12.27.2019

BEST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS OF 2019 : ROUND-UP PART I


Photographs by Elinor Carucci
Foreword by Kristen Roupenian 
Monicelli Press

From acclaimed photographer Elinor Carucci, a vivid chronicle of one woman’s passage through aging, family, illness, and intimacy. "As one of the most autobiographically rigorous photographers of her generation, Carucci recruits and revisits the same members of her family that we have seen since her work gained prominence two decades ago. Even as we observe telling details—graying hair, the pressures and joys of marriage, episodes of pronounced illness, the evolution of her aging parents’ roles as grandparents, her children’s increasing independence—we are invited to reflect on the experiences that we all share contending with the challenges of life, love, and change.” Purchase

 
from Caress : (r) Elinor Carucci (l) Mickalene Thomas

A Yoffy Press Triptych

Elinor Carucci also featured in this impressive limited edition 3 book set along with David Hilliard and Mickalene Thomas in from Yoffy Press. All three photographers explore intimacy, emotion and connection between the people in front of their lens, the artist and subject. Purchase

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© Roy DeCarava
  
Roy DeCarava : Light Break
Photographs by Roy DeCarava
Preface by Zoé Whitley
Introduction and text by Sherry Turner DeCarava
David Zwirner Books

Light Break presents a wide-ranging selection of Roy DeCarava’s photographs accompanied by a preface by Zoé Whitley, an American curator based in London, and features an introduction and essay by curator and art historian Sherry Turner DeCarava. Titled “Celebration,” Turner DeCarava’s essay considers the artist’s singular poetic vision, his timeless portrayals of individuals and places, and his mastery of composition and photographic printmaking.

“In making photographs, as in life, DeCarava was patient. Possessing both a peerless self-awareness and acute observational skills, he knew intuitively when to wait and when to open the camera’s shutter. In the dark room, he availed himself of these same attributes, moving with steady assurance to develop his prints so as to allow the full range of what he called his “infinite scale of grey tones”—often realized at the deepest end of the spectrum—to emerge slowly and fully.” Purchase

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 Cover : This Empty World
Bus Staion With Elephant In Dust © Nick Brandt

 River Of People With Rhino © Nick Brandt

Nick Brandt - This Empty World
Photographs by Nick Brandt
Thames & Hudson, London   

"Moving into color photography for the first time, this monograph of new work from photographer Nick Brandt is both a technical tour de force of contemporary image making and an ambitiously scaled project that uses constructed sets of a scale typically seen in major film productions."

"Each image is a combination of two photographs taken weeks apart, almost all from the exact same camera position. The starting point of each composition is always the animal photographed in its native savanna landscape. Brandt then designs and builds sets in the precise location of the original photograph depicting the human developments, such as gas stations, highway and bridge construction sites, and bus stations, that are invading the East African landscape. A second sequence is then photographed with the completed set, populated by a large cast of people drawn from local communities and beyond."

"The final images are powerful composites of the two source photographs, which presents the wild animals and the people as equal victims of the environmental—both now aliens in their once-natural, once-native habitat.” PhotoEye Books

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 Veruschka and sumo, Yuzawa, 1966 © Gideon Lewin 

Gideon at Modernage Labs, working on the Twiggy mural 
for the retrospective exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum 1979
Photo: Kaz Nakamura 
  Ara Gallant creating a bracelet (on Veruschka), Tokyo, 1966 © Gideon Lewin

Avedon – Behind the Scenes 1964-1980
Photographs and Text by Gideon Lewin
PowerHouse Books

"This monograph on the work of Gideon Lewin, master printer and assistant to Richard Avedon for 16 years, reveals moments never told, stories never heard, and a life that only a few ever experienced. It is a story of a close working relationship and collaboration with a master." 

