Sharon Core - Pop Art or Early American Master Still Life Photographer

Still Life with Branzino and Wild Striper © Sharon Core

After seeing this image in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, I wanted to write about the work of Sharon Core. Sharon smashed an ace in 2003 with her photographs based upon Wayne Thiebaud's paintings and sold, if not every print in the edition, so many prints at Bellwether Gallery that Bellwether left Williamsburg for Chelsea. If you don't know the Thiebaud paintings or Sharon's photographs, she was able to create exact replicas of what Thiebaud painted from imagination. Call her work overly conceptual, I call it amazing (and maybe a bit obsessive compulsive.) Imagine the lighting control and forced perspective when looking at the work- not to mention the culinary control!

I emailed Sharon because I was curious about her crossover from the fine art world to the world of magazines. I wondered if The Times picture had been an assignment or, as the photograph had a decidedly Dutch-master feel to it, was it maybe part of a new series she was working that the Times just happened to pick up. She wrote that it was the best of both worlds. The Times had seen a preview of the work at her new gallery Yancey Richardson and commissioned her to use this feel for the food story about striped bass.

It turns out that Sharon's new work is based upon the painter Raphaelle Peale (son of early American painter Charles Wilson Peale and brother of Rembrandt and Titian.) Charles is said to have started what is considered the first museum in America and named his children after famous painters.

Sharon is still developing the work and plans to show in early 2009. Get a preview here.

Here's a good article from the Times. Here's the Thiebauds at Bellwether.

And here's a Thiebaud painting and a Sharon Core photograph:

Cakes 2003, ©Sharon Core

Utah Update

c'mon folks... I must go to the Post Office today to mail my quarterly payroll forms to the IRS. Can't I mail you a lovely print from Utah?

Stew, The Negro Problem, and Passing Strange

A Broadway Show Not to Miss? Isn't that an oxymoron? Since hearing his 2003 cd "Something Deeper Than These Changes," we've been big fans of Stew and his band The Negro Problem (Sandi to the point of obsession - for a while he was the only thing on her ipod.) Sandi drove the 400 miles to New York from Maine last year just to see Passing Strange at The Public before it came to Broadway.

I picked up same-day tickets for only $26 last weekend. If you're intrigued and want to know more listen to Kurt Anderson interview Stew about the play co-written with Heidi Rodewald.



Also be sure to check out Stew's yahoo group (negroproblem@yahoogroups.com)

The Cold Morning Light of April in the Escalante of Utah

The Cold Morning Light of April in the Escalante of Utah ©Russell Kaye

Friday Give-Back: 12th email with subject "utah" to "give_back@russellkaye.com " get's an 8x10 in the mail. Be sure to include your mailing address and I have to admit I'm a little flummoxed as my passover image is still available from last week. I didn't think it would be that hard to give away prints. Also I'll announce when we have a winner - so don't assume it's over until I say it is...

UPDATE - we have a winner-actually two winners. I'm giving-back two prints this time; one to Charles Allen who was sort of the 12th email when he sent a second email from his wife's email address and one to Lisa Pitcher the official 12th email. Thanks for all the entries.

Robb Kendrick's Tintypes

©Robb Kendrick

Has anyone looked at a Nat Geo recently? I think they've taken the level of magazine photography up a couple of notches.

Robb Kendricks tintypes of cowboys (above in NG) show a devotion to alchemy and craft that you can't get with a computer and a pigment print. There's a good article about Robb and his method in April 20 NY Times.

Friday Give-Back (The Exodus from Slavery)

Williamsburg, Brooklyn 1992 © Russell Kaye, All Rights Reserved

The above image shot in Williamsburg, Brooklyn during Purim a few years ago is a bit timely as not only am I visiting Williamsburg this week but also Passover begins tomorrow at sunset.

Passover celebrates the Jews exodus from slavery in Egypt and in remembrance of said exodus and of the ten plagues that finally got the Egyptians attention we will be giving away an 8x10 of this image to the tenth person to email "passover" to give_back (at) russellkaye.com

Also please note there's another photographer giving back here at Sandra-Lee Phipps

UPDATE: We Have A Winner- if Tomé Duarte will email me an address please!!

We Have A Winner!

We finally have a winner here in the first Friday Give-Back series: Miss Yvonne Stender, Photography Director of Sunset Magazine is the ninth person to email. I must say I'm glad that the first Friday give-back ended before the second one comes out tomorrow.

