1.07.2011

MATTHEW AVEDON: Fashion of the Times

NUMÉRO HOMME Fashion Magazine
Photograph by Greg Kadel

NUMÉRO HOMME Fashion Magazine
Photograph by Greg Kadel

Fashion Photographer Greg Kadel moved to New York from Pennsylvania to study marine biology and fine art. It was only after graduation he realized his passion for photography and filmmaking. His images have appeared in every top fashion publication and advertising campaign. Kadel is represented by Marek & Associates and Trunk Archive (must-see sites) for image licensing. Matthew Avedon is represented by DNA Models, NY

You can also catch Matthew playing Gypsy Jazz with his his trio at the Immigrant Bar and around Brooklyn. Photograph by Georgia Nerheim

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PUBLISH YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY BOOK: With Darius D. Himes and Mary Virginia Swanson


Industry insiders Darius D. Himes and Mary Virginia Swanson demystify the process of producing and publishing a book of photographs. They provide an overview of the publishing industry; a look at the process of making a book; how to market a photo book; case studiesbuilt around discussions and interviews with published photographers; and present resources towards understanding the publishing world. Their forthcoming title Publish Your Photography Book also includes further interviews from industry professionals (artists, publishers, designers, packagers, editors, and other industry experts) who share their own publishing experiences. A must-see for anyone considering publishing their photography book.

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About mid-way into their video presentation, Swanson and Himes incorporate examples of the various states of my design process for photographer Jessica Hines photography book, My Brother's War. In order to demonstrate the evolution of the book 's design, they present examples - such as the positioning and sizing of the book's title, image choice and positioning of the art for the book cover, chapter headings and various font options - that I sent to Hines for her consideration before we settled on the final "look" for the book. At the time Jessica and I began to work on her project, we had never met and we live in different states. In the beginning, we communicated by phone and then I sent her jpegs and pdf's of the layouts by email. A perfect example that you can design and produce your book from anywhere, as Swanson and Himes mention in their lecture.

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Mary Virginia Swanson, is a consultant in licensing and marketing of fine-art photography. She also lectures, conducts workshops and educational programs for photographers. Follow her blog, Marketing Photos, a valued resource for photographers. Darius D. Himes, cofounder of Radius Books, is also a lecturer, consultant, and writer. Organized by Arezoo Moseni, Artist Career Development Series. And thank you New York Public Library.

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1.06.2011

KENNETH O'HALLORAN: Fair Trade

Twins: Puck Fair, Co Kerry
Photograph (c) Kenneth O'Halloran /All Rights Reserved

Ballinasloe Fair
Photograph (c) Kenneth O'Halloran /All Rights Reserved

Cahirmee Fair
Photograph (c) Kenneth O'Halloran /All Rights Reserved

Ballinasloe Fair
Photograph (c) Kenneth O'Halloran /All Rights Reserved

Smithfield Fair
Photograph (c) Kenneth O'Halloran /All Rights Reserved

Smithfield Fair
Photograph (c) Kenneth O'Halloran /All Rights Reserved

"Fairs are more than places of trade in Ireland. Women regard them as occasions worth dressing up for...a femininity to counter weigh the spit-in-the-hand dealings of the men folk. Many of these are traveling people, part of an ancient tribe of Gaelic nomads who have never remained in one spot for very long despite numerous integration attempts by settled society. ...there's business to be done. On days like these horses and ponies are their stocks and shares; the towns and squares of Ireland morph into their trading floors...these old meeting grounds are flourishing arenas of openness and transparency."

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My father with his granddaughter Caoimhe, Corofin
from the series Life After Death
Photograph (c) Kenneth O'Halloran /All Rights Reserved

Aoife and Daniel Communion, Mother Teresa and myself, Corofin
from the series Life After Death
Photograph (c) Kenneth O'Halloran /All Rights Reserved

My father asleep, Corofin from the series Life After Death
Photograph (c) Kenneth O'Halloran /All Rights Reserved


LIFE AFTER DEATH

"My father, who is 80, having spent half his life working, recently retired, closing his drapery store. His undertaker's business continues. For me and others in the family it meant that death was never far away or overtly mysterious. We became accustomed to the dead of our parish being prepared for the final ceremonies before burial."

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Kenneth O Halloran was born in the West of Ireland, and is a graduate of the Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Dun Laoghaire. Based in Dublin, he is currently working on a number of long term projects, which include a personal portrayal of his family shot over 5 years.

