Personism

The View (From Where I Was)

View of Chiricahua National Forest: click for big-ass version.

Vacation is already beginning to seem like a distant memory. One of the highlights of the trip, which I'll post about more later, was a late afternoon hike through Chiricahua National Monument. Amazingness, as you can sort of see from the photo. Ain't nothing like the real thing! And in this case, you kind of have to see it to believe it. As previously mentioned, I've never been to the Southwest before and I felt like I was on a different planet - It's a drastically different landscape than what I'm accustomed to.

Annoyances Related to Gmail

I am well aware of the insanity of filling up my seemingly limitless storage on my Gmail account, but I have indeed. "Switch to Yahoo! mail" a friend urged me. I've had a Yahoo! account since the nineties, but well, it seems awfully cartoonish when contrasted with the pared down obtuseness of Gmail that I've come to know, love and rely on.

It's sort of shocking to me that Google would lag behind Yahoo! on anything. But they do. I can't imagine that there are many other people who reach their limit - why not just bump the storage up? It's puzzling.

And back to the insanity of my Inbox for a moment... I currently have 9592 messages in my active Inbox. 20,778 when I go into "All Mail" view, which includes archived messages. This is after some pretty aggressive day-to-day pruning.

I get tons of email newsletters, but delete as I read. I also am conscientious about weeding out the spam that makes it past Gmail's (very good) filters. I need an intervention! Or perhaps it's time to declare email bankruptcy? Regardless, if you're irked that I haven't responded to an email sent to you, please don't take it personally. I'm dancing as fast as I can.

Spring ' 07 HHS! Winners Announced

Untitled (Hanoi no.2) by Spring HS Kelly Shimoda

[Ed. note: This is cribbed from Ms. Wells who posted the announcement over on the Hey, Hot Shot! blog last week. (My travels have me way behind on, well, everything. It was totally worth it though.)]

The list is in! The time has come to announce the 10 artists selected for the Spring 2007 Edition of Hey, Hot Shot! And the winners are...

Clint Baclawski
Nina Berman
Michael Julius
Karolina Karlic
Mark Marchesi
Casey Orr
Justin James Reed
Pavel Romaniko
Kelly Shimoda
Daniel Traub

Pencil it in, the showcase soiree in honor of our Hot Shots is Wednesday June 13 from 6–8PM. Get on down to the jb, see the work, and support the winners. The show will be up from June 14–17, 2007 and quite a show it promises to be!

Special thanks to our fabulous group of panelists––Anthony LaSala, Lesley Martin, Jörg Colberg, Raul Gutierrez, Jenni Holder, Youngna Park, Christine Collins, and the Ultras, to Jeff Kirsch and Jesse Chan-Norris for all their hard work and commitment to the jb, and, of course, a whoppin' thank you goes out to all of the participants for sharing their work with us.

And what work it is! Our panelists were posed with what seemed the impossible feat, narrowing it down to a mere ten proved just as difficult as expected. Some honorable mentions are in order:

Matias Aguilar, Rob Ball, Nelson Chan, Larissa Cleveland, Kate Copeland, Shane Lavalette, Maria Passarotti, Will Sanders, Michelle Sank, Deidre Schoo, Tamir Sher, Rylan Steele, Joseph Tripi, Ching Wah Lam, Greg Wasserstrom, Emily Winton

RSF Photographers: Karolina Karlic

Rosa Parks by Karolina Karlic

I have an enduring interest in the facets of American idealism and the deterioration of those ideals. Frontiers. Trains. Cars. Post-industrial sprawl and desertion. Defunct factory towns. I've been known to see majesty in the splay of shopping malls on local highways. It shames me to even say it but it's true.

Detroit, as it exists in my imagination (I've never been there) seems to embody many of these fascinations, plus it boasts proximity to the John Hughes suburbs that seemed so exotic to this city kid. Last Summer I read Middlesex and while I finished it somewhat ambivalent, scenes from it and Eugenides' descriptions of Detroit's history have stuck with me.

Jamal by Karolina Karlic

A road trip to Motor City might not be high on my agenda, but I was certainly thrilled and fortunate to have a chance to view it through Karolina Karlic's lens last week at Review Santa Fe.

