Salina Ellis presents Vincent Serbin

Vincent Serbin is another artist working with collaged imagery. He sometimes cuts and tears the negatives, tapes them back together and then overlaps them using 2, 3, or 4 negatives in a single print. He then selectively tones the print in sepia and/or selenium and bleach. The final result is a print that has several layers of texture. Serbin calls this process “metaphysical graffiti”. Like Carol Golemboski he also at times incorporates photo-gram imagery.

The artist uses a 4x5 camera to capture his images. I thought it was very interesting that for his body of work “Figure Ground” (2008) he did not take any pictures. Instead Serbin went through the 16,000 plus negatives he had taken over the last 20 years and created paired images. That particular series explores the relationship of man and nature.

Other bodies of work include “Metaphysical Ground” 2007 which concerns the themes of time, past and future, and metaphysics and “Toward Omega” addresses the goal of the Omega point for the human race. Earlier works contain themes of still life an nudes.

Carolyn King posts Ka-Man Tse

I am utterly confused. This guy's got some really interesting, titles (how to address the fog, how to build small boats) for his work, really intriguing, but none of the work reflects the title.. The photos are as obscure as his titles and overlap and spill over into other bodies of work as if he's just sticking names to various and disparate photos to try and be "contemporary." I do enjoy the composition of some of the phot

os, and the extremely unique subject matter photographed in interesting ways. I just wish I thought like him or that his work stood enough on its own not to warrant an artist's statement. I'm struggling to find an excuse to see how these photographs fit together, so I'll stop, and enjoy them as interesting pictures, not as a body of work.

http://www.tsewhat.com/main.html

Yvette Coronado submits Adi Nes

Adi Nes' series Biblical Stories (2007) are presented in contemporary Israel and come to life with vividness and clarity. The series are fourteen separate portraits of characters from the Old Testament. The work showcases Jewish themes of exile and exodus. Here we see Ruth and Naomi scavenging for survival, left to make it own their own. Nes was inspired by the homeless in his home town of Tel Aviv and did not use professional models, just local people. I also enjoy how Nes uses art historical precedents in producing stories from the Old Testament and puts a modern spin on them. This series incorporates a strong narrative with a certain film quality. Nes has set up his photography with fully staged tableaux scenes, with close attention to costumes, locations, and production design.

This work still encompasses Nes' ideas of masculinity seen in his previous series: Soldiers(1994-2000), Boys(2000), and Youths(2001). We see it here in the photo of David and Jonathan.Young Jonathan was sent into exile by his father, Saul, and was taken in by David. In this portrait compassion and tenderness prevails.

Although I greatly enjoy Nes' work his website is somewhat disappointing. There are links to his gallery work, but site lacks information about the artist or his work. Check it out for yourself http://www.adines.com/

Carolyn King posts Richard Ross

This photo was taken at a shelter in Conroe, Texas, about 40 miles north of my hometown.

I found the project "Waiting for the End of the World" to be interesting not because of the photos themselves but on the idea that was supported by the photos. The body of work focuses on the environment and architecture of underground habitats, which were either made, converted or were naturally converted into shelters. I became interested in the idea of how these spaces, made in hopes of protection, could become one's fateful cell that no longer protects, but inhibits. At times the shelters are majestically cavernous, they always seem looming, on the verge of collapsing, not structurally but figuratively, onto seeming beauty that constructs the space. Ross stated in an interview (available on his site), "Shelters are the architecture of failure—the failure of moderation, politics, communication, diplomacy, and sustaining humanity. They represent the ultimate in optimism and belief in individual survival and paradoxically the ultimate in pessimism—the expectation of the destruction of humanity." Through the evident beauty of these spaces I sense the optimism Ross speaks of, but ultimately, I am overwhelmed by the immense cloud of expected decadence and thoroughly enjoy the juxtaposition.

http://www.richardross.net/

Andrea Couture submits Richard Koenig

Richard Koenig uses photography it a bit of a different way. He explores the tension that is created in photography - its capacity to depict and deceive. Koenig tries to get his viewers to pay more attention to the photograph than the actual subject of the piece by re-photgraphing his photographs. He tricks the eye with the angles at which he takes the photograph, making a flat surface look three dimensional. Often times he will place his photos in the corner of a room where the lines of the photographs break the lines of the corner.

I think these photographs are interesting but only for a few minutes. At first, these photographs grab your attention because you aren't always sure what is going on but they become uninteresting once you discover what Koenig is doing. Koenig seems to pay a little bit of attention to the composition of his "re-photographs" and the minimal background help the viewer pay attention to what he is doing. I really appreciate how well Koenig has been able to perfect his technique but I feel like its time for him to move on.

Here's his website to look at more of his work.

http://people.kzoo.edu/~rkoenig/homepage.html

Andrea Couture submits Anna Gaskell

Anna Gaskell is a contemporary photographer that focuses most of her work on loosely re-interpreting Alice and Wonderland. Many of the photographs are a little on the dark side and deal with child identity and the transformation from innocent child to "knowing" adult.

Gaskell pays close attention to the composition of these photographs with the lines and diagonals of each piece. The coloring of this work is very consistent and speaks to the dark, eerie quality that Gaskell is going for. If these photographs had been light and airy, her concept would not have come across as well. Also, some of the harsh lighting she used created crisp, dark shadows which also help with her concept.

I could not find a website just for Gaskell but there were several that talked about her work and showed some of her images. Here is one of those websites:

http://www.postmedia.net/999/gaskell.htm

Ashley presents Boogie

So, I have always been in to Upperplayground, check them out www.upperplayground.com, and a few years ago they printed a book of photographs about Sao Paolo, Brazil by a photographer named Boogie. He is a Serbian born photographer that got his start as a war photographer in his homeland. Now he travels the world photographing the darker side of humanity. His most recent book is about Istanbul and it is really disturbing. It is sad to think that this is actually exists but at the same time there is just something very beautiful about the images.

He also has a blog that he updates regularly, http://boogiephoto.blogspot.com, and as cheesey as it is he did a series on funny looking dogs that is really pretty good and amusing all at the same time. Funny looking dogs always make my day.