Photographer: Ilan Rubin
Last week, I wrote a column that tried to tell it like it is. The world we inhabit, one that revolves around photography, is painfully un-diverse. Here in the United States, those in the profession are very, very likely to only interact with others of a similar background. (And skin color, sadly.)
While I left room for the exceptions, the fact that there seem to be so few is troubling. How do we change this? Whether it’s people complaining about all-white competition-jurys, all-male Superbowl commercials, or writers like me scrambling to review books by women and minorities, the numbers are obviously skewed. What to do?
The only answer I’ve been able to glean is to do some boots-on-the-ground style outreach. As I’ve said before, I spent seven years teaching photography to at-risk minority youth. I’ve done the work, and seen how easily art concepts can become embedded in young minds of any color or gender.
Another tried-and-true methodology is to honestly examine one’s own biases, and then try to challenge them. Most of us have a hard time admitting to negative preferences or stereotypes. Not a pleasant conversation to have with oneself.
Looking inward, I had to admit I was biased against Texans. (Here in New Mexico, it’s a state passion.) As I mentioned in a column a month or so ago, after years of seeing Texan plates on personal Tour Buses towing Hummers, it was easy to get angry. Throw in the bluster and big belt-buckles, and I can honestly say I was proud of the hate.
Whether geographically, racially, or gender-based, it’s not OK to dislike people en masse. (Obviously.) So I was thrilled to spend a little time in Houston last year, and realize that my pre-conceptions were off. I didn’t hate Texans, just the folks in the Dallas to Amarillo corridor. And even in Texas, that seems to be an established sentiment. (Yes, I am now mostly joking.)
As much as I enjoyed last year’s taste of Texas toast, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to re-visit H-town last week. I even planned a little road trip up to Central Texas for a quick visit to über-hip Austin. (Did I listen to some country music along the way? You bet I did. KNRG, the Renegade, is all Texas music, all the time. The first three songs I heard were all anti-urban. (Including a hysterical mockery of the aforemetioned Dallas.))
To be clear, this article is but an introduction to a series, like we did with San Francisco late last year. (How’s that for polar opposites?) I saw some fantastic art exhibitions, met with some intelligent, friendly and unpretentious art professionals, and ate some truly amazing food. Basically, I had a great time. From Texas hater to convert in 10 short months.
Before I leave you, though, I want to share one of my thin-sliced-stereotypical observations. I can’t take advantage of it myself, being chained by mortgage and blood to this extraordinary piece of rural paradise I call home. But some of you can. So here it goes.
Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States. The three cities above it, NYC, LA, and Chicago, are famously expensive. Houston is not. They are also known for exclusivity, and make it difficult to break into established networks, lacking the proper school connections and/or friend lists. Houston is extremely open and accessible, from what I’ve seen. (And the FotoFest Biennial provides entry to all comers.)
Beyond that, Houston has the kind of financial and cultural resources that exist in very few places in the world. Its economy is booming, and ought to continue to grow, as the energy sector is unlikely to wither. The port, connected to the city via the shipping channel, is also thriving. (And global trade is not going away any time soon.) The unemployment rate is below 6%, and the median income is over $70,000 per year. (Thank you for the statistics, Houston Public Radio.) Essentially, the place is leaking money.
The city is vast and diverse, with massive immigrant and minority communities, including Vietnamese, African-American, and Latino. It’s like a Texan Los Angeles in scope, minus the mountains and oceans. (Of attitude.) It’s the perfect place to encounter those from backgrounds different than yours: a city where biases go to die.
I noticed vacant commercial real estate everywhere; storefronts just waiting to be turned into artist-run galleries or commercial photo studios. I also spoke with an artist/curator who produces art shows for those downtown mega-corporate-skyscrapers that I mentioned in last year’s article. While state funding for the arts has been cut, (it is still Texas,) the public-private combination seems to offer insane amounts of cash and opportunities for the local community.