Beautifully written and illustrated, Lewin shares with us a look back stage at one of the most prolific and successful photography studio's. Publishers Weekly Review (12/11/2019): "Photographer Lewin pays homage to his mentor, fashion and portrait photographer Richard Avedon (1923–2004), in this lavishly illustrated tribute. Having worked as Avedon’s assistant and studio manager for 16 years in the 1960s and ’70s, Lewin describes highlights including assisting a shoot in 1967, when Avedon photographed Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman in bed to promote The Graduate. Lewin speaks about a range of subjects, such as helping around in the studio, traveling to the Japanese countryside to photograph supermodel Veruschka (von Lehndorff) alongside a sumo wrestler, and the unexpected and humorous difficulties that came with working with Hollywood megastars such as Sophia Loren (who continually motioned to adjust the light) and Raquel Welch (who “demanded to look in the mirror every time Dick pointed the camera” at her). The true strength of the volume lies in its descriptions of Avedon, whom Lewin describes as “totally committed to photography, consciously creating imagery with a fierce determination to leave a legacy.” Lewin’s enthusiastic testimonial will thrill Avedon’s fans." Purchase

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Dear Mr. Picasso: An illustrated love affair with freedom 


"Fred Baldwin’s life took a turn in the direction of the extraordinary when he decided to interview and photograph Pablo Picasso. In his last year of college, he delivered a letter with own drawings to the artist. This made Picasso laugh and open the door. Baldwin’s life changed. He followed his dream, used his imagination, overcame fear, and acted – now he could accomplish anything. What followed were picture stories about reindeer migrations, a day and a night with the Ku Klux Klan, Nobel Prize coverage, cod fishing in Arctic Norway, polar bear expeditions. Then underwater images of the fight of hooked Marlin in Mexico – an homage to Hemingway. In 1963, Baldwin joined the Civil Rights Movement, photographing Martin Luther King. A two-year stint as Peace Corps director in Borneo was followed by more photojournalism in India and Afghanistan. This account takes the reader to high adventure worldwide, but also to disaster and failure. This illustrated love affair with freedom shows how a camera became a passport to the world.” – Schilt Publishing. Purchase

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 Vince. New York © Alec Soth

Nick. Los Angeles © Alec Soth

MACK Publishing

"Taking its name from a line in the Wallace Stevens’ poem “The Gray Room,” Alec Soth’s latest book is a lyrical exploration of the limitations of photographic representation. While these large-format color photographs are made all over the world, they aren’t about any particular place or population. By a process of intimate and often extended engagement, Soth’s portraits and images of his subject’s surroundings involve an enquiry into the extent to which a photographic likeness can depict more than the outer surface of an individual, and perhaps even plumb the depths of something unknowable about both the sitter and the photographer." Mack Publishing
 
“After the publication of my last book about social life in America, Songbook, and a retrospective of my four, large scale American projects, Gathered Leaves, I went through a long period of rethinking my creative process. For over a year I stopped traveling and photographing people. I barely took any pictures at all. When I returned to photography, I wanted to strip the medium down to its primary elements. Rather than trying to make some sort of epic narrative about America, I wanted to simply spend time looking at other people and, hopefully, briefly glimpse their interior life. In order to try and access these lives, I made all of the photographs in interior spaces. While these rooms often exist in far-flung places, it’s only to emphasize that these pictures aren’t about any place in particular. Whether a picture is made in Odessa or Minneapolis, my goal was the same: to simply spend time in the presence of another beating heart.” – Alec Soth

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  Kohei Yoshiyuki: The Park
 Kohei Yoshiyuki: The Park
  Kohei Yoshiyuki: The Park


Photographs by Kohei Yoshiyuki
Introduction by Yossi Milo
Text by Vince Aletti
Interview by Nobuyoshi Araki
Radius Books / Yossi Milo

For his notorious Park photos, taken by night in Tokyo’s Shinjuku, Yoyogi, and Aoyama parks during the 1970s, Japanese photographer Kohei Yoshiyuki used a 35mm camera, infrared film and flash to capture a secret community of lovers and voyeurs. His pictures document the people who gathered in these parks at night for clandestine trysts, as well as the many spectators lurking in the bushes who watched—and sometimes participated in—these couplings.

With their raw, snapshot-like quality, these images not only uncover the hidden sexual exploits of their subjects, both same-sex and heterosexual, but they also serve as a chronicle of a Japan we rarely see. As Martin Parr writes in The Photobook: A History Volume II, The Park is “a brilliant piece of social documentation, capturing perfectly the loneliness, sadness and desperation that so often accompany sexual or human relationships in a big, hard metropolis like Tokyo.”

