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Having their cameras taken away from them, the photographers in this book have created vivid visual art pieces, not with their eyes through a lens but rather, with their words on paper.

On Friday, May 11 at 7:30pm the Ampersand Gallery will host a panel discussion and book signing of Will Steacy's 'Photographs Not Taken'. The panelists will include Amy Elkins, Eirik Johnson, who are both contributors to the book, and Michael Itkoff, Daylight Magazine co-founder and editor. Drinks will be provided by Ninkasi Brewing Co. and there will be a Q and book signing session following the panel.

Information:

http://www.ampersandvintage.com/Ampersand_Vintage/Home.html

On June 6th, LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph will kick off in Charlottesville, Virginia. This year, there will be a variety of exhibitions, presentations, interviews, workshops and outdoor projections, all curated by David Griffin and Vincent J. Musi. The three INsight photographers for this year are Stanley Greene, Donna Ferrato, and Alex Webb. Plus there is a TREES Artist and many more Masters Talks for the event so make sure to stop by at LOOK3 this June.

Tickets and Information:

http://look3.org/

Image by Alex Webb

Jeff Whetstone's connection to the land, love of history and susceptibility to romance brand him along with other great photographers-especially the sons and daughters of the South. 

The first time that I saw this image, I was spellbound. Listed on his website under the heading Human, this image defies being fully identified.The viewer's gaze is interrupted by only having access to the back of the sitter. 

What we do know comes from the barrel of the gun to the left, the plaid covered arm on the right and that enveloping hair that glistens and shields (to the point of camouflaging) the sitter's body. This, along with Whetstone's characteristic naturalistic vista creates an image (and narrative) that is at once classic and defiant similarly to that of Lorna Simpson's Waterbearer (1986) seen below. Both subjects reflect on female workers in art history-mainly those in the paintings of Vermeer.

Simpson's standing woman pours water from two distinct vessels, she wears a generic, white shift dress and a single bracelet. Her hair-partially braided, subtlety glistens against a dense, black background that mostly camouflages. The viewer's gaze is also interrupted as we are only permitted to view the Waterbearer from behind.

The text beneath Simpson's image reads like a cautionary tale, yet the subject is no more a victim than Whetstone's seated huntress. Both have seen, witnessed and conquered and in the end, each woman retains a degree of control over her identity, thoughts and history. 

You can see more Jeff Whetstone's work at www.jeffwhetstone.net

Darren Ching selected Lydia Goldblatt as one of the esteemed Juror's Picks of last year's Photo Awards.

Of Lydia's work, Ching says,

"Lydia Goldblatt’s photographs of her father are a refreshing and eloquent shift from the straightforward document of family. These are visual gems—encapsulated memories of an intimate relationship between father and daughter. The somber light not only serves as a distinct artistic voice but somehow imbues these highly personal observations with an enigmatic aura with which the viewer can empathize but not wholly gain access.”­

Kate Levy interviewed Goldblatt for our blog. 

To enter the photo awards, click here.

Kate Levy:  You use the spectrum of extreme shadows and light, and often the most compelling parts of your images reside in the soft glow in between. You employ a similar technique in your range of focus, using a scale of softness and sharpness to project a feeling of the interstitial onto the subject in the frame. How do you pose your mother and father? Can you describe the situation you set up, or look for in the portraits you have produced as part of the All Flesh Is series?

Lydia Goldblatt: I work differently with each of them. With my father, the search for that space between physical and metaphysical is more acute, placed as he is at the frontier of mortality, and much of my work with him is about finding ways to convey that in visual form. I examine the details of his bodily surfaces and edges as a means to access the physical and psychological thresholds of individual existence. There is also a desire to record something of the everyday routine and passage of time, and the relationship between us that allows for a photographic exchange. Essentially, it is about connecting an exploration of the external world – space, events, and moments – with an internal landscape of experience. I sometimes return to an image I have already made, repeating it over the course of weeks or months. In the repeated forms subtle shifts in mood or expression emerge through the surface of photographic paper, which speak to the mutability of experience and identity, and a questioning of surface and depth.