In the parlance of economics, Houston is an undervalued resource: a city just waiting for a fresh round of hipster-style-gentrification. And if you doubt me, you can trust Forbes magazine, which listed Houston as the coolest city in America in 2011. I’m not sure what their criteria was, and it’s likely to be very different from mine. (As Forbes itself is actually uncool.) But you can bet there will be a proverbial gold rush of 20-something energy-sector/hedge-fund yuppies who’ll rush down there due to Forbes’ blessing.
Who are they to you? Will they be your new friends, if you move to H-town? Probably not. Would you find them “cool,” in their khakis and button down polo shirts? It’s unlikely. (Again with the stereotyping.) But might they make up the bulk of your collector base, or client base, for decades to come? Now you’re getting the picture.
still love old-school promos too, btw. I get a stack of mail everyday, and while 95% of it might go in the trash if there’s that one promo I like I put it on my stack of promos on the shelf (see below). It might be nine or ten months later, but I’ll remember the work and will go look for the promo if we want to consider hiring that person.
–Leslie Baldwin, Texas Monthly Photography Editor
via I Love Texas Photo .
Photographer: Dewey Nicks
Photographers Andy Anderson, William Allard, Jim Arndt, Daniel Beltra, Mark Gooch, Andy Mahr, Kurt Markus, David Spielman, Matt Turley and Olaf Veltman got the call of a lifetime when veteran adman Jimmy Bonner of The Richard’s Group phoned with simple instructions and a mantra from Paul Harvey. He asked them to go spend time with farmers and ranchers and take pictures to be shown in a 2 minute spot for Ram during the Super Bowl. No AD’s or clients or craft service; just photographers and their subjects.
AdWeek is calling it the #1 spot from the Super Bowl and love or hate the sentimental message you’ve got see this as a clear referendum on the power of photography. At nearly $3,800,000 per 30 seconds of air time, Ram and The Richards Group made a huge bet and came up aces. According to Andy Anderson and his blog Rob Baker, and Deb Grisham we’re also involved in the production.
we are now independent, and greatly looking forward to being a smaller, leaner company able to pursue its own best interests with a new sense of purpose and creativity. As Marc likes to say, “This is a startup, with a 160-year-old brand at its heart.”
via A Letter from the editor – British Journal of Photography.
Photographer: Ryan Heffernan
Lifetime Achievement: David Goldblatt
Young Photographer: Kitra Cahana
Art: Mishka Henner
Publication: Cristina de Middel, The Afronauts
Photojournalism: David Guttenfelder
Applied/Fashion/Advertising: Erik Madigan Heck
Photographer: Hiro
We’re all middle class, aren’t we? We, the creative class, were reared to have options. Here in America, at least, if you’re reading this, you’re probably white, and you likely grew up comfortable. (If you were upper class, you’d be reading Frieze, and planning to jet off to Dubai to take some sun.)
In case you’re wondering, I am aware that one of these days my penchant for stereotyping might just get me into trouble. But until then, I will endeavor to keep it real. If you grew up with enough education to become a photographer, or an editor, or an art buyer, it’s unlikely that you come from a dirt poor rural spot of nothing, or a gritty inner-city ghetto.
I believe our respective middle-ness is a big driver for the need many photographers have to visit emerging nations to document poverty. (And violence. And misery.) The obsession with “The Other” is well-worn. On the flip side, our mission to share truth and reality with the wider world, through our respective media outlets, often comes from noble roots.
Seriously, how many of you have a colleague who rose up from nothing to become an artist? Or a journalist? Of course it’s possible, but I’d suggest that for those with little or nothing, the desperate need to ensure survival supersedes the desire to make pretty, or important pictures. Given how much I believe in the power of Art, would that it were different. But class matters, as does one’s home turf.
I got to thinking about this, having just put down “Steel Work City,” a new book by Rikard Laving. (Journal) If bleak beauty is your thing, this is one to buy. If you love a peek into how the other half lives, those who toil thanklessly in dirty industry to make the cash to buy food, pay for gas, and perhaps have time to fish a bit on the weekends, then this one is for you as well.
