Andrea Couture submits Carrie Mae Weems talk

Many of us went to the Carrie Mae Weems talk during SPE. I thought that she was a great speaker. She seems to be very passionate about her art and allows her life to be consumed by the work she is making at the time. Weems had a lot of interesting things to say and I enjoyed seeing her work. The work that I was most drawn to was her Kitchen Table Series.

I think this series is interesting because all of the photographs are set in the same scene, only the characters and a few simple props move and change. Each photograph is set where most of the kitchen table is seen and the light hangs down, shining brightly in the middle of the table. These photographs are simplistic but they say a lot. This series talks about the human relationship (romantic, mother/daughter, friend, ect.) I really enjoy the interaction between the characters; it reminds me of the things that really do happen around a kitchen table. I also feel that many of life's events happen around the kitchen table and that is where we learn about each other and ourselves.

If you would like to see more from this series, visit this link:

http://carriemaeweems.net/galleries/kitchen-table.html

Midterm Blog entries are ridiculously low.

Hey Advanced Photo students...where are your weekly blog entries? These are to show me the progress of your personal research and so far, I only see 4 names here. Many of you officially have an F on this requirement. You will now only be able to achieve 1/2 of the grade for the blogs...come on people. This is not that big of a requirement. Check your syllabi for the weight of the blogs in your final grades. You are advanced students, get your game on!

Katy Schmader presents Sarah Cusimano Miles

http://sarahcusimanomiles.com/

I first met Sarah Cusimano Miles at SPE nationals in March. She recently spoke at the South central conference in town. Man oh man is her work exciting.

Miles had access to all the unused animals at the Anniston Museum of Natural History in Anniston, Alabama. Miles composes these creatures to create these beautifully composed images. I believe a lot of her influence comes from religious renaissance artwork. All the objects in the frame of her photograph tend to have a greater meaning than purely being fixed into the image.

The greatest thing about these images is how they are composed. Sarah Cusimano Miles breaks the image into a grid. In each portion of that grid she takes several different photographs at different focal lengths. When she uploads all these collected images into photo shop she masks off each image in a way to give herself in infinite amount of focus. This process creates incredibly detailed images.

Not only are these images beautiful, but they create a conversation between the specimen and the viewer.

Katy Schmader present Dan Mountford

Dan Mountford is one of my favorite new finds. Mountfords work is mostly made up of double exposure that is all done in camera, without the use of photo shop.

Due to the technical skills, and the flawlessness of his prints, he seems to have worked the technique that he uses down to a science.

His prints are clean, and well thought out. They really take advantage of positive and negative space, not only as the finished product but as well as the process. In order for these images to work the way they do I feel Mountford has to put in an incredible amount of work, and thought process.

Mountford’s mages are excellent examples of double exposure, and the otherworldly project that we are currently working on. These images really helped me to think about how two images relate to one another, what those two images together say as a whole, and what that says about the image conceptually.

Chris Castillo presents Roy Flukinger at the Harry Ransom Center

At the end of this years Society for Photographic Education South Central conference, co chair Kent Rush led a small group to Austin to meet Roy Flukinger, Senior Research Curator of Photography at the Ransom Center. Flukinger showed us the public areas of the building and selected pieces from the Gernsheim collection for us to view.

Temperature, humidity, and light levels are some of the main conservation concerns. The building's lighting, temperature and humidity are completely controlled. Lights are UV and infrared shielded. The windows have screens to block out daylight and the overhead lighting is dimmable.

From the collection, we saw work by photographers including Julia Margaret Cameron, Lewis Carroll, and Carleton E. Watkins. We were also shown examples including an albumen print, a wax paper negative, and a pre-photographic era (1810) camera obscura.

The collection has around 600 pieces of 19th century photography apparatus, Flukinger said.

Until we set up our own class tour to the collection, click this link to hear Flukinger introduce the collectors, the hunt for the first photograph, and how the Gernsheim collection was brought to The University of Texas at Austin.

For more information, visit http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/audio/

Chris Castillo presents Bill Durgin

Bill Durgin is a photographer who uses the abstracted body to redefine genre boundaries. Is he a still life photographer? Is he a portrait photographer? Is it documentation of performance? Durgin’s work is a combination of of the above categories.

According to his artist’s statement for his nudes and still life works, he riffs on classical painting genres. He pays attention to relate the scale of the body equal to the scale of his juxtapositions (plants, wig hair, animals…) Dancers, models, and the artist himself pose as the subjects.

His nude work is unexpected. Bodies become objects, distorted, contorted, and universal. The spaces that surround the bodies are ambiguous, isolating, and haunting. They allude to the white cube gallery, but could allude to sinister or controversial spaces, like prison systems or psychiatric institutions…

He details his technical process. He shoots on 4x5 film, scans it, and minimally retouches the C41 prints. The photos are true to life’s real surrealism.

For more information visit http://billdurgin.com/

Rebecca Villarreal presents Taryn Simon

Taryn Simon is a hard person to describe as a photographer. Her work is impressive to the lengths she goes in the research alone to put it together and get the shots she wants. Much of her process is about the research and letter writing to just about anyone who can help her reach her goal. Many of her projects seem to surround the idea of injustices done to people by the government, their own family members, and the things we aren't supposed to see. Out of all her work my favorite project, that inspired me to write about her, was her work called The Innocents which was based around how photography is used as tool to convict the wrong people in many cases of crimes the did not commit. All the men in her photos were tried and convicted almost solely on the use of photography in a photo line up. Many spend years in jail before being aquitted by DNA or a confession by the actual criminal. Some of the photos in series are powerful to look at with the story attached, with one photo a person's life is completely ruined and they must forever live with a stigma of having been in jail.

That's really what seems to make Taryn Simon's work, work, is the story she investigates and insures is true paired with a photo that puts an image to the facts or research.