This newly designed, comprehensive edition of Kohei Yoshiyuki: The Park brings this collectible classic back into print with eight never-before-seen images, as well as documentation of the sold-out 1980 Japanese zines that predated the 2007 Hatje Cantz/Yossi Milo edition. Purchase
 

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Vince Aletti : Issues 
PHAIDON Press

Acclaimed photography critic Vince Aletti has selected 100 significant magazine issues from his expansive personal archive, revealing images by photographers rarely seen outside their original context. With his characteristic élan and featuring stunning images, Aletti has created a fresh, idiosyncratic, and previously unexplored angle on the history of photography.

Issues, a luxury, oversized object, richly illustrated with brilliant reproductions, and enclosed in an elegant archival-style magazine-file box, is an essential addition to every book collection on photography, fashion, and graphic design.

It's the first survey to explore the history of photography through the lens of fashion magazines, spanning the years 1925 to 2018. Magazines featured include American, British, and French Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, W, Details, Purple Fashion, The Face, Dutch, and many more. –Phaidon Press 

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Tod Papageorge : On the Acropolis
Photographs by Tod Papageorge
Stanley / Barker 

In 1983 - 1984, Tod Papageorge spent a month each summer on the Acropolis in Athens, producing a body of work that seems lost in time, fusing the ancient with the modern.

“I stayed at a nice hotel, the Zafolia, five minutes from the Acropolis, where every surface in my room was marble, and where I did laps in the pool every evening, driving the hotel staff crazy. I usually ate lunch at a vegetarian restaurant in the Plaka, right under the Parthenon. I just liked the food. Have no memory at all of where I’d go for dinner. Very solitary the whole time. That was it: up The Hill in the morning, down for lunch, usually back up for more after that, then a swim and dinner somewhere nearby.” - Tod Papageorge

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Raghunath Manwar examines an X-ray of one of several workers who has been diagnosed with asbestosis in Ahmedabad, India. Raghunath is the secretary of an NGO, the Occupational Health and Safety Association, that assists employees affected by asbestos from a power-generating company and a cement factory. Image © Louie Palu/ZUMA Press


Asbestos tailings from the mining of chrysotile asbestos, a.k.a. white asbestos, seen in the city of Thetford Mines in Quebec, Canada. Image © Louie Palu/ZUMA Press

Photographs by Louie Palu
Essay by Alison Nordstrom, PhD
Yoffy Press 

In A Field Guide to Asbestos, Louie Palu documents the effects of asbestos on people and the landscape in Canada, the US, India and the UK. In this 15-year-long award-winning investigative project, Palu also addresses the visual aspects of asbestos that are related to fatal diseases that can take up to 40 years after exposure before they appear. – Yoffy Press

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Images of the New West
Photographs By Joan Myers
Essay by Lucy R. Lippard
Damiani Editore 

"In this latest collection of photographs, taken over the last forty-five years, Joan Myers turns her lens to the contemporary American West. In so doing, she turns our conception of western landscapes and the life contained within them upside down, revealing the changes the region has undergone over the last half-century. Her perspective is at once elegiac and ironic, capturing the myth and reality of the West, its shaping and appropriation by Hollywood, popular culture, and the ever-present, but fracturing American dream. “

In deconstructing the pictures, cultural critic Lucy Lippard notes that they “seem to emerge from cracks in American culture. They show us a past that still affects, and reflects, our present, revealing unexpected insights into how the myths of the West were formed and how they relate to reality.” Purchase

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Anastasio Bonnie Sanchez, left, a rancher in Colorado's San Luis valley, whose Hispanic ancestors can be traced to early settlements in neighboring New Mexico, and the San Geronimo church massacre site in Taos Pueblo, right, which U.S. troops attacked in 1847, killing 150 © Tomas van Houtryve/VII

Medicine Bow Peak, left, near the early-19th-century border between Alta California, Mexico, and the United States. Ralph Peters III, right, a member of the Hupa tribe. 2017 © Tomas van Houtryve/VII


Portraits by Tomas van Houtryve
Radius Books

What if Mexico Still Included California, Nevada and Texas? 

With Lines and Lineage, Tomas van Houtryve takes aim at America’s collective amnesia of history. The work addresses the missing photographic record of the period when Mexico ruled what we now know as the American West. To visualize the people and places from the remarkable yet unseen Mexican era, van Houtryve chose to photograph the region with glass plates and a 19th-century wooden camera. 