The slim volume opens with a lovely poem by Mattias Alkberg, in Swedish, and then English. To be fair, you don’t know it takes place in Sweden until the end notes. The initial viewing provides a generic, cold, Scandinavian experience. Sitting here in New Mexico, it could have been Finland, Norway, or Denmark for all I knew. (It’s funny that some neighboring countries have internecine rivalries, but all look the same from the other side of the planet.)
But Sweden it is. The narrative is based at the Swedish Steel AB compound in Oxelösund, and the surrounding areas. (It employs 54% of the local population.) Lots of billowing smoke, modernist institutional architecture, and gray light. In the wrong hands, the material could easily be bland and banal. Instead, I was hooked.
This book is a great example, (as was last week’s,) of what happens when everything comes together. The production quality, the text, the graphic design, the use of suspense. (Where is this? What’s going on?) I loved that each image was allowed to breathe on the page, and that the titles gave me the info I needed just below.
The subtle color shifts communicate cold, and even boredom. The school children pictures truly surprise, as we see that diversity has hit this sleepy little area. It’s not just a bunch of little Aryan kids. Who knew?
I’ll readily admit that bleak beauty doesn’t do it for everyone. Some folks prefer otters and ocelots. Cacti and chameleons. Boobs and bikinis. Why not?
But I love the experience of opening up a photo-book, and being reminded how lucky I was to be born with options, in spitting distance of the most powerful city in the World. (Here’s your shout-out, NYC. Enjoy the mantle while you’ve still got it.) It’s a big part of why I worked so hard for seven years to share the power of Art with kids less fortunate than I was. The other reason, unsurprisingly, was that the bills needed paying. I’m a working stiff too. Thankfully, though, my fingernails are clean, and my hands are as soft as a baby’s belly.
Bottom Line: Lyrical, bleak life in a Swedish Steel town
To Purchase “Steel Work City” Visit Photo-Eye
Full Disclosure: Books are provided by Photo-Eye in exchange for links back for purchase.
Books are found in the bookstore and submissions are not accepted.
Photographer: Jamie Kripke
Still Images In Great Advertising, is a column where Suzanne Sease discovers great advertising images and then speaks with the photographers about it.
Cade Martin has been a long time client of mine and I have been more than thrilled at his continuing success and growth. This latest campaign is with Starbucks and their TAZO tea brand which came to him through his agents at Greenhouse Reps.
Suzanne: I see you finessing this style and growing the technique. Is this because this creative team allowed you to push the envelope more than some past projects?
Working with the Starbucks creative team was an amazing experience. They were collaborative as well as super supportive of anything I wanted to try, and gave the time and space to push it a little bit further and experiment. For this project I pulled together a team with a lot of feature film experience, which helped take it in the direction I wanted.
Suzanne: Where did you shoot this campaign? It is so etherial. But some of that I think is your lighting and technique that you have taken further.
We shot the entire campaign over three days in LA, two days were at Greystone Mansion (a Tudor-style estate where films like There Will Be Blood and The Prestige were filmed) and one day was at the Huntington Botanical Gardens.
We had a number of scenarios and the two locations were perfect in that they allowed us multiple looks that were all completely different.
Suzanne: What are your plans to continue to grow this style of shooting? It is nice to be known for a unique style but if you don’t push and grow you get pigeon holed.
It’s an interesting question and I’ve faced the pigeon holing at every step of my career. When I first started I worked on a couple of projects for National Geographic & Discovery Channel and I was considered a reportage photographer. I then worked on corporate portraits and I was known as the corporate guy. I did a book project for a ballet company so I was then the dance guy. I know it’s human nature to want to classify someone but I’d love to be considered just a photographer. I honestly love the range of the projects that I work on and I think I’m able to draw on each and every one of these different experiences to bring something to a project that maybe wasn’t considered.
Suzanne: I know that it is wonderful to be doing National and International assignments, but you still love your local clients and the work they do. How to get the message to local advertising community that you still love their projects, too.