I can see there is plenty of traffic here on the blog and am puzzled why it took so long to get nine names. Can some of the visitors that didn't enter leave a comment please? You didn't like the image? Why would you want to hang something on the wall that's given away? You don't want to bother?

Anyway I got a few comments that if they didn't win here they'd still be interested in purchasing a print. Has everyone heard of Jen Bekman Gallery's model for selling art at low prices? Has everyone seen 20x200? Here's Jen's schpiel:
large editions + low prices × the internet = art for everyone

So yes, If you'd still like a print, email me at me at RussellKaye.com

I'll do editions of
200 8x10s for $20/each
20 13x19 for $200/each


Comments, thoughts, please.

Update on First Friday Give-Back

Give Away is still open. I'm only up to six. I'm looking for nine. See here for my original post.

Steve Casimiro at number six says: "dude, this is a beautiful image. i'd happily pay you $20 and a lot more for it. what's wrong with people?!!"

David Leith at number five says: "If I didn't win the give away I'll definitely pay $20 for a copy. It would look great in our "New York" bathroom. I miss that view."

Mark Maziarz stuffed the ballot box and says "People amaze me. I thought I would be closer to #99 when I sent my first email on Friday. Will stuffing the inbox work? I'll try. If that doesn't work, I'll send $20. I love your Flatiron photo. I would hang it next to Steichen's version. (If I had the money...)"

Thanks for all the kind words -

Crime Photography

© Joel Sternfeld

The "Polk 8" got me thinking about the intersection of crime and photography. Immediately to mind came Joel Sternfeld's "On This Site" - especially the photograph of the site in central park of the "preppie murder" where Robert Chambers killed Jennifer Levin in the fall of 1986 (also when I first moved to New York.) It's essentially an image of a tree and not much else.

© Michael David Murphy

Which got me thinking about Michael David Murphy's Jasper Texas series
which is also essentially images of not much. And also the site of a horrendous crime. Yet I find Murphy's images much less tinged with sensationalism - is it because it's part of a series and Murphy (who is also a MFA-carrying poet) accompanies the images with words to tell the story and fill in our imagination? Murphy's is somehow reporting, telling us about what happened at this place while Sternfeld's seems to be about Sternfeld's vision or Sternfeld's ego taking a photograph at the site of a famous murder.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

No IM or My Space for the Polk 8

I thought it was some kind of april fools joke at first. When I saw the images of the teenagers in their correction facility outfits with the headline that they had filmed themselves beating the crap out of another teenager so they could post it to You Tube. I thought it was some film school stunt. I don't really know why I thought it was a stunt. Maybe they looked too much like some of those cool, detached portraits I had seen at Rob Haggart's Promotional Flickr slideshow. Maybe these kids were too young, too attractive. Maybe it was all the orange. But apparently it's not a stunt. Eight teenagers in Polk County Florida (6 girls and 2 boys) have been arrested after beating another female teenager to the point of hospitalization while filming the beating and threatening to post the video on You Tube.

Here are the images of the defendants at their bail hearings - take a look at their cold vacant stares. Not much sign of remorse or connection to what they had done. They are fascinating images - their oversized orange having been changed to correctional facility royal blue - they each look like actors in a soap opera. They could be in ER or Scrubs or maybe even in an Alec Soth verite´ fashion story for W.

(all images below © Scott Wheeler)

They met bail yesterday under the condition that
"You will not use any Internet chat room, social site, opinion forum, included, but not limited to, MySpace and YouTube," Judge Cowden said.

The full story is all over the internet. One amazing report has this:
"Following their arrests the girls joked in a holding cell. One asked if she would be able to make it to cheerleading practice the next day, while several others joked that they wouldn't be making it back to the beach anytime soon, he said."

"They seemed to have absolutely no remorse at all," Judd said. "They were just going to beat her. And beat her they did."

And while we're on the subject of appearance and normalcy and race and attire and prison uniforms, I have to add these images from commercial photographer Chad Ress. I found them awhile ago and wondered what they had been shot for:

images below ©Chad Ress

Friday Give-Back

We have a Winner!!
©Russell Kaye, All Rights Reserved - click image for nice big view...