It was my 16th review of the day. (I did 18 total that Friday.) I was feeling a little crispy by that point, but I got a second wind when Karolina sat down in front of me with a hefty, gorgeous, simple book. The Dee was beautifully bound and wonderfully paced. There was no shuffling of portfolios or setting up of presentations. We just paged through the photos together. I asked questions, she told stories. It was awesome.

It also just so happened that she'd entered this round of Hey, Hot Shot! (I hadn't yet had a chance to review her entry when we sat down together, which worked out kind of well in the end.) I'm excited that she's one of this season's finalists and will be showing some photos from The Dee at the Spring Edition Showcase, which opens at jen bekman on June 13th.

We Did This by Karolina Karlic

A Trip: The RSF Reviewers

N34°11.115'W116°08.399' by John Divola

Unsurprisingly, my updates from the road thing didn't work out so well. My trip was jam-packed, but not in a bad way. I will post excerpts and impressions in dribs and drabs. I'm going to start at the very beginning, I hear it's a very good place to start.

I am still absorbing the whole Review Santa Fe experience, which was so great in so many ways. I can't recommend it highly enough for emerging photographers - it's a huge opportunity. Center put together an amazing team of reviewers, I was really flattered to be included among them.

Reviewers who I got to spend a lot of quality time with included NYC gallerists Daniel Cooney, Michael Foley (next door hotel room neighbor, loaner of toothpaste) and Bill Hunt (hilariously and highly inappropriate at times, gotta love 'im). West Coast dealer Charles Guice and I bonded over a shared love for decent coffee (a love most harshly unrequited in the Southwest, I'm sad to say.)

On the media side, Darren Ching from PDN (and his fab wife, independent curator + writer Debra Klomp Ching), Kira Pollack from The NYT and Darius Himes from photo eye Booklist. (Darius was also a totally gracious host and Santa Fe tour guide. Props to him for making sure that all us reviewers had a good time.)

On the book front, I had fun hanging out with Alan Rapp from Chronicle Books, Christopher Bain from B&N and Joan Brookbank from Merrell.

I also really enjoyed meeting Joanna Hurley - she's the chair of Center and we talked about their new branding, transitioning from being known as "The Santa Fe Center for Photography" to simply being "Center". (They did a fabulous job.) And of course, Swan was there in a starring role - reviewing, presenting, connecting people and throwing lovely parties.

Part of what makes RSF especially great is that it's juried. Everyone who I met with is dedicated to their craft - they all spent a lot of time preparing for the event, and it showed. It was productive and inspiring and well-run. I already can't wait 'til next year. (For photographers' impressions, check out what Joe and Raul had to say.)

Next up, later today or tomorrow: the photographers themselves.

(Sidenote: the image above, from John Divola, is entirely unrelated to anything I just wrote about but is included in the review of Where We Live I recently wrote for Booklist and I just got done with spending a lot of time in the desert AND Laurel just posted about Divola's new project, Abandoned Paintings, this morning, inspiring me to dig up this image for this here post.)

Better Now

I've been having intermittent email issues since I took off for Santa Fe on the 17th. If you've tried to email me between then and now, try try again. It's all fixed!

Incidentally, I am back in warm + muggy NYC now. Stay tuned for reports from the road + some catch up on stuff that's happened while I've been gone.

On the Road

On the Road to Taos by John Hogan

Today I learned that I am not totally immune to altitude sickness, although it's really not so bad - my legs are just achy and restless. I also ate some damn fine huevos rancheros, took a walk, climbed a fence and stood in a stream. Not bad for a city girl. Then I sat down for a few agonizing hours of choosing this season's Hot Shots. The announcement will be live on the HHS! blog tomorrow @ 1pm.

I am not entirely sure where we're headed tomorrow. We haven't made a firm decision as to whether we'll head north or south, both routes are tempting for different reasons. Hopefully coffee and daylight will steer us down a good path.

Above is a photo from John Hogan, a photographer who I met at Review Santa Fe. This is one of many enjoyable images from his Vacation project. Seemed apropos, although Taos isn't on the agenda.

Greetings From Chama, NM

Look at the pretty birdy!