I live in DC, am raising my family in DC and I truly love working in DC. It really is a neat city, an international city, and there is a ton of amazing work being created here – projects large & small and I love being a part of it. I’ve been very fortunate to have a list of local clients that I love working with and truly enjoy the collaborative nature of our work. It’s like family. Photography for me is not just about the grand and faraway – but often, it’s the joy of bringing a new look – or discovering a hidden secret – in your very own backyard.
Note: Content for Still Images In Great Advertising is found. Submissions are not accepted.
Cade Martin is an award-winning photographer for advertising, corporate and fashion clients worldwide. His meticulous attention to detail helps shape an environment that echoes the real world, but with a heightened emotional focus. Specializing in people and location photography, Martin has worked for clients including Tommy Hilfiger, Coors Brewing Company, Zurich, America’s Next Top Model, Discovery Channel, Karla Colletto, IBM, Verizon, Marriott International, Grey Goose, National Geographic Society, Starbucks and other companies and creative agencies.
APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s, after founding the art buying department at The Martin Agency then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies. She has a new Twitter fed with helpful marketing information. Follow her@SuzanneSease.
Now the reality when producing any involving/layered story; It’s 99 percent problem solving and 1 percent photography, all wrapped around a heaping scoop of serendipity.
via The Photo Society.
Photographer: Ellen Von Unwerth
It’s possible to live off of commercial photography, but I don’t think it’s possible to live off art photography full time, or at the least it’s highly unlikely for all but the exceptional few. I did receive an honorarium for a show, which was a pleasant surprise, but every artist I know works a day job or takes commercial gigs.
via American Photo.
Jennifer Shaw is a fine art photographer based in New Orleans. Her project Hurricane Story was published in 2011 by Chin Music Press. She is represented by Guthrie Contemporary in New Orleans, and by Jennifer Schwartz Gallery in Atlanta. Ms. Shaw also teaches photography, and is the director of the photoNOLA festival.
Jonathan Blaustein: Did you ever watch the Jetsons when you were a kid?
Jennifer Shaw: Uh-huh.
JB: When you were watching people talking to each other on screens, did you ever think it would happen in your lifetime?
JS: Not really.
JB: And here we are.
JS: It’s my second Skype conversation ever.
JB: Ever? I’m honored that I pushed you to do something new. I just used a bank drive-thru window for the first time in my life. Sometimes technology is scarier than it ought to be. I always thought I was too dumb to figure it out, but it wasn’t that hard.
Do you use the drive-thru window?
JS: Of course.
JB: Everybody had it figured out but me. You are in New Orleans right now, as we speak.
JS: Right.
JB: But I saw in your bio that you were born in Indiana, and raised in Milwaukee. So you are a child of the great Mid-West.
JS: Correct.
JB: What brought you to NOLA?
JS: I graduated from art school. I don’t know if you went to art school, but there’s not exactly some great corporate job lined up waiting for you. It’s more of a decision of where you want to go to make a life as an artist. I always had this fascination with New Orleans. You know, the mystique. The Crescent City.
I decided after one last long, bitter winter in Rhode Island that I was going to move South. I came down here, and here I am.
JB: How long ago was that?
JS: 1994.
JB: 1994? Old school. I was just in New Orleans for photoNOLA, which all of our regular readers will know. When I do these travel pieces, I don’t have a lot of time to make observations. I keep my eyes open, and talk to people. It works. But the downside is that I’m making judgements based on a really thin slice of reality.
I wrote a piece about the city booming with money and energy and galleries. Putting Katrina in the past. That was a spot observation. I have to admit that I could be really wrong. Just because Mercedes Benz is sponsoring the Superdome…was I rushing to judgement? Or are things doing really well down there, as I surmised?
JS: New Orleans is always a mixed bag. There are parts of New Orleans that are doing really well, but there are still some areas that haven’t fully recovered from Katrina. But culturally, we’re definitely in a beautiful, Post-Katrina boom.
