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Posted in Home by Paul Turounet on March 10, 2010

Photography News

Happening in Galleries | Books

New York and Issues of Appropriation

The Whitney Biennial

from the New York Times, photograph of installation by Lorraine O’Grady, featuring appropriated photograph of Michael Jackson originally made by Harry Benson

For more on this latest issue of appropriation and unauthorized use, click on Whitney Artist Copies Harry Benson’s Michael Jackson Pic

The Armory Show in NYC

Sherrie Levine, After Cezanne, series of pixeled abstractions based on one of Cezanne’s Mont St. Victoire paintings. Each image is 13″ x 19″ color laser print and the series of 18 prints is going for $100,000.

For more on Photography at the Armory, click on DLK Collection

Happening in the Studio

Having worked with a variety of cameras and materials, particularly over the past decade, from 35mm color to large-format positive/negative film for site-specific work and digital capture, I’m considering shaking it up once again as I’m restless and not sure I want to work with the digital capture or medium-format / large-format look that is so prevalent right now. In 1997 – 1998 during my Fulbright Fellowship in Mexico for the Tierra del Sol series, I used the Polaroid 195 camera with 669 film to make images to give to people I would photograph. I would not have been able to make the photograph of a member of a Mexican anti-drug trafficking patrol without first making a series of Polaroids. This strategy continued and became even more vital with the next series of projects in which each portrait I made was a collaboration, resulting in the site-specific installation of Más allá – the Retablos of Migrants along the U.S. – Mexico Border and the gallery installation, Estamos Buscando A – We’re Looking For.

So now, with the opportunity to purchase some film again from the Impossible Project, I’m looking forward to testing the film. The intimate, tactile quality of the prints as well as the color sensibility suggest some interesting possibilities in relationship to the ideas and conceptual framework I’m looking to explore while working in Mexico.

Or maybe it just won’t work, and I’ll need to rework the direction with different tools and materials…

…will be testing Polaroid 669 and Fuji FP 100c for the Polaroid 195 and the Littman 45 (4″ x 5″ rangefinder).

Happening this Summer

This summer, I’ll be teaching Introduction to Photography and Color Photography in the University of San Diego Guadalajara Summer Program in Mexico from June 1 – July 18, 2010.

The University of San Diego – Guadalajara Summer Program is a summer program in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico designed to provide students with an intense academic and cultural experience. The Guadalajara Summer Program is suitable both for students with a primary interest in learning Spanish and for those interested in taking related courses in other fields. While it is recommended that students have some knowledge of the Spanish language or enroll in a Spanish class while in Guadalajara, no previous Spanish study is required.

The program offers Spanish I-IV, as well as courses in art, art history, business, communication studies, dance, education, English, ethnic studies, history, Latin, Latin American literature, Latino studies, music, political science, psychology, Spanish literature, sociology, and theology & religious studies.

Click on University of San Diego – Guadalajara Summer Program for additional information and to complete an application.

Happening in Class

What do you tell your students?

Walker Evans – First of all, I tell them that art can’t be taught, but that it can be stimulated and a few barriers can be kicked down by a talented teacher, and an atmosphere can be created which is an opening into artistic action. But the thing itself is such a secret and so unapproachable. And you can’t put talent into anybody. I think you ought to say so right away and then try to do something else. And that’s what a university is for, what it should be— a place for stimulation and an exchange of ideas and a chance to give people the privilege of beginning to take some of the richness of general life that’s in everybody and has to be unlocked.

For more on Walker Evans thoughts on photography, click on Walker Evans with Students