Personism

Art Nerds On Ice

Here are a few photos from my recent Minneapolis trip, taken when we made a sojourn to The Art Shanty Projects. I don't know why Colin Kopp isn't in any of these pictures. He was there too! Aside from being fine company, he was kind enough to drive Karolina and I all over the place on Friday and Saturday. Thank you Colin!

This Is Not A Designated Swimming Area. I'll say.

I slipped on the icy bank before even getting on to the ice proper, and oh boy it sure did hurt a lot. It looks as though Karolina is tender and concerned. Reality: she has my iPhone in her hand and she's about to crouch down in front of me and start taking my picture.

Leigh Merrill, Paho Mann, Karolina Karlic, yours truly, Matt Moore, as captured by the lovely and talented Carrie Marill

Matt Moore <3 Carrie Marill

Peter Haakon Thompson, instigator of Art Shanty shenanigans.

The Shanty of Misfit Toys

Everything Will Be OK - Promise!

Sleep soundly with the reassurance that everything will be ok by Keetra Dean Dixon

Remember what I said: it's ok; really, seriously everything is ok.

And even if it isn't right this very second... everything will be ok.

(I was trying to find this the other day when I made my original OK posts, but getting the right results for terms like "it's ok", "everything is ok" and/or "everything will be ok" proved quite a challenge to my relatively search savvy self. It didn't help that I'd forgotten the blanket's future perfect perspective on the matter.)

On (Leibovitz ' s) Photography

A portrait of Susan Sontag by Peter Hujar

Over on Looking Around, Richard Lacayo has published a post about Annie Leibovitz's photographs of Susan Sontag during the latest stages of the illness that killed her, specifically their inclusion in traveling retrospective of Leibovitz's work. The meat of the story is fascinating in and of itself, but it's of particular interest to me in the context of the broader conversation about portraiture in general. An excerpt:

The black and white portion of the show was there to insist that she was more than Hollywood's court photographer, and in that context the pictures of Sontag in her final days felt like a career move, another part of her bid for seriousness, no matter how genuine her grief, which I have no reason to question. And it was the context that turned the pictures into images of "celebrity death". When I read Rieff's [ed. note: Sontag's son] bitter words I thought of something Sontag wrote in Illness as Metaphor — that the worst legacy of Romanticism was the notion of "the interesting".

It's good, thought-provoking reading that makes me want to read more (more Sontag, more Lacayo) and think more (about portraiture.) I suggest reading the item in its entirety.

An American in Paris

These bikes are all over Paris.

I've really been enjoying Cathryn Horyn's posts about Paris over on the NYT's fashion blog On the Runway. I like the fashion reportage of course, but her travelogues are incredibly charming. From her post Paris, Saturday:

Then I pushed on to the Marais–I thought I’d drop by to see Azzedine Alaia. When I got there, he was working on the right side of a jacket for the new collection and wanted to finish it with the atelier. I stayed for lunch: baked chicken and mashed potatoes. Carlyne Cerf was there with her dog Jack, a big, great-looking Jack Russell. The conversation around the table was about the French film awards, the American election and the Milan shows. Afterward, Alaia came out to the street with me. He was worried that my shopping bags, in the metal basket of the bike, would spill open, so he stopped and tied them. Then I peddled toward Les Halles.

Reading this rrrrrrrrrreally made me want to get back there, oh-so-badly, even if lunch with Azzedine Alaia won't be on my agenda when I do.

A meal (not the one Ms. Horyn describes) with Azzedine Alaia, photographed by Alec Soth.