The arts scene is thriving. It’s always been healthy, but especially now. The St. Claude arts district is new. A lot of artist-run co-operative-type things going on. So that’s exciting.
JB: So I wasn’t completely off base?
JS: No, no.
JB: Because that was your opportunity to tell me I was full of shit in my article from a few weeks back.
JS: (laughing) No. I loved your observations.
JB: It’s 2013, so we’re coming up on almost 20 years of you living there. Is this boom unprecedented in your time in the city?
JS: I think so. A lot of the larger institutions have been here for many, many years. The Julia and Magazine St galleries have been here for a long time. But the St. Claude and Downtown scene, where it’s funky and fresh and vibrant, where the artists are starting their own spaces…that’s all pretty new. Post-Katrina.
JB: When I was in town, it was suggested that maybe part of the boom had come from the people who came down to New Orleans to help out after the storm, and then stayed. Thereby bringing in aggressive, fresh energy. Was that something that you noticed? Was it all the government money? What do you think was the cause of the Renaissance?
JS: There definitely has been some “brain gain,” as they say. People who maybe came down to volunteer to help with the re-building, and then just fell in love with the city. There certainly was money flying around afterwards, but I think that’s dried up to some degree. There was a point where there was federal or insurance money, and things felt really hopping. (With lots of construction and renovation everywhere.)
I almost feel like I’m not qualified to answer the larger, institutional-type questions.
JB: No problem. Ladies and gentlemen, while you read this interview with Ms. Jennifer Shaw, you can choose to disregard some of what she says because she does not claim expertise. All right? It’s in the record. You might not be the right person to answer these questions, but you’re on the other end of the video screen, so you don’t have much of a choice right now, do you?
JS: No.
JB: What about the Southern Hospitality? When you first moved South, what was your reaction?
JS: It’s charming, right? Makes you feel right at home.
JB: photoNOLA, as I understand it, is an off-shoot or project of the New Orleans Photo Alliance.
JS: Correct.
JB: And the Alliance is an artist-run, artist-founded, member-supported community organization, with its own gallery in the Lower Garden District. Is that about right?
JS: Yes, non-profit as well.
JB: When did it get started?
JS: The New Orleans Photo Alliance formed in 2006. Another one of those Katrina silver linings. Don Marshall runs the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, and has a long history of working in the arts in New Orleans. After Katrina, he started calling meetings with different groups of artists, encouraging us to form our own collectives and non-profits. To help resuscitate the arts, and the wider cultural rebuilding of the city.
Out of these groups of meetings with the photographers, we eventually decided what to do, what to be, and the name. One of the things I thought we should do was start a photography festival.
JB: Was that emergence concurrent with the creation of the Photo Alliance, or did it take some time?
JS: It was pretty concurrent; it came out of one of the early meetings. We first met in February or March of 2006. There had been a couple of Mardi Gras-themed group photography exhibitions. You know there’s always a big crowd at a group show.
Everybody came out and was just so thankful to see each other again. Hugs all around. Lots of “How did you make out during the storm?” There was this great energy flowing, and I think Don had attended one of those openings. I don’t know if that was one of his catalysts for getting us together, or if it was a part of his mission to organize lots of different types of artists, and getting us forming these self-sufficient organizations.
I’m totally losing track.
JB: It’s OK.
JS: So there were these two shows, and then a formal meeting is called at the Jazz and Heritage foundation. We decided, yeah, this is a good idea. Why not go ahead and do this?
Start an organization. So we had a series of monthly meetings to figure out what we might accomplish as a group. What sort of form it would take, and what the goals might be. What the structure would be.
By December of that year, we had our first officers, and a group show that started membership. We made it so the entry fee gave you membership into the New Orleans Photo Alliance. That was the beginning of it all. Don hooked us up with an exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center. When he got that plotted, I said, “Let’s take this December show at the CAC, and use it as an anchor to get the festival started.”
