showing that film edge told you that that was all there was ...

I think about photographers that have had a very discernable look – you know I think about Avedon a lot and the idea of him making those portraits, for example, In the American West. The rebate was a big part of those images and it really allowed those images to have a really graphic nature to them that … ultimately that showing that film edge told you that that was all there was … and, on the planet, that was the thing I chose to show you that day.

Dan Winters interviewed by Ibarionex Perello for the Candid Frame podcast #85.

I feel we're deserting him ...

"We come and we leave. We take our pictures and go. I feel we're deserting him. I wish I'd never stopped photographing the people we met. I wish I could have stayed with the project my whole life."

Richard Avedon after a 2003 reunion meeting with Richard Wheatcroft, a subject Avedon first photographed in 1983 for In the American West.

Like and animal and a prey — vroom!

And at the same time, when something happens, you have to be extremely swift. Like an animal and a prey — vroom! You grasp it and people don’t notice that you have taken it. Very often in a different situation, you can take one picture. You cannot take two. Take a picture and look like a fool, look like a tourist. But if you take two, three pictures, you got trouble. It’s good training to know how far you can go. When the fruit is ripe, you have to pluck it. Quick! With no indulgence over yourself, but daring. I enjoy very much seeing a good photographer working. There’s an elegance, just like in a bullfight.

Henri Cartier-Bresson: Living and Looking
from a recently discovered 1971 interview by Sheila Turner-Seed

Review - Facing the Light

A review of the show "Facing the Light: Portraits" now showing at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery has just been published in the Coast Reporter.

Here's the link:
http://www.coastreporter.net/article/20130809/SECHELT0501/308099998/-1/sechelt/tim-portrays-jone-acts

Tim portrays, Jone acts

Jan DeGrass/Arts and Entertainment Writer / Staff writer

AUGUST 9, 2013 01:00 AM

Figures in action stalk the walls of the Gibsons Public Art Gallery (GPAG), and portraits stare down at the viewer during the current exhibition that opened last weekend.

Tim McLaughlin's almost life size photographs dominate the smaller room. As a working artist, McLaughlin is also a graphic designer and a writer, who began to focus on photography in 2004.

Late in the summer of 2010 he launched into portrait photography. He blossomed quickly; the body of work that resulted from his first efforts is large, each picture realized, portraying the essence of the subject. Many of the portraits are of Sunshine Coast artists - Todd Clark looking moody, Nadina Tandy looking like Tina Fey, her sense of humour apparent, Maurice Spira aloof - or of performers: sound artist Giorgio Magnanensi, ethereal behind his beard, or Jean Pierre Makosso, laughing as usual. Why artists? Most of the people he knows personally are involved in the arts in some way, McLaughlin told Coast Reporter.

"Those who work in the arts immediately understand why you would like to make a portrait of them," he said. "They seem to understand (and are keen to collaborate in) the process of turning their presence into another kind of presence - a portrait."

Taking a photo is a great excuse to meet people, he added. He went to France on the strength of that idea and photographed a British painter now living there, Julian Merrow-Smith, and Craig Hanna, an artist working in Paris. The results can be found in a recently released hard cover book, Portraits Found and Taken (Eidetic Editions - available for sale at the GPAG's gift shop). Coast people are prominent, but the book includes portraits of strangers unearthed from thrift store photo albums and canisters of previously undeveloped film. The book also includes a preface by Stephen Osborne (aka Mandelbrot) anda series of fanciful, creative writings in which McLaughlin defines his portrait subjects in words as well as photos.

McLaughlin's work is in the Eve Smart room, a separate section of the larger gallery. This is also significant. McLaughlin played strings in the Sunshine Coast Community Orchestra with the late Eve Smart, benefactress of the gallery. He realized how happy he was, in his first show on the Coast, to be in the gallery named after her.

Jone Pane began painting figures in action in order to boost her own energy, she said. The walls are covered in brush stroke figures not unlike Chinese characters and they are moving through all kinds of martial arts, dancing, giggling, or performing tai chi.

"I'm not that good with language," she said, pointing at one of her paintings titled, It is Written. "This is my language," and she waves a hand at the many works.

The gallery has embraced the idea of action paintings for the month of August and has scheduled activities such as karate, NIA and fencing that are open to the public. Tomorrow, Aug. 10, the Coast Martial Arts Club shows a few of their moves and on Sunday, Paul Blakey demos Wild Goose Qigong. Pick up a brochure showing the other events that run until Sept. 1.

On Aug. 16 Marlene Lowden attempts to mesh art and yoga in an interesting two and a half-hour workshop designed to help you rediscover and liberate your creativity. (This is one of the few workshops with a fee. Contact the instructor at mlowden@dccnet.com). More about the gallery's activities can be found at: www.gibsonspublicartgallery.ca.

GPAG Opening

Yesterday afternoon was the opening for Facing the Light: Portraits at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery. Thanks to all who came out. It was an honour to hang these images in the Eve Smart Gallery. I knew Eve and her bequest has enabled artists to partake of this wonderful new space.

The show is up until September 3, 2013. It features 10 large photographs (2 x 3 feet) mounted on aluminum sheeting. Two works on paper (3 x 4 feet) and some smaller works. The publication of the book has been delayed slightly - it is expected in about 2 weeks. 

Photography is a marvellous discovery ...

Photography is a marvelous discovery, a science that has attracted the greatest intellects, an art that has excited the most astute minds—and one that can be practiced by any imbecile … Photographic theory can be taught in an hour, the basic technique in a day. But what cannot be taught is a feeling for light … It is how light lies on the face that you as artist must capture. Nor can one be taught how to grasp the personality of the sitter. To produce an intimate likeness rather than a banal portrait, the result of mere chance, you must put yourself at once in communication with the sitter, size up his thoughts and his very character.

Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon)

Quoted in the biography Nadar by Jean Prinet and Antoinette Dilasser

there was for us both the possibility of contact ...

On the early trips, he adapted existing spaces like a garage or a barn to his needs, and noted the crucial role of a neutral environment to encourage the respectful exchange he was interested in. Eventually this led him to construct a tent studio that could be dismantled and taken from location to location. Penn felt "in this limbo [of the tent] there was for us both the possibility of contact that was a revelation to me and often, I could tell, a moving experience for the subjects themselves, who without words—by only their stance and their concentration—were able to say much that spanned the gulf between our different worlds."

Biography. From the website of The Irving Penn Foundation

Sophia Danai

Sophia Danai, singer, taken January 24, 2013

But the most difficult thing for me is not street photography. It’s a portrait. The difference between a portrait and a snapshot is that in a portrait, a person agreed to be photographed. But certainly it’s like a biologist and his microscope. When you study the thing, it doesn’t react as when it’s not studied. And you have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt, which is not an easy thing, because you steal something. The strange thing is that you see people naked through your viewfinder. And it’s sometimes very embarrassing. 

I’m always nervous when I go to take a portrait, because it’s a new experience. Usually when taking a portrait, I feel like putting a few questions just to get the reaction of a person. It’s difficult to talk at the same time that you observe with intensity the face of somebody.

Henri Cartier-Bresson: Living and Looking

from a recently discovered 1971 interview by Sheila Turner-Seed

Sophia Danai, singer, taken January 24, 2013

It became easier to stay in the shadow of the work ...

It really does allow my work to stay in … I would say, semi-anonymity. When I started, it was because graffiti is illegal – you get arrested. And then suddenly when I started pasting other people’s portraits on the street it was as if I was writting their name – so why would I put my name up? And then I guess I realized it became easier to stay in the shadow of the work.

JR interview with Kristie Lu Stout.