Using a North American map from 1839 (the same year that photography is thought to have made its debut in Europe), Mr. van Houtryve traveled along Mexico’s old northern border to meet families who have lived in the region for centuries.

His portraits of direct descendants of early inhabitants of the West—mestizo, Afro-Latin, indigenous, Crypto-Jewish—are paired in diptychs with photographs of landscapes along the original border and architecture from the Mexican period. This book lifts the pervasive fog of dominant Western mythology and makes us question the role that photographs—both present and missing—have played in shaping the identity of the West – Radius Books

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 Lost Venice, Damiani
Photographs by Sarah Hadley

 from Lost Venice © Sarah Hadley

Photographs by Sarah Hadley
Text by Karen Haas, Susan Burnstine
Damiani

Los Angeles based photographer Sarah Hadley’s 'Lost Venice' is both an alluring and haunting portrayal of that majestic city as distilled through her personal lens of loss and nostalgia. Hadley contemplates the paradoxes of Venice with evocative images that celebrate the magnificent architecture and its fragility.

Hadley’s unusual childhood and lengthy history with the city, coupled with the premature loss of her father who introduced her to Italy, have allowed her to channel Venice’s ethereal nature with subtle intensity. Her dream-like images of dark waters and shadowy passageways emanate longing and conjure a forgotten Venice – Damiani    
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      Serge Kayaking Through the Salvinia © Lynne Buchanan

Florida’s Changing Waters: A Beautiful World in Peril
Photographs By Lynne Buchanan
Essays by Jason M. Evans, Robert L. Knight
George F. Thompson Publishing


"Lynne Buchanan began photographing rivers to create artistic records of her connection with water and the lessons she learned from rivers about being in the present moment and aligning with the flow of life. The more time she spent photographing waterways in her native Florida, the more she noticed what was being damaged and lost due to human impact….The result is Changing Waters, which documents the negative effects of climate change, agricultural pollution, population and urban growth, and land development on Florida’s inland and coastal waters and springs." Purchase

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Anna Marie Mesa, 16, listens to music on her smartphone in Centro Havana. Technology is leapfrogging the infastructure in Cuba where citizens went from landlines to smartphones in a matter of months. Cubans born after 1989 have only known a time after the USSR dissolved and left the Caribbean nation with little resources and a powerful, growth-crippling, US-led economic embargo © Greg Kahn

Havana Youth © Greg Kahn

Havana Youth : Greg Kahn
Photographs by Greg Kahn
Introduction by Ariana Hernandez-Reguant
Yoffy Press

"In Havana Youth, Greg Kahn explores Cubans born after 1989, who have only known a time after the USSR dissolved and left the Caribbean nation with few resources and a growth-crippling, US-led economic embargo. Those kids, born during what is called “The Special Period”, are now in their twenties and developing a sense of individuality in a society that was historically focused on collectivism. This is their cultural counter-revolution, and they are redefining what it means to be Cuban." Yoffy Press

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The Best of LensCulture,  vol 3  
Schilt Publishing

The next generation of contemporary photographers. . .

"Here are 150 award-winning photographers you should know. These exciting contemporary photographers hail from 42 countries on five continents, and they are making remarkable work right now in diverse cultures around the world. It's fresh, inspiring, insightful and thought-provoking. LensCulture is the leading online destination to discover the latest trends and freshest contemporary photography, and this volume compiles some of the best discoveries of the year. This book celebrates excellence in the visual language of photography in all genres: documentary, fine art, photojournalism, portrait, street photography, abstract, landscape, architecture, nature, alternative
process, experimental, poetic, personal, and more. Everyone who is curious about the current state of photography around the globe will be delighted to discover the rich variety of photographers and their imagery presented in these pages." – LensCulture.com

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Kwaidan. Stories and Studies of Strange Things
Photographs by Hiroshi Watanabe
Text by Lafcadio Hearn
Introduction by Paul Murray
Unicorn Publishing Group



PHOTO-EYE Book Store asked internationally renowned experts and artists from the photobook world to choose just one book for their 2019 photo-eye Favorite PhotoBooks List. Check them out https://www.photoeye.com/best-books-2019/index.cfm