His project 'Tales from the Promised Land' has been shortlisted for the Terry O'Neill Award 2010 and his portrait, Twins: Puck Fair, is being shown until Feb 20 in The National Portrait Gallery in London, as part of the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize 2010.


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1.04.2011

KLOMPCHING: Splash II

Bundle (2010)
Photograph (c) Cara Barer

International District, Seattle (2003)
Photograph (c) Doug Keyes

Beyond The View No. 5 (2009)
Photograph (c) Helen Sear

Attentional Landscapes No. 11 (2007-2008)
Photograph (c) Odette England

SPLASH II Group Exhibition
Opening Jan 6 - Feb 26

Sarah Lynch, Doug Keyes, Phillip Toledano, Helen Sear, Odette England, Cornelia Hediger, Cara Barer. Also showing Lisa M. Robinson's Snowbound.

111 Front Street, Suite 206 | DUMBO Brooklyn

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1.01.2011

BEST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS OF 2010

















I was invited to submit my top 10 choices for photo-eye Magazine's annual "Best Photography Books of 2010", along with other contributors from Todd Hido - whose book A Road Divided (Nazraeli Press) I now wish I had included in my top 10, Alan Rapp, Larissa Leclair, Bruno Ceschel, Melanie McWhorter and many more. I had a hard time keeping my list down to 10 choices, so I'm posting all of the books I would have liked to list - not in any favored order:

LEE FRIEDLANDER - America By Car | DAP/FRAENKEL "Driving across most of the country’s 50 states in an ordinary rental car, Friedlander applied the brilliantly simple conceit of deploying the sideview mirror, rearview mirror, the windshield and the side windows as a picture frame within which to record the country’s eccentricities and obsessions at the turn of the century. Never has America been photographed so penetratingly and ingeniously as in Friedlander’s latest body of work."–Publisher

SALLY MANN - The Flesh and the Spirit | APERTURE "One of the apparent paradoxes in Sally Mann's work is her desire to show what lies beyond vision by using a medium invented to record reality's surface"– John B. Ravenal. This publication accompanied a significant exhibition of Sally Mann's photography in the special exhibition galleries of the Virginia Museum of Fine Art's new McGlothlin Wing. The "Untitled (Self Portraits), 2006-7" make this one of my most treasured books.

TOD PAPAGEORGE - Opera Citta' | PUNCTUM PRESS "...Tod Papageorge imagines this book to be something like a photographic stepchild of one of Calvino's invisible cities, conjured up by a camera out of bits and pieces of a place called Rome..." Papageorge, the Walker Evans Professor of Photography and Director of Graduate Studies in Photography at the Yale School of Art, (and my first formal photography teacher), was invited to Rome to work for a month on the Rome Commission. In this perfect little book of color photographs, curated by Marco Delogu and designed by Nicola Scavalli, are some of my favorite Papageorge images (a cringe worthy charge, I'm sure)...read more

EUGENE SMITH - The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of Eugene Smith From 821 Sixth Avenue 1957 - 1965 | KNOPF 821 Sixth Avenue was a late night haunt of musicians–Charles Mingus, Zoot Sims, Bill Evans, and Thelonius Monk among them. Between 1957-1965, Smith, then a 38 year old former Life Magazine photographer, shot 1,447 rolls of film at his 821 Sixth Avenue loft, roughly 40,000 pictures, the largest body of work of his career. "Smith made several hundred photographs through the broken windowpane. The cracked window was a kind of aperture, and a metaphor." Buy the book-it's incredible!

CHRIS VERENE - Family | TWIN PALMS
Chris Verene follows the lives of his family and friends. The titles to his photographs tell the whole great story of what I love about his work; "My Twin Cousin's Husband's Brother's Cousin's Cousins"; "The Same Day They Signed The Divorce Papers, A Tornado Hit The House"...read more

ZWELETHU MTHETHWA | APERTURE His portraits are stunning! Photographing in urban and rural industrial landscapes, Mthethwa documents a range of aspects in present-day South Africa, from domestic life and the environment to landscape and labor issues...read more

WILLIAM EGGLESTON - For Now | TWIN PALMS ‘This monograph is the result of film-maker Michael Almereyda’s year-long search through the Eggleston archives, a remarkable collection of heretofore unseen images spanning four decades of work. Unusual in its concentration on family and friends, the book highlights an air of offhand intimacy, typical of Eggleston and typically surprising. Eggleston remarked “the book comes close to being a family album.”...read more on La Lettre