I knocked on the doors of galleries and other venues, and said, “We’re going to do a festival. Would you have a photo exhibition in conjunction with our show at the CAC? It’s going to be called photoNOLA, a month of photography.”
So that was the beginning. The first year was just exhibitions throughout the month, but nothing what it’s like now, obviously. (Portfolio reviews were added in 2007.)
JB: I didn’t know that the Photo Alliance came out of the immediate aftermath of Katrina. It’s a really interesting idea, the DIY ethos of artists getting together to do if for themselves. Given how much work it takes to do the business and self-promotion aspects of a career, the idea of getting together to lessen the load, and create the rising tide model, makes so much sense.
Were you the head of the photoNOLA festival from it’s inception?
JS: Pretty much so, yeah.
JB: Now, we both know that there are people who do that job, the Director of a non-profit, and that’s their only job. But on top of that, you also teach photography, and you have a full-time art career, and you’re a Mom.
JS: Right.
JB: So you’re trying to juggle everything at once. The 21st Century Hustle. I wanted to hear a bit about the founding of the organization, so thanks. It’s kind of a leading and inappropriate question, but do you think this would not have happened without the storm? Was there a burgeoning sense of collaborative energy because of the Internet anyway? Or do you think this was really a reaction to tragedy?
JS: I think it was totally a reaction to tragedy. I don’t know if something else would have come up in a different form later without the storm. But with Katrina, with everybody being out of the city for two months, and desperately wanting to get home, and desparately missing all of our friends and connections, I think it made us all appreciate people in a way that we never had before. Community ties too, not just in the art world.
There was a whole civic rebirth after the storm, on many different levels. Schools, and community organizations. So Katrina had a lot of silver linings, and the art scene and the Photo Alliance are certainly two of them.
JB: As is your book, “Hurricane Story.”
JS: (laughing.)
JB: So there’s that. My house got destroyed in a Hurricane, and all I got was a hard-cover book. Is that a T-shirt yet?
JS: (laughing still.) No. I should clarify, though, my house did not get destroyed. I’m on the sliver by the river, where there wasn’t any flooding. Just wind damage.
JB: Oh, congratulations.
JS: (laughing again.)
JB: I know, it’s seven years later, and I’m saying, “Congrats that your house didn’t get destroyed.” Let’s not give people the wrong impression.
I picked your book up and reviewed it in the very beginning of my book review column. I didn’t know you, or your name, or your work, or photoNOLA. I grabbed the little object off of my stack, and was kind of shocked. I hadn’t seen anybody personalize the tragedy in such an empathetic, but slightly light-hearted way.
Because you used toys.
JS: Right.
JB: What was the impetus for telling this really difficult story that way, about your evacuation, and having a baby on the day the storm made landfall? What was the genesis?
JS: I had a Holga that I’d modified into a macro-camera, and I hadn’t done a lot with it. I had some King Cake Babies lying around, and I think one day, I saw one lying around, and it reminded me of…I don’t know. Something just sparked, and I decided to pull out that macro camera and try it on those King Cake Babies, and maybe that’s the way I can deal with Katrina.
I’d taken some traditional disaster pictures, but didn’t feel like I owned that. You know? I felt like I was doing it in a documentary sense, for posterity. I didn’t feel entirely comfortable saying that was my art, or trying to sell that kind of work in galleries. I don’t know.
It was just these King Cake Babies, this macro camera, and a roll of black and white film. It just rolled, and made sense. This is it. This is what I need to be doing.
JB: What exactly is a King Cake Baby?
JS: Good question. Sorry. Every year from 12th Night through Mardi Gras, New Orleanians have mounds and mounds of King Cakes. Inside the cake is a little plastic baby, and the tradition is, whoever gets the slice with the King Cake Baby has to buy the next King Cake. It’s a continuing tradition at parties, and in offices, for weeks on end. We all get really fat. Getting the baby is a special thing, so you tend to collect them. They’re small and plastic, and made in China.
JB: Just like everything else.
Photographer: Joel van Houdt