to keep China’s politics and China’s Olympics separate, he says, and it has attacked anyone who has tried to link the two.

Read the entire article here.

Read China’s response here.

We have just updated our website with a new “Resources” section!

In Resources, you will find four categories:
Newsletter
Calendar
Extras
FAQ

The Newsletter page has moved to a new location in the menu, and also has one exciting new feature. We are going to conduct a raffle of all people that sign up for our Newsletter. We are literally going to pull a single name out of a hat, giving the winner a free copy of the Pause, to Begin book. Sign up today for your chance to win. Don’t worry if you have already signed up, you are in the raffle too!

The Calendar is complete with dates of exciting events at Pause, to Begin through the month of June. We will be adding information as it becomes known.

The Extras section contains numerous goodies for all of our Pause, to Begin fans. Right now it has the newly designed poster, postcard, and flyer, all made by the amazing Josh Gomby. Please feel free to download the files for each, and print them out. You can also email them to a friend. The flyer is specifically designed to be xeroxed, so please print them out and hang them up. If you do this make sure to take a photo of it and send it to us. We will mention you on our website as a way of saying thank you.

The FAQ section is a new place where you can go to learn about Pause, to Begin if you are a little unclear about anything. If that still does not answer your questions, then please send us an email at info@pausetobegin.com.

To end this post on a sad note, our documentary filmmaker Bruno Toré, can no longer fulfill his role. Some unforeseen circumstances came up recently and he cannot make the trip with us in May because of them. Thankfully, we have already contacted some other people in the documentary film industry and we hope to finalize a filmmaker this weekend on a trip to Boston. We will keep you posted.

I purposely left portraits out of my previous post on aesthetics because by putting a person in the frame it automatically changes the way we look at it. In most cases, our eye goes directly to a person in the frame, or some human element, before we see anything else. This either makes common portrait aesthetics more simple than non-portraits, or more difficult.

Instances where the aesthetics of a portrait become simplified occur in many of Richard Avedon’s photographs. In his portraits, it is as if the person is the image and the actual photographic skills appear less important. Avedon’s true skill seems to be in his relationship with his subjects. The viewer becomes so drawn to Avedon’s subjects that the careful framing and tonality are noticed less. If one takes a closer look at most of Avedon’s famous portraits, they will find that in many instances the use of negative space is really quite unique and impressive. In the instances that it is not, it is usually because the subject is so completely captivating that possibly sacrificing the moment of the portrait to aestheticize the image is out of the question. In other words, the viewer is completely caught up in looking at the person that we can easily ignore average aesthetics.

Here is one famous portrait from Avedon’s series titled In The American West, notice the wonderful use of shape and negative space.

Rineke Dijkstra is another photographer that seems to concentrate more on the subject than aesthetics at first glance. Again, like Avedon and others, she focuses on interesting subjects, but she most certainly does not ignore aesthetics. In this photograph of a bullfighter Dijkstra utilizes a beautifully subtle color palate, and negative space to bring attention to the bullfighter. Also, the red tie and his cuts help the viewer’s eye to move throughout the frame.

While Dijkstra also photographs adolescents in a more straightforward full-length pose, the aesthetics in those images are also carefully considered. The lighting and the gray sky isolate the subject against the backdrop. The frame works perfectly to bring attention to every detail of their gesture. Dijkstra lets us believe that her subjects have personality and feeling, every one of her subjects has a presence in the frame that is undeniable. Part of this presence is due to the aesthetics.

Avedon and Dijkstra allow the subject to be themselves in front of the camera. They isolate their subjects, to focus in on the their characteristics. Both Avedon and Dijkstra seem to have an uncanny ability to bring a vulnerable fascinating element out of the people they photograph. The viewer gets the sense that each person they look at is not acting. Part of the reason it is easy to look endlessly at a photograph by Avedon or Dijkstra is that they set up the photograph to allow you to continue looking at the subject. This is an important, often overlooked skill.

If one is to photograph in this manner, they must realize that the use of negative space, the light, and the subject make an incredible amount of difference in how the images look. In portraits by Avedon and Dijkstra, these items are often subtle, and thus sometimes overlooked. Another reason for why a young photograph may fail trying to photograph in the manner of Avedon or Dijkstra is that the subject’s personality and presence is not enhanced by the photographer. Instead it looks like a mannequin was photographed, something that could be more interesting if it was a mannequin instead of a person looking dull. People just standing there, in fort of the camera, is not worth extended in-depth attention.

Hellen van Meene makes portraits of adolescent girls that are more visually dynamic than Avedon and Dijkstra.

Van Meene uses both awkward poses and composition to evoke a sense of awkwardness in adolescents. This is a very different tactic than what Dijkstra does in her photographs of adolescents. Dijkstra accentuates the subject’s own awkwardness through isolating them in the frame, van Meene does this by putting the subjects in odd poses and using somewhat unique framing devices. In other words, van Meene coaxes the awkwardness out of the subjects through her direction.