In Almost Every Picture

In Almost Every Picture by Erik Kessels One of the very best things about my trip to Europe over the holidays was being shown around Amsterdam by the awesome, excellent and affable Bert Teunissen. It was the total VIP treatment; over the course of one (very full) day we ate great food, walked all over town, visited galleries and browsed in bookstores. The day culminated in a drive across the harbor (well, under it) to a restaurant built within a converted industrial space. A leisurely, convivial dinner was followed by a visit to Bert's studio that reaffirmed my love of traditional darkroom prints. In one particularly great design/photography bookstore, the name of which sadly escapes me at the moment, Bert showed me a bunch of his friend Erik Kessels' books. I fell especially in love with the slip-cased edition of In Almost Every Picture (Volumes 1-5), a set books of found photography that I just can't believe he had the good fortune to find.* Yes, that is a thick delicious felt slipcase and the books inside are an absolute delight. My favorite is # 2: A photo from In Almost Every Picture #2 Kessels and Stultiens have delved into the treasure trove of vernacular photography. They found a remarkable series of photographs taken by a taxi driver of one passenger only. The passenger and the taxi are pictured in front of mountains, fields, sunsets, city squares, highway rest stops. What were they doing there? Who was she? Why did she travel like this? I seriously covet the set - I was tempted to buy it in Amsterdam, but the weak dollar and the prospect of a book-heavy suitcase to schlep through my connection in Heathrow deterred me. I'm looking forward to when Aperture has it in stock, and I'm also really looking forward to the upcoming exhibition at the Aperture Gallery, where the work will be shown alongside Australian photographer Matthew Sleeth's Ten Series/106 Photographs. I'm going to be in Austin for South by Southwest when the show opens, damnit, but I'll do my level best to be in town for Erik's artist talk on May 13th. *OK, maybe not good fortune. I'm guessing he's one of those people who patiently, obsessively rifles through stacks of abandoned photos at thrift shops and flea markets, something I've never had the attention span for myself. Erik, I salute both your obsessiveness and your wherewithal to make great books with its bounty.

Media Mentions: Wired + Businessweek

Wired Magazine - March 2008

20x200 gets a mention in the new issue of Wired, in an article called Home Improvements by Eric Smillie:

Aspiring art collectors, shred that Starry Night poster from the museum gift shop and hit the web for original art... at affordable prices... 20x200: Jen Bekman... takes her Soho gallery experience online, selling carefully selected limited-edition prints. We like the wild-life drawings by 21st century Audubonista Carrie Marill... BEST FOR: Higher-rolling art patrons who want the gallery quality without gallery attitude.

Since this is Wired's Free issue, they are giving away 10k copies for free. Go get one!.

Another recent mention: A few quotes from yours truly in Businessweek's Small Business News:
Creative Artists Confront Sales Anxiety, along with a bit more quotage in the accompanying slideshow.

I Like Candy

See Candy by Jonathan Lewis

See Candy by Jonathan Lewis
47 Iris Prints, 6" x 4" inches each | Edition of 25

Titled according to the candy wrappers from which they draw their colors. Including 3 Musketeers, 5th Avenue, Baby Ruth, Bit O'Honey, and more. Presented in an archival candy box.

Available from Blind Spot.

Yum.

Really, seriously

everything is ok.

ITS OK. IT IS OK.

ITS OK by Sighn. From an edition of one million.

I love this. I bought one. (The grammarian in me is a little twitchy, but hey, it's ok.)

I can't wait to do some object editions with 20x200.

(Via about a million people, I can't remember where I saw it first.)

Woodblock poster by Anthony Burrill.

I also love this. I did not buy it.*
I'd be over-the-moon excited to do a 20x200 edition with Mr. Anthony Burrill.
Via La Lux.

*Tragically, is it sold out. I bought some postcards instead, weak dollar be damned.

Opp, Alabama by Scott Eiden

Opp, Alabama by Scott Eiden. A limited edition c-print available at 20x200.

From the 20x200 blog:

Opp, Alabama is an especially special analog edition from Brooklyn-based, Northwest-bred gentleman photographer Scott Eiden, who makes his pictures the old-fashioned way: with a Deardorff Field Camera and a whole mess of chemicals.

As I said during my presentation on Monday night at the The Minnesota Center for Photography, technology is a key component in making 20x200 go, go, go. We'd be hard pressed to develop such a far-flung and enthusiastic collector crowd without the website or the newsletter, the 20x200 dream team would be lost without IM and, to date, all of our prints have been produced digitally.

So, yes, I am a lover of the digital technology, but that doesn't mean that I don't mourn the diminishing presence of our analog past, photographic and otherwise. That's why today's edition is such a treat.

Opp, Alabama is editioned in 3 sizes, all of which are traditional Chromogenic prints on Kodak Supra N paper, created from an 8"x10" negative. The edition of 200 are 8.5"x11" contact prints with black borders. (The medium and large sizes, 20"x24" and 30"x40" respectively, have white borders.)

The traditional process of the actual prints is a fitting echo to the bricks-and-mortar solidity of the building depicted. Dean's Pharmacy is a sturdy, yet beleaguered, artifact of our small-town heritage, buffeted by the relentless encroachment of service-road, strip mall America.

Read the rest of the post on the 20x200 blog.