Emmet Gowin,

This past Wednesday I went to the Emmet Gowin (2) lecture at the Museum of Fine Arts here in Boston.  The Museum has a survey of Harry Callahan’s work up and invited Gowin to speak about both Callahan and his own work.  Oh goodness, it was wonderful.  You know that feeling between crying and exploding—that strange lightness and strained feeling when you feel like you might lift out of your seat?  I love that feeling, I had it for the entire lecture.  Gowin is an amazing speaker; he is so deeply attached to everything in life that I don’t think he can help but talk about everything in a beautifully eloquent, romanticized, passionate way.  I thought he might start sobbing a few times throughout the evening.

Edith and Rennie Booher, Danville, Virginia, 1970 © Emmet Gowin

Callahan was Gowin’s grad teacher at RISD in the mid 60’s and they struck up a close relationship.  I never really considered the closeness of their work until it was presented to me tonight.  There are immense similarities between the two photographers’ thought processes and sensitivities.  He said that Callahan’s work exists in tandem with the Quaker saying about how our role on earth is the invention of peace, and that his work “sought to redress the frightening masculinity” of our time.  Honestly he was such an eloquent speaker, it seemed so effortless for him to use grand, beautiful statements like that.

© Harry Callahan

Gowin went on to discuss his own photographs, quoting Rilke and Faulkner most notably.  He mentioned the ideas of standing guard over the solitude of the people you’re with, something that Rilke talks about and which comes strongly across in his work, along with the idea of photographing a scene but really photographing the tragedy behind the scene.

Nancy and Dwayne, Danville, Virginia, 1970 © Emmet Gowin

At one point during his exquisite ramblings and storytelling he went on and on about Edith, his wife he photographed almost constantly, even creating her presence when her physicality wasn’t available. “The greatest distance you can ever travel is to come back to where you are,” he stated.  That is where you find “a kind of personal eternity” where you realize “where you are is where you’re supposed to be.”  It’s almost a spiritual idea, really, of finding your place in the world.  He beautifully captures his love for her, just by seeing the multitude and sensitivity of the images he makes of her you can sense the immense unbounded love he has.  She is his muse.  It’s beautiful.

I’ve failed to mention so many aspects of his talk.  If you ever get the chance to go to one, do it.  He’s retiring from his teaching career at Princeton this year, it would be lovely to attend his farewell lecture I’m sure.  At the end of the lecture I went down to the stage to thank him and he gave me a huge hug, it was cute!

Edith and Moth Flight, 2002 © Emmet Gowin

“Life itself isn’t the reality…if we did not dream, reality would collapse.” –Harry Callahan

Rose

New York,

Ok, I apologize for the extremely late updates but it’s been a crazy past few weeks.  I’m sure you feel my pain of business, I mean when are we all not busy?

The Friday before my Spring Break, March 6th, I was given the opportunity to go to New York and work at Verve Art Fair, a part of The Armory Show.  My friend Rachel King was an intern at Khaki Gallery for a few weeks and the owner of the gallery wanted us to come and help out with her space at the show, hold down the fort and grab classy clients.  So on Friday we got into New York at 4 am and found ourselves at the Dylan Hotel sleeping in the extra bedroom/storage room our gallery reserved.  We slept a couple hours, got up and walked outside to realize we were only a block and a half away from Grand Central Station, squished between Park Ave and Madison Ave.  This was for both of us our first time in New York, we were absolutely thrilled.  Everything was active; we were blocks from the Empire State, Times Square, 5th Avenue…the center of it all.  It was so exciting!

We spent our day working Verve, which was in a series of really nice rooms in the Dylan Hotel, and running around the city trying to see as much as possible.  We ended up getting free passes to Volta NY and The Armory (though we didn’t have enough time to see the latter) popped over to take a look.  Volta was so strange.  I’m really not sure how I feel about huge art fairs like that.  The booths cost a fortune, the artists honestly didn’t impress me for the most part, and it was like some strange window-shopping experience. 

Jörg Colberg of Conscientious had some interesting thoughts on fairs like Volta recently, take a look.  Of course events like Volta are great ways to see fresh new work and sell some work, but it felt so artificial.  The way I was looked at by the representatives and artists was like I was a hamburger after they’d starved themselves for a week.  They approached me like I was a buyer, which in a way was refreshing not to be dismissed for being just a student but was really strange at the same time.

© Nat Ward

Later that evening Rachel and I walked over to Affirmation Arts to see the 31 Women in Art Photography exhibit put on by the Humble Arts Foundation.  After a few distractions—we were driven like flies to porch lights to Times Square and stuffed our faces with saurkraut and sausage—we finally got there and there were two gigantic lines snaking out from the entrance and only fifteen minutes left to get in.  Luckily our dear beloved Ms. Tara Bogart was inside and was able to snag us some wristbands and get us inside immediately.  Go Tara!  We entered the space and immediately I was overwhelmed and intimidated.  Everyone was gorgeous, young and social.  The show was lined up in a way that I couldn’t see any of the work because of the model-height of so many of the attendees and the mass of the crowd swarmed in the space.  I’m so glad Tara was there!  We walked around and looked at the work, most of which I really enjoyed.  Justine Reyes was one of the picks, remember when she had her work up in the Perspectives Gallery at school?  Here’s a list of all the women and their pieces that were in the show.  Billie Mandle and Claire Beckett actually teach classes here at MassArt (honestly this school has amazing faculty!).

Unfortunately Rachel and I had to leave pretty quickly to catch our bus back to Boston.  We got into Boston at 3 am and I immediately turned around and went to the airport for my 5 am flight to San Francisco.  I’m going to have to do this in segments, I’m in the process of writing about San Francisco still.

 

Side note: my image of Jason Lazarus’ poster Try Harder that I got in the mail made it onto his website! Tom, Sarah, Mandie and Barbara, all of your photos are on the same wall so you’re on there too!

I hope your spring breaks were lovely!  I miss you all!
 

New Photo Society,

Just a notice to all: we've decided to change our group name to something a little more appropriate to our means and have settled on New Photo Society.  That means the url of this blog will be changing to newphotosociety.blogspot.com and you'll probably have to update your feed subscriptions, at least that's what I'm guessing.

Have a great Spring Break my friends!

Rose

update

My current work explores issues of my adolescence by referencing empty friendships of my past. I'm excited about the direction this work is taking me; these two images are merely a beginning of a very personal body of work.

Mandie Lousier: something new

©Mandie Lousier

This is a recent project I started for my narrative class and it is a whole new side to my photography. This is a work in progress illustrating a dream I had many years ago. I don't have a statement for these, nor do I think they really need one, just a title.

Either way this is a nice new breath of fresh air for me.

Mandie.