"Out of this year’s vast ocean of photography books, I chose "Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things" with photographs by award-winning contemporary photographer Hiroshi Watanabe illustrating Lafcadio Hearn's century-old folk stories. One of my favorite short stories opens the book...with Watanabe’s magnificent photograph, remarkably created with an accurate Buddhist spell painstakingly written all over the entire body of the main character, Hoichi, also shown on the book cover." Elizabeth Avedon


12.14.2019

ALL-ABOUT-PHOTO AWARDS: Call To Enter

The Car Boys © Rebecca Moseman, Merit Mention 2019

CALL TO ENTER: All-About-Photo Awards 5th edition invites photographers from around the world to submit their best work for consideration. Cash prizes! Terrific jurors! Deadline to enter: January 31, 2020

Winners will receive $10,000 in cash awards, extensive press coverage and global recognition. The grand prize is $5,000, the 2nd prize is $2,000, the 3rd prize is $1,500, the 4th prize is $1,000 and the 5th prize is $500!

All winners will have their work published/showcased on the websites Lenscratch, Daylighted's digital traveling exhibition worldwide, All About Photo Winners Gallery and featured in the printed issue of AAP Magazine "Special Edition All About Photo Awards 2020". In addition, a selection of entrants of particular merit will be invited to display their portfolio on the website www.all-about-photo.com.

For More Information and to Enter:


 © Christian Vizl, 2nd Place Winner 2019


 All About Photo Awards is open to all individuals age 18 and older; 
professional and amateur photographers alike.

12.04.2019

BLACK+WHITE Call For Entry : Curated by Elizabeth Avedon

First Light © Sean Perry

Mahavodi Temple, Bodhgaya, India © Nicholas Vreeland

Black and white photography still holds a place in my heart; it holds an incomparable mystique and mood. Actually film star Ginger Rogers said something like that, but I am of the same opinion. Canadian photojournalist Ted Grant said, “When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their souls!” I’m not sure that is an actual fact, but I like his point of view. – Elizabeth Avedon

I’m looking for entries on all subject matter, real or illusive, unpredictable or expected, complicated or plain, in black + white.

"Black + White” Photographs Call for Entry
Curated by Elizabeth Avedon
Entry Deadline: January 6, 2020

Notifications: January 20, 2020
Framed images due at Gallery: March 1, 2020

Exhibition hangs March 1 - May 15, 2020
South x Southeast Photography Gallery
Molena, Georgia

questions: nancy@sxsemagazine.com

11.27.2019

FRACTURED : photo-eye Juried Exhibition


CITIZEN 13, 2015 © CHRISTOPHER COLVILLE
(click to enlarge)

F R A C T U R E D
AN EXHIBITION CURATED AND 
PRESENTED BY PHOTO-EYE GALLERY

Photo-eye Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico: This year marks the 40th Anniversary of photo-eye and they are celebrating with their first-ever juried Open Call looking for photographic submissions for a gallery exhibition in Santa Fe (and online) entitled: "F R A C T U R E D." They invite the submission of photographic works exploring the concept of “fractured.” The exhibition will take place in their physical gallery and online from February 28th to May in 2020.  Read more here

Submitted photographs may come from photojournalistic or documentary projects, commercial assignments, as well as photographs made as expressive artworks. Artists are encouraged to be creative in their interpretation of the theme. Read more here

This exhibition will be juried by the photo-eye Gallery staff. The gallery is looking for new work, and submissions to the open call are also considered for future representation in our online Photographer’s Showcase. Standard artist contract applies. Read more here

Deadline to submit work: 1/12/20



11.25.2019

JONATHAN BLAUSTEIN: Extinction Party Kickstarter

 © Jonathan Blaustein

 © Jonathan Blaustein

 © Jonathan Blaustein

 © Jonathan Blaustein

 © Jonathan Blaustein

© Jonathan Blaustein
 
Images and text by Jonathan Blaustein
Published by Yoffy Press, with an essay by Kevin Kwan
A limited edition photo book about over-consumption
and its impact on the planet

Photographer, writer and educator, Jonathan Blaustein, is asking for your support to help publish his new limited edition photography book that is about to go into production with Yoffy Press in Atlanta.
Check out Jonathan's KICKSTARTER and View his Video for full details on how to support this project by purchasing a book and/or a limited edition print (images above) in the next 11 days. 
Extinction Party
www.kickstarter.com