NICK BRANDT - On This Earth A Shadow Falls | BIG LIFE EDITIONS On This Earth, A Shadow Falls combines the best photographs from Nick Brandt's previous books. It features 36 images from On This Earth and 54 from A Shadow Falls and is the only publication where images from both books will appear in one volume, on a larger scale than the previous editions...read more

KENRO IZU - A Thirty Year Retrospective | NAZRAELI PRESS A book of treasures - priceless images of past civilizations. "A chance viewing of the mammoth plate photographs by the Victorian photographer Francis Frith led Izu to travel to Egypt in 1979, to photograph the pyramids and other sacred monuments. Thus began the artist’s renowned series “Sacred Places,” which includes work from holy sites in Syria, Jordan, England, Scotland, Mexico, Easter Island and, more recently, Buddhist and Hindu sites in India, Cambodia, Burma, Vietnam, Indonesia, and China...more about Kenro Izu

ALEX WEBB + REBECCA NORRIS WEBB - Violet Isle | RADIUS BOOKS "This multi-layered portrait of “the violet isle”—a little-known name for Cuba inspired by the rich color of the soil there—presents an engaging, at times unsettling document of a vibrant and vulnerable land. It combines two separate photographic visions: Alex Webb’s exploration of street life, with his attuned and complex attention to detail, and Rebecca Norris Webb’s fascination with the unique, quixotic collections of animals she discovered there, from tiny zoos and pigeon societies to hand-painted natural history displays and quirky personal menageries."

DANNY LYON - Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement | TWIN PALMS In Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, Danny Lyon tells the compelling story of how a handful of dedicated young people, both black and white, forged one of the most successful grassroots organizations in American history. The book depicts some of the most violent and dramatic moments of Civil Rights Movement...read more

PAUL STRAND - Paul Strand in Mexico | APERTURE Co-published with Fundación Televisa A.C., Mexico, 2010, this book documents the complete photographic works made by Strand during his 1932–34 trip to Mexico as well as a second journey in 1966—a total of 234 photographs, 123 of which have never before been published. Strand in Mexico tells the story of Strand's journeys through Mexico in the early 1930s. In search of a fresh start, Strand traveled to Mexico City in late 1932 at the invitation of Carlos Chávez, the eminent Mexican composer and conductor.

Street Photography Now | THAMES + HUDSON Jointly curated by Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren, Street Photography Now presents 46 photographers noted for their everyday street, subway, and shopping mall scenes. Included are a few of Magnum's masters such as Bruce Gilden, Martin Parr and Alex Webb, along with new and emerging photographers work from New York to Dakar...more

RENATE ALLER - Oceanscapes | RADIUS BOOKS "Aller has been photographing the Atlantic Ocean for over a decade, from a single point on Long Island's fabled coastline. Her images capture the shifting colors and textures of the sky and water, and the beauty and grandeur of the ocean, providing a rich document of what has made the Hamptons such an integral aspect of New York life. The sublime beauty of this Atlantic view, which Aller connects to the great nineteenth-century German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich."...more

RAGHU RAI - The Indians: Portraits from My Album. 150 Years of Portraiture In India | PENGUIN BOOKS INDIA "Raghu Rai has been in the forefront of photography in India for over 40 years. As a member of Magnum, he established an international reputation as a photographer with his special essay on the Bhopal Gas tragedy. Twenty-five of his photographs are held in the permanent collection of France's Bibliothque Nationale and in 1997 the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi gave him the first retrospective exhibition dedicated to the work of a contemporary Indian photographer." An upcoming piece on Indian Photography Books is coming up soon on La Lettre de la Photography.

ROSE-LYNN FISHER - Bee | PRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS Bee was a winner in the International Photography Awards 2010: Books/Nature. "Melding art and science, photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher puts this modern tool to creative use in order to reveal the microscopic majesty of these natural wonders. BEE presents sixty astonishing photographs of honeybee anatomy in magnifications ranging from 10x to 5000x. Rendered in stunning detail, Fisher's photographs uncover the strange beauty of the honeybee's pattern, form, and structure. Comprising 6,900 hexagonal lenses, their eyes resemble the structure of a honeycomb."...more

WILLIAM CHRISTENBERRY - Kodachromes | APERTURE This book includes work from 1964 to 2007. "As in all of Christenberry's photographs, the subject matter is the rural Deep South: the twisting back roads, open landscapes, rusted signage and ramshackle vernacular architecture found in Hale County, Alabama. Though many of the sites pictured in this rare collection are new, other subjects have grown iconic in Christenberry's oeuvre as he has returned to photograph them over the decades--the red building in the forest, Sprott Church, the Palmist Sign and the Bar-B-Q Inn, among others."