I am here in Chama, gearing up for the road trip while simultaneously recovering from the awesome intensity that was Review Santa Fe. So much photo goodness, an embarrassment of riches, I tell you. I saw loads of great work and met lots of terrific people. I'll follow up with more details on the art part later in the week - I plan on doing some quick posts about some of the work I especially enjoyed.

Aside from the absolute tidal wave of photo input, I had so much fun. The change of scenery did me good, and I'm looking forward to more of it this week.

Busy Being Crazy

Bonnie by Alec Soth, part of the gallery's upcoming group show, A New American Portrait.

I am off to New Mexico tomorrow morning. (On a 6:10AM flight. Criminal, I tell you. Yowzers.) It's been a crazy week so far, with lots of loose ends needing to be tied up before I go. I limbered up my portfolio viewing muscles with last night's Hey, Hot Shot! panel review. We've narrowed down the list to 30 some-odd shutterbugs and now get to the hard work of re-reviewing and whittling it down to ten.

Other stuff on the jb horizon:

- Joerg and I are working through details of our upcoming exhibition, A New American Portrait. It opens on Thursday June 21. You can read about our all-star lineup here.

- My review of Where We Live, an exhibition I saw at the Getty when I was out in Cali for PhotoLA, is in the new issue of Photo-Eye Booklist. You can read an excerpt of the review, , but better yet: buy a copy or subcribe. It's a great magazine! (The book is great too - Buy it from Photo-Eye or directly from The Getty.)

- Exposure opens at The PRC on Thursday May 25th 24th. Alas, I won't be able to make the opening as I'll be road tripping, but please go check it out if you're in Boston. These are the photographers in the exhibition:

Daniel Ballesteros (Willimantic, CT)
Chris Bentley (Medford, MA)
Anastasia Cazabon (Brighton, MA)
Jon Edwards (South Freeport, ME)
Erin Eriksen (Brighton, MA)
Erik Gould (Pawtucket, RI)
John Hirsch (Jamaica Plain, MA)
Robert Knight (Boston, MA)
Susan Lakin (Rochester, NY)
Paige Largay (Somerville, MA)
Christopher Lovi (New York, NY and Boston, MA)
Paul McKee (Prescott, AZ)
Brad Moore (Laguna Beach, CA)
Christina Seely (Berkeley, CA)
Martin Stupich (Albuquerque, NM)
Jim Turbert (Jamaica Plain, MA)

I'm sure I'll be checking in with reports from the road, but right now I have about a million things to do before I ride off into the sunset.

Eye on the Prize

Image Credit: Eye by Winter Edition Hot Shot Mickey Smith

Photographer and Winter Edition Hot Shot Mickey Smith came by the gallery this week to show us more of her gorgeous prints in person. Since she was on my mind, I used the photo above on the deadline reminder I sent out for Hey, Hot Shot!. (It's Monday, but you knew that already.)

Anyhow, Ms. Smith, she's got her shit together. She's professional without being uptight, her prints are gorgeous and at the end of our visit she left me with an impeccably put together package that contained:

- a heavyweight folder customized with one of her images and a label with her name

- a clearly labeled cd, in a case

- a checklist for the cd, a resume, a pricing guide and her artist statement, all printed on letterhead

- two postcards

- press clips and a press release from a group show she participated in

- an inkjet print of one of her photos, on heavy stock paper, with the image information at the bottom

- her business card

All of these items were enclosed in a hand addressed, labeled envelope (color-coordinated, of course!) All the materials were flawless - no typos, no rough edges, she spelled my name right. I resist accepting packets whenever possible. My gallery is teeny tiny, I am not an organized person, I am perpetually drowning in paper. This was not a package I could say no to however.

This all leads back to the "How to Approach Galleries?" question I get asked again and again. Mickey has the right idea, not just because of her presentation, but because she was pleasantly persistent about setting up our meeting in advance and had a clear plan of what she wanted to show me and how. And of course it helps that I love the work.

One other thing - Mickey was recently featured on NYC design blog Apartment Therapy. She emailed me a nice note to let me know about it and mentioned that she'd found them through my blog, and thanked me for the referral. Did I mention that she has her shit together? Because she does.