My 2014 Interview on L'Oeil de la Photographie / The Eye of Photography with Jonathan Blaustein about this project in it's earlier stage just before an exhibition of this work opened at The Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, New Mexico:

The Eye of Photography
Jonathan Blaustein Talks To Elizabeth Avedon

“I’ve lived in cities on both coasts, and have found that the man-made landscape leads people to over-consider the power of humanity…. When you’re staring at skyscrapers all day, and traveling via underground train or high speed elevator, it’s easy to overestimate our capabilities.”– Jonathan Blaustein

Jonathan Blaustein is an artist, writer, and educator based in Taos, New Mexico. His photographs have been exhibited widely in the US, and reside in several important collections, including the Library of Congress, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He also writes about photography for the New York Times Lens blog and APhotoEditor.com, and has taught at the University of New Mexico-Taos for many years.

His series, “The Value of a Dollar,” was published by the New York Times in 2010, and subsequently went viral on the Internet. Ultimately, the conceptual series was seen by millions of people around the world, creating dialogue about the manner in which food represents deeper issues of wealth, class, power and health.

Opening February 22, Blaustein‘s photographs will be part of a three person contemporary art exhibition, “The Mindless Consumption of Animals,” at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, New Mexico.
    
I spoke with Jonathan recently about his work and his upcoming exhibition:
  
Elizabeth Avedon: We first met several years ago during CENTER’s Review Santa Fe, while you were working on what eventually became your very successful series, “The Value of a Dollar.” Please explain your works point of view.
   
Jonathan Blaustein:
My point of view is informed by my background and my experiences, like anyone else. “The Value of a Dollar” was a project that was born out of my obsession with food, many years in the restaurant business, my conceptual art training, and my economics education.

The Great Recession was imminent, as I was shooting the project in early 2008, and I began to pay more attention to how much healthy food costs. When I started buying less fruit, berries in particular, because my income was dropping, I felt that it was something worth exploring.

Furthermore, where I live in the American West, there are semi-trucks and billboards everywhere, showing these lacquered up, shiny Fast Food hamburgers. Everywhere, we see artificial visions of what we eat. And that visual language is a huge driver for America’s obesity epidemic.

Eventually, I got the idea to go shopping for food, as a part of my artistic practice. I’d buy things, based upon their aesthetic and symbolic potential, and then measure out $1 of each item, before photographing it on my stark studio table. I wanted to make up my own visual language that examined the incredibly complex underpinning of the global economy, via a simple and clean image style.

I photographed everything without any artificial lighting, packaging, or styling, so that the food items could stand alone and speak for themselves.

EA: And you followed this series with “MINE”?

JB:
Sort of. I actually spent a year and half working on a cultural landscape project in Southern Colorado. But I had a hard time making the pictures what I wanted them to be, so I put that to the side.

In 2011, I got the idea for “MINE,” which felt like a proper follow up, once “The Value of a Dollar” had been so well received. Like a lot of artists, I wanted each project to make sense in an evolving continuum.

After commodifying my food, I wanted to take a look at another primary element of human existence: territory. I actually live on 3.5 acres of land at the base of the Rocky Mountains, and it’s filled with all sorts of nominally worthless natural resources. Rocks, trees, grass, flowers, snow, ice, and, of course, animals.

The concept of private property gives me the right to do whatever I choose with that which is “MINE.” So I decided to turn those natural artifacts into art, in my studio, and then photograph them. In that way, the process was much like “The Value of a Dollar”. I went shopping for free nature on my land, rather than food in a grocery store.
   
EA: How did that work lead to your latest project “The Mindless Consumption of Animals.”

JB:
Well, I put a lot of effort into turning “MINE” into a solo show in Santa Fe over the course of 2012. And then, once it opened, I kind of abandoned my studio. I write from home, and teach at the University in town, so I began to spend less and less time in my photo studio after the massive production of the “MINE” exhibit.

Unfortunately, my studio was pretty expensive, for a small town. So eventually, I realized I needed to give it up. It was costing too much, and I’ve got two young children. It seemed like my priorities needed a re-ordering.