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HAPPY NEW YEAR! 1.1.2011


HAPPY NEW YEAR !
~
Wishing You All The Best In 2011

HH The Dalai Lama and Einstein Photograph (c) Clive Arrowsmith

...may 2011 be a
Prosperous + Peaceful New Year!

Must see LENSCRATCH today! 400 photographs posted - my favorites include tom chambers, julie blackmon, stephen mallon, sean perry, jessica todd harper, phillip toledano, gabriela herman, sheri lynn behr, ruben natal-san miguel, elizabeth opalenik, susan worsham, ellen jantzen, akihito yamamoto, jamie stillings, rania matar, christopher rauschenberg, gina kelly, manjari sharma, bruce barone, blake andrews, valery rizzo, mitch dobrowner, joni sternbach, liz kuball, russ martin and marcia schulman martin and more...
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12.31.2010

ORCHARD: A Series of Collaborative Journals From Raymond Meeks

ORCHARD: A Series of Collaborative Journals From Raymond Meeks

ORCHARD: A Series of Collaborative Journals From Raymond Meeks

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12.30.2010

MELANIE MCWHORTER: Interview with PhotoBook Designer Elizabeth Avedon



Interview with Photobook Designer Elizabeth Avedon

I first met Elizabeth Avedon when she was the Gallery Director at photo-eye. Since the time Elizabeth departed Santa Fe, she established her own blog which has become a recognized voice in the photography community featuring portfolios and interviews, including my first interview about my photography. I am delighted to turn the tables on Ms. Avedon and allow her to discuss her profession: Book, Exhibition and Web Design + Curatorial Consultant. Here she discusses the photobook, print-on-demand, and some of her favorite projects.

Melanie McWhorter: At what point is it important to involve a designer in your project?

Elizabeth Avedon: There are different stages for a designer to step in for every project. It really depends on the artist/photographer. Some photographers will start talking to me years before they actually are ready to begin the layouts, others hand me a complete, finished edit when I first meet them. I can easily begin to sequence the work for them from that, but I think it's an important step in the overall process for the designer to be involved in the edit of the work from the start, to get a feel for the point of view of the photographer. Many times the designer will see an interesting "book" the artist hadn't imagined for themselves. Other times the photographer will be overly critical in their edit, second guessing themselves and their audience, leaving out images that may show important steps in the evolution of their work. Other photographers may not be critical enough with their work, unable to edit out images because of the people, place or action going on which may not actually come across so well in the image as they think. They are still visualizing the moment, but we don't see it in the frame. It's important for everyone to have an outside eye.

MM: Are most of your clients individuals and do you consult with them one-on-one or are most publishers?

EA: I'm not really a trade book designer, although I love the work I've done for them in the past. (Favorite was An Open Heart by The Dalai Lama for Little, Brown & Co). Almost all of my clients have been individuals or at least the projects start out as someone approaching me and then suggesting to their publisher they would like to work with me. I'm mostly asked to work on special projects. I recently had lunch with the son of a late great photographer to discuss a book of his father's iconic images. Fortunately I knew his father and many of these images are part of my own history, so it could work out well for both of us. We discussed whether to bring in a publisher at this juncture or design the completed book and package it to a publisher. Other times I'll design and print a 20-page dummy for someone to shop around to publishers.

MM: What do you feel is the role of a designer in a creating a photobook?

EA: I think a designer is there to organize the work, whether through a timeline, chapters, subcategories or just by the sequencing into a narrative. The way the works flows from one image to the next, one spread to another, should intuitively guide the viewer through the photographer's world - his or her intention with their work. It's really fun to do a very creative design, with crazy fabulous typography and collage the images and show off as a designer, but that isn't going to showcase a photographer's work. I try to let the work dictate what kind of book it wants to be and stay out of the way. Let the work speak for itself. I've worked on several long-term projects that began as one kind of book and when they were completed, I could see they wanted to be an entirely different kind of book. The work needed to be organized into its first incarnation, to see it was meant to be as an entirely different kind of entity...read more here

Photographer Melanie McWhorter has managed photo-eye BookStore, the best online Photography Bookstore in the world, for over 13 years. She is a regular contributor to the photo-eye Magazine, co-founder of FiniteFoto Magazine, curator and lecturer.
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