Copyright Lydia Goldblatt

Photographing my mother is, generally speaking, an experience more rooted in the everyday, which is characteristic both of our relationship, and her own approach to life. It is an exchange, more than a clearly defined process of posing and photographing, in which her active nature allows for play as much as sober reflection. The images that I make of her are often full of reverie, but they also evoke her active pleasure in form and colour, and a conscious reckoning with change.

Copyright Lydia Goldblatt

KL: How have your parents reacted to your examination of their disposition and preparations to cross over the threshold into death? What sort of conversations with your parents have you had around this work?

LG: Making this work stems from a desire to address the inevitable changes raised by the prospect of my father’s death, and is in itself, a kind of conversation. My thoughts are expressed through the process of photographing, more than in words, though the subject of death is not taboo in my family. Nonetheless, daily life necessitates more of a practical engagement with the subject, and the act of photographing provides both for me and, I hope, for my family, a very different space, one of extended time and meditation, to grapple with issues of transience and loss.

My father has repeatedly talked about his readiness to die, and indeed much of the time his whole being, his entire energy, seems focused on that process of transitioning from life to death – an effort of labour as intense and concentrated as any other in life. However, during the moments when I photograph him, it often sparks a re-energising towards life, which is an unexpected gift and pleasure between us.

Copyright Lydia Goldblatt

My mother, whose images deal more with the business of daily existence, is remarkably game about our photographing, which I think is based on a pre-existing level of trust and friendship between us. I could not make the images I do, if I were not already close to her. Inevitably, she does not always like the images I make, but I think the process of making them, and the objects themselves, sometimes offer an unexpected means of reflection and self-reflection that is valued.

KL: In your artist statement for All Flesh Is, you reference that your work on human transitional states is tied to identity and belonging. Can you elaborate on this ideology? 

LG: I am not sure if this is an ideology, but rather a recognition that in the work I make, whether my authorial presence is implicit or explicit, there is always a connection between fleeting, individual experience (including my own) and the more enduring arc of humanity. I am interested in the way personal existence reflects and is reflected in a more universal, philosophical context, and it is the turning point between the two that informs my work.

The human instinct, precisely because of our transient nature, is to establish frameworks and structures of identity, meaning and belonging, to carve out individual space that is nonetheless knitted into the fabric of extended networks and relationships. My work engages with that instinct and, in terms of this particular series, explores the imperative to understand our own existence in relation to our parents.

Copyright Lydia Goldblatt

KL:  You have a few bodies of work that centralize around religion and identity. How does this interest tie into the work you are doing around transition and impermanence? 

LG: Transition and impermanence lie at the heart of any religious, or indeed secular, philosophy of humanity. They are the basic tenets of our existence. I am interested in exploring that existence via the creative impulse of photography, so religion, identity, transition and impermanence are all inevitable sources of inspiration for me. Photographing is a hugely important means to look deeply into the world that we perceive and exist within. It rarely provides logical answers, but can illuminate something of the world’s forms and rhythms.

KL: What work have you been developing since being selected as a juror's pick for 2011 Photo Awards? 

LG: I have continued the work with my parents, and exhibited this as a solo show in London in October-November. I will also be having an exhibition of this work, including some new images, at the Felix Nussbaum Museum in Germany later this year. Concurrently, I am also developing a new series of work. It represents a complement to ‘All Flesh Is’, and a recent shift in my practice towards themes of fecundity and growth. The transient nature of life is still deeply embedded within the work, however I am expanding and developing my charting of cyclical time by incorporating the joyful forms and rhythms of vitality as a necessary correlative of vulnerability.
 

To see more of Goldblatt's work, visit:

http://www.lydiagoldblatt.com/

The 2012 Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival has kicked off in Toronto. For the month of May, the Contact Photo Festival is filled to the brim with exhibitions, public installations, artist talks, panel discussions, workshops, screenings, portfolio reviews, and many more events, making it one of the biggest photography events of the year. This years theme is based on 'Public' which was sparked by the rekindled global interest in street photography. Daylight co-founder Michael Itkoff will be present for portfolio reviews and will be one of two judges for the BMW exhibition prize. Be sure to check out the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival.

Information:

www.scotiabankcontactphoto.com

Image by Max Dean, 'Family Photo Albums'.