The studio was filled with crap. Piles and piles of waste paper, and worthless objects that I’d accrued over 8 years time. Facing it all, it seemed so daunting.

Then it struck me that I could photograph my junk, and imbue it with value through the artistic process. So it connected perfectly with the two previous projects, which were based upon presenting my own resources, and using them to make grander statements about life in the 21st Century.

Since I was excited about mining the trash for goodies to photograph, it made the process of culling through the clutter kind of a fun game. Each day, I forced myself to take at least one full trash bag out of there, so the piles gradually shrunk.

And then I was left with a blank space, and a trove of images to cull through.
   
EA: You studied Economics and History at Duke University. What led you into Photography?
    
JB:
In retrospect, I got a decent education at Duke, but I was miserable the whole time. Eventually, I learned I had enough credits to graduate early, so I came to hang out here in Taos, where my folks had moved. During that semester, I began to explore my creativity for the first time, and felt like there was something out there for me.

After college, I worked on a couple of movie productions in New York, before deciding to move back here to the mountains. Just as I was leaving on a solo, five day, cross-country drive, I bought a few rolls of black and white film for a little point and shoot I owned, but never used.

It was just a random idea, and I still don’t exactly know where it came from. But I was hooked within minutes, and shot hundreds of images along the way. By the time I got to Texas, I jotted in a notebook that I wanted to be a photographer. That was it.

So I threw myself into it, and studied undergraduate at UNM in Albuquerque, before a stint in San Francisco. Then I went to Pratt in Brooklyn, where I got my MFA. It’s been 17 years since I picked up a camera, and I still can’t believe how it all turned out.
   
EA: What inspired you to move to New Mexico?

JB:
I was very fortunate growing up, in that my parents discovered Taos when I was still a child, and brought me here when I was 14. We came back once or twice a year, and then they built a house and moved here permanently, when I was still a teenager.

I loved it from the very beginning. I met my wife while I was in Albuquerque, and she was born and raised here. Her folks live here, as do mine, so it was a natural place to settle down and raise a family.

I’m glad I grew up in New Jersey, because the East Coast does impart a certain drive in most people. But since I came here at such a young age, it’s become home in a way that Jersey could never be. The sunshine and the landscape are most definitely addictive.

EA: Were you always so environmentally or economically concerned or has this developed since living on the land in New Mexico?

JB:
That’s a great question, Elizabeth. The answer is that my time here has informed the way I think about the manner in which humans interact with the planet. It’s inescapable, as I see a two million year old extinct volcano out one window, and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains out the other.

I’ve lived in cities on both coasts, and have found that the man-made landscape leads people to over-consider the power of humanity. It can’t be helped. When you’re staring at skyscrapers all day, and traveling via underground train or high speed elevator, it’s easy to overestimate our capabilities.

I definitely didn’t set out to make political work, or work with an environmental bent, but those themes crept in while I wasn’t looking. And then, when this exhibition opportunity arose, it gave me a chance to consider the deeper roots of my artistic practice.

EA: How did the upcoming exhibition come about?

JB:
I spend most of my time showing my work, and engaging with community outside of Taos, because our art scene is a little insular, and perhaps regional. But I struggle with that, as I’m a big believer in the power of community in general.

Early last year, the Harwood curator Jina Brenneman reached out, and said she wanted to get my work on the wall, to introduce it to Taos. It’s the best museum north of Santa Fe, by a long margin, so I was very excited. They have an amazing collection of Agnes Martin’s work, and it draws a good crowd.

Once she told me the premise of the show, and the title, “Art for a Silent Planet,” it really forced me to think about what I’ve been doing. I read the title as a metaphor for the Lorax: we speak for the trees [Dr. Seuss — ‘I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees for the trees have no tongues.’ ]

So I decided to find a through line in my work from the last six years, and lo and behold, the environmental themes were right there. As Jina pushed me to try do say something unique, I thought hard about how to best present what I’d been working on.

Eventually, I decided that as the new work was about “repurposing” my trash, I’d repurpose my older work alongside it. There will be a grid of four meat pictures from “The Value of a Dollar,” for instance, but for this show, it’s been retitled as a single piece called “Cow farts cause Global Warming.”

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 Extinction Party : Jonathan Blaustein
Yoffy Press