Unique c-Print's

Three new Unique c-Prints that I made this past Monday. I like that they have a Japanese print style to them. I'm hoping to start making more images like the third one below. Images that have more depth and illusions of dimension in them. I want to create environments that don't exist with this work.

Unique-c-Print

Another Unique c-Print from the Fall of 2009. I have always been drawn to this image on multiple levels, from it's seduction of color, to the fluidness it displays. It hold a strong sense of motion or some sort of act, but an indescribable one.

Unique c-Print

This is a new Unique c-Print I made in the fall of 2009. It doesn't quite fit in with my thesis project, but I still feel it has an interesting representation of the landscape, or at least the idea of what the landscape really is. Enjoy this loner dootie.

Haystack Mountain School of Craft: Fall 2009

I got to spend several days again at the Haystack Mountain School of Craft in Deer Isle, Maine in October of 2009. This time around I concentrated strictly on photography as opposed to the poetry installations I worked on last fall. This year I wanted to take a few different approaches to making images here, especially since a lot of the images I see come out of Haystack are fairly traditional landscape photographs. I wanted to make something a little different then that. While some of these images are on the more traditional side, others explore different means of the idea of a landscape photograph.

The images with the pure white backgrounds are a new idea I am looking to explore extensively in the near future. I originally wanted to be able to take photographs that imitated my unique c-print series. I wanted the viewer to not be sure if they were looking at a photograph, a photogram, a unique c-print, or something completely different. I still like this idea of blending different kinds of imagery, but for this particular method of photographing, I started to find other interesting aspects to it. One thing I was trying to do was to single out certain parts of this landscape. I remember when I was there last year, there were particular things I wanted to shoot without the rest of the forrest taking over the photograph. It was hard to just take an image of a certain kind of flower without other distractions in the image.

I toyed with the idea of the title and location of the photographs to still play an importance to these white background image. Though the images seem like specimens, I wanted their location to still be relevant. I thought maybe I would let the title of each image be of the location it was shot in, or at least of the area. I feel this would allow the viewer to purely focus on the object I singled out, while imagining what the rest of the scene may look like. Mixing reality with fantasy a little bit. I'm looking forward to seeing where this idea may go down the road. Please enjoy what is here thus far.

Happy Valentines Day

A little something for the "holiday" spirit.

This was a bite I took of this delicious breed of an apple/pear in the Fall of 2009

One of the first unique c-Prints I ever made, sometime in the Late fall of 2007.

Project: X-Deco

These are images from a small series I plan on working on every winter holiday season. The images are about Christmas decorations and the esthetic choices they represent from the individuals who put them up. I'm interested in the different approaches people take to the idea of decoration and how that translates visually in the areas they are in. I plan on shooting for this project each season and seeing how it accumulates over the years.

Found Piles

A lot of my recent landscape work has developed into smaller individual series. I will be posting a lot of these series up in their current states, though I am adding to them as I find more of these scenes. So far I have a good set of fences, unmarked paths, views of the Prudential building, empty plots of land and found piles. The Views of the Prudential can be viewed here and the rest will be posted within the next week or so.

As for these found piles, there are several things that have attracted me to them. One of my interest in photographing the landscape is finding scenes that imply recent modification, or that show the shorten evolution of a space. I instantly respond to things that I know will soon be gone, or that will no longer be part of that particular space. I am fascinated with these piles, knowing that they are probably gone now, thus creating a different perspective of the scenes I found them in. I also like to think of these piles as sculptures of removed earth. Though temporary, they represent the strength and foundation of the land we engage with.

Of all these smaller series I have, the piles have tend to be the weirdest in terms of exposure, color and other photo related characteristics. Each image has some sort of strange color shift, light leak, or blown out highlights that have added a strange but wonderful feel to these photographs. I also c-Print these images 4x6 on 8x10 paper, just slightly bigger than the 4x5 negative size. I like that printing these massive piles of earth down to a smaller scale gives them a different life and allows a more elegant experience with them. 

Found Pile: 1, Needham, MA. 4x6 c-Print

Found Pile: 2, Boston, MA. 4x6 c-Print

Found Pile: 3, Jamaica Plain, MA. 4x6 c-Print

Found Pile: 4, Jamaica Plain, MA. 4x6 c-Print

Found Pile: 5, Brookline, MA. 4x6 c-Print

Waiting Days: A Gift From Tina Garvin

A couple months ago I received a small package in the mail from one of my closest friends, Tina Garvin. In this package was a letter and a receipt pad. In the letter she told me she recently quit her waitressing job, the one she had ever since I met her a few years back. When I pulled out the receipt pad and read what she wrote on it, I instantly felt like I was holding some sort of relic. I felt so much history and character in this simple object. I also found it interesting how it was her departure from being a waitress that made this piece so characterized. I don't think it would have the same effect on me if she was still working at this job, especially since I can totally feel her disconnect from that part of her life when I hold this object.

It would be Tina's piece that would initiate the idea for this project in general. I knew there was an importance to holding onto the other objects in this series, but I wouldn't know that reason till I opened her package. Though I am not fully sure how this project will keep developing, I do feel very strongly about the work in it thus far and would love some feedback and ideas for it. Feel free to comment and start a conversation about these ideas with me.

Three Color Receipt Book, Front. Tina Garvin's Retirement Note, 2009

Color Receipt Book, Back. Tina Garvin Passes the Baton, 2009