Cloe Aigner and Jocelyn Hallett

Cloe Aigner and Jocelyn Hallett, creatives, taken February 22, 2013

There is a strange math at work when you add a second subject. I find photographing more than one person at a time almost impossible. You might think the complexity simply doubles when you add a second person, but I find that is not the case. If, for example, you spend time and took forty pictures of a subject to get one that is suitable, it is not the case that you would need to take eighty photos to make an image of two people. It seems to me to be exponential. One hundred and sixty would be needed. By then both the photographer and the subjects are exhausted. 

This session was a gas. I learned a lot from it, in particular about using lights in a small space with two people. Cloe and Jocelyn were great to work with and as two founders of Zen House Media they knew all about photo shoots - I think maybe that made them very tolerant ...

Thomas King on Edward Curtis

Curtis was fascinated by the idea of the North American Indian, was in fact obsessed with it. And he was determined to capture that idea, that image, before it vanished. This was a common concern among many intellectuals and artists and social scientists at the turn of the nineteenth century, who believed that, while Europeans in the New World were poised on the brink of a new adventure, the Indian was poised on the brink of extinction.

In literature in the United States, this span of time is known as the American Romantic Period, and the Indian was tailor made for it. With its emphasis on feeling, its interest in nature, its fascination with exoticism, mysticism and eroticism, and its preoccupation with the glorification of the past, American Romanticism found in the Indian a symbol in which all these concerns could be united. Prior to the nineteenth century, the prevalent image of the Indian has been that of an inferior being. The romantics imagined their Indian as dying. But in that dying, in that passing away, in that disappearing from the stage of human progress, there was also a sense of nobility.

I probably sound a little cranky – I don’t mean to. I know Curtis paid Indians to shave away any facial hair. I know he talked them into wearing wigs. I know that he would provide one tribe of Indians with clothing from another tribe because the clothing looked more “Indian.”

So his photographs would look authentic.

And while there is a part of me that would have preferred that Curtis had photographed his Indians as he found them, the men with crewcuts and moustaches, the women in cotton print dresses, I am grateful that we have his images at all. For the faces of the mothers and fathers, and aunts and uncles, the sisters and brothers who look at you from the depths of these photographs are not romantic allusions, they are real people.

Thomas King, The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Massey Lecture Series 2003.

New Show - Ferry Building Gallery

I'm happy to announce a solo show at the Ferry Building Gallery in West Vancouver. Located on the shore next to Ambleside Park, the Ferry Building Gallery is a heritage building and a great, intimate space for an exhibition. I have printed four new portraits for this show and they will be large format works, measuring 24" x 36". 

There are three events associated with the exhibition:

Opening Reception - Tuesday January 28th 6-8pm

Official Book Launch for Portraits: Found and Taken  - Thursday January 30th

Meet the Artist: A chance to talk about the work - Saturday February 1st, 2-3pm

Hope to see you there!

Musicworks Cover Photo

My portrait of Giorgio Magnanensi is on the cover of Musicworks magazine. Here is a link to the full article. http://www.musicworks.ca/featured-article/featured-article/giorgio-magnanensi-sonic-playground

Congratulations Giorgio!

photography has become a household word ...

… photography has become a household word and a household want; is used alike by art and science, by love, business, and justice; is found in the most sumptuous saloon, and in the dingiest attic—in the solitude of the Highland cottage, and in the glare of the London gin-palace—in the pocket of the detective, in the cell of the convict, in the folio of the painter and architect, among the papers and patterns of the millowner and manufacturer, and on the cold brave breast on the battle-field.

Lady Elizabeth Eastlake, from her 1857 essay on photography.

New Book - Press Sheets

I put together a special signature of images to test the printing of the images in duotone. The press sheets arrived from the printer a few days ago in a very heavy mailing tube. I am pleased to say that the sheets look fantastic— rich, crisp, and with considerable depth to the greys and blacks. 

It is a very exciting time.

Even without the book finished yet, sales are good. Pre-order your copy here:
http://andandcompany.blogspot.ca/p/books.html

Peter Braune

Peter Braune, printmaker, taken February 8, 2013

Photography is the easiest medium in which to become competent. Almost anybody with a point and shoot camera can take a decent picture. But while photography is the easiest medium in which to be competent, I think it is the hardest medium in which to have a distinctive personal vision.

Chuck Close 

Peter Braune runs New Leaf Editions and is a motivating force behind the Biennial International Miniature Print Exhibition or BIMPE.

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.