As a thank you to all the visitors here and as an experiment in giving away,

or giving back,


Here's the start of my Friday Give-Back series.

The 9th name and address emailed to give_back@russellkaye.com
(that's give_back at Russellkaye.com) (subject: Flatiron) gets an original, signed, suitable for framing, 8x10 in the US Mail of my fave image of the Flatiron Building above.

due to the underwhelming response I just want to add this update: Sunday night and I still don't have a winner. I don't have 9 names. In fact I don't even have 6 names. I've got only 5. Maybe this image is a dog. Maybe no one wants anything for free anymore. Next week I'll charge $20.

Chris Jordan+Beck

Collaboration:

The whole seems to again be greater than the parts - here's a great collaboration.

Has everyone seen Beck's new video for his song "Timebomb?" It converges a pissed-off Beck with Chris Jordan's carefully neutral (or not pissed-off ) images of overconsumption. Chris presented at the 2007 Pop!Tech conference here in Camden. I missed it, of course, so I don't know how angry he really is with our consumerism. Maybe Chris will be back in 2008 (and maybe he can bring Beck with him?)



via videosift.com

Blog Backlog

Would that be a Back-blog?

I've got a pile of posts here from the last few weeks I started and never finished. I would bump into something I wanted to write about and mark it "future-blog" and wait for the time to write more in-depth and gloriously insightful observations. In the end it simply means that they never get finished.

American Pictures: Who Is Jacob Holdt?

click the image above to watch the video

I must live under a rock because I'd never heard of Jacob Holdt until a few months ago. There are not enough superlatives I can use to praise his work. If you haven't heard of him, he is a self-described Danish vagabond who spent 5 years hitch-hiking across America. He uses photographs and video to fight oppression, racism, and poverty. Spend a few minutes with this powerful video above of Jacob with a leader of the KKK. It was made for Danish tv but most of it is in English.


from his web page: http://www.american-pictures.com

Vagabond years
Arriving in America with only $40 for a short visit, a young Dane, Jacob Holdt ended up staying over five years, hitchhiking more than 100,000 miles throughout the USA.

He sold blood plasma twice weekly to be able to buy film. He lived in more than 400 homes - from the poorest migrant workers to America's wealthiest families such as the Rockefellers. They not only gave him a hospitality and warmth, but their continuing friendship to this day.

He joined the Indian rebellion in Wounded Knee, followed criminals in the ghettos during muggings, sneaked inside to work in Southern slave camps and infiltrated secret Ku Klux Klan meetings as well as Republican presidential campaign headquarters.

Working with prisoners he saw two of his friends assassinated. By the time he returned to Denmark 12 of his friends had been murdered (in the years since so many of his friends have been murdered that he has completely lost count).

The (multi-media) show in Europe
Back in Denmark he put together the photos he had taken into a multimedia show named American Pictures. His show instantly became enormously popular and with the help of several black American friends, it was shown in 14 countries in 7 languages between 1976-82.

The profit was used for humanitarian aid in support of the struggle against apartheid by donating schools and farm machinery to the countries and liberation groups bordering South Africa.

The show in America
In 1982 the show moved to America, where Jacob Holdt has since presented it in more than 300 universities, city councils, churches, etc. The show has been updated constantly and one fourth of the pictures are now from the 90'es.

In his latest version from 1997 Holdt worked closely with leading educators, psychologists and workshop counselors throughout America and Europe in order to best incorporate universal themes of oppression.

As a result the show is now the ideal thought-provoking "warm up" for national and international conventions on peace, ethnic conflict, human rights, sociology etc.

addendum: I just found more background on Jacob Holdt at Boing Boing

Flickr+Video

How much longer will the still silent image be with us?

Flickr news: "Video! Video! Video! The rumours are true and “soon” is now. We’re thrilled to introduce video on Flickr. If you’re a pro member, you can now share videos up to 90 glorious seconds in your photostream.."

Keith Jenkins at the Washington Post writes: "I've been part of the Super Secret Beta for the last couple of weeks. I think this is going to ROCK the world of photography. Unlike YouTube this really is an extension of the Kodak moment to moving pictures. Short, sweet pictures that move!"

It's the beast of convergence again. My latest Calumet catalog talks about still cameras eventually being replaced by video cameras with enough resolution to also be still cameras. Imagine not trying to capture that decisive moment because you captured every moment.