David Hilliard is a photographer who extends the frame with multiple photographs. By doing so he creates more than simple portraits, he creates complex scenarios about himself and his subjects, and their subsequent relationships.

Due to his technique, Hilliard creates an incredible amount of depth and visual movement. He tweaks the plane of focus to lead the viewer’s eye through the photographs. The other advantage Hilliard clearly gains, is the ability to stretch time. A photograph can only capture one moment, but since Hilliard makes multiple photographs to create one object, he has the subject shift poses throughout the images. This creates a scenario within the single artwork, through multiple photographs.

In portraiture, there seems to be two way of making portraits. One is to focus on the subject, make them important and visually allow interesting aspects of them to come through in the photograph. The other method, is to leave an amount of mystery in the person being portrayed. Make the subject apart of a scene that describes and informs the viewer about the photographer and subject and this all begins to tell a story.

In the work of van Meene, Hilliard, and Philip-Lorcia diCorcia, they bring out interesting emotions through what appears to be more set up situations. In many ways, the photographers are creating stories through their subjects. Typically in these kind of portraits there is a substantial amount of depth that helps to create drama. The important aspect of these portraits is that the surrounding area is nearly as important as the subject. The surroundings, the aesthetics, and the subject all play roles in informing the viewer about the photographer and the subject.

Obviously, not every portrait will fit into the above two categories. For instance, one photographer that appears to fall in-between these categories is Alec Soth. His portraits are structured in a fairly simplistic way, but they also tell a story as he connects his images (both portraits and non-portraits) through subtle free association.

While I am suggesting that there are two different approaches to portraiture, both methods have a slight bit of overlap as Soth clearly shows. Avedon and Dijkstra have the beginning elements of story telling in their subjects. Their messages are in groups of people. This might be because as humans, we want to both look at other people and we want a story about them. I find myself using both thought processes quite easily. I look and think about the individuals photographed, and how the photographer’s own personality might come across in such images. I also enjoy thinking about the stories that surround a differently structured photograph.

I would say the challenge for contemporary photographers trying to get their own portraits recognized, would be to try to avoid focusing on just one kind of portrait too much. If you photograph people to look at them and see what the subject is doing, great; but try to see a story develop in at least an abstract way. If you photograph in a pseudo narrative way, then do not forget to pay attention to the subject as well. Both elements are important to portraits. We want to look at people, but was also want to know about them. The greatest portraits seem to allow both to happen.

image from:  Democrat and Chronicle

Throughout the month of February the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY is holding a series of events and lectures titled Not Forgotten: Portraits of life and death in Rochester. Included in the series is a teen poetry slam, a community outreach education night and a lecture by Magnum photographer, Eli Reed.

Last evening, I had the opportunity to attend one part of the series: a panel discussion by Will Yurman (a Democrat and Chronicle staff photographer) and local artists Juliana Muniz and Heather Layton. Each artist discussed his or her body of work – all of which related to the 54 homicides that occurred in Rochester, NY in 2005 (a record number of homicides that consequently earned Rochester the highest murder-per-capita rating in New York State that year).

Will Yurman discussed his project, Not Forgotten: Portraits of Life and Death in Rochester. The project documents each of the 54 homicide victims and their families and friends. A combination of his own still photographs and a multimedia presentation that compiles images, family photographs and sound, his work is on display at the Eastman House through March 2.

Next, Juliana Muniz showed her documentary project — a yearlong endeavor to photograph each on-site memorial created for the homicide victims.

Finally, Heather Layton explained her project titled (sub)urban homicide. After plotting each of the original murder locations on a map, Layton used tracing paper to superimpose the crimes sites onto suburban neighborhoods on the southeastern side of Rochester. Creating fictionalized suburban homicide sites, Layton installed and photographed a flower memorial on each new site in order to “bridge the gap by presenting a fictional scenario to our wealthiest citizens…”

Following the presentation of work, the audience was invited to participate in a question and answer session with the artists. Several interesting points were discussed — particularly regarding the future of crime in Rochester and how a citizen can begin to combat the issue firsthand. My own overwhelming feeling at the end of the evening, however, was a fascination of the potential role art can play as a tool for social activism.

In an ideal cultural climate, the institution would be a beginning environment for a discussion of artwork — particularly artwork that deals with social issues. I am reminded of artist Barbara Kruger, whose highly graphic work examined power struggles, feminism and consumerism in public spaces such as billboards, posters and buscards.

I am interested in the notion of photographers seeking out equally public venues in order to present their work to members of the community outside of the arts. I applaud Will Yurman for using the internet (particularly the Democrat and Chronicle website) as a space to share his project with the masses — but are there other places for the photographer to engage with the general public? I am not sure how the individual artist can engage with with the general population without assistance from the institution. Specifically, I am interested in the way Layton’s work confuses boundaries between socially active image-making (i.e. photojournalism/documentary) and work with a more art-related philosophy. Critical engagement with the masses seems essential to the continuation of fine-art photography as we know it. Our challenge is to figure out how this interaction can successfully take place.