John Steck Jr.

Friday, October 16, 2009

The Photo Archive Blog

A fellow friend and classmate Rebecca Buonopane has recently started an excellent blog called The Photo Archive Blog. This blog is centered around Photography Majors at The Massachusetts College of Art, and the current thesis projects we are working on there. I have a few of my new images on the blog with an interview about the work. There is also great work on there by my classmates so please take the time to see what kind of work is being produced by the senior class. She will be updating the blog several times a week with new artist so make sure to check in from time to time. Congrats to Rebecca on a great start.

The images below are a few samples of the work you can see on the blog right now.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Exhibitions: Lowerdeck in San Francisco

The Lowerdeck in San Francisco is have a great group show starting next week called Familial Ghost. The Show is about different interpretations of family stories/traditions by different media based artist. I will have 15 images in this show from an older series of mine called Was Home. Normally these images are large color c-prints but The wonderful crew at the Lowerdeck had asked me to take slides of the images so that we could project them big on the wall. I was really into this idea because I like the thought of using an old school projector to interpret the stories in my work just as a family would use a projector to show slides that tell their own stories.

If you happen to know anyone in the San Fran area please pass this info along to them. For more info on the show please click the link above. The images below are several that will be in the show. Please enjoy.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

The Hallway Gallery in Jamaica Plain & The Starwell Gallery at The New England School of photography

I mentioned these shows before in my blog but now that I got two sided postcards made for them I thought I would post it up here for a more appropriate look at the show. Click on the thumbnails below to see the details for the show. There will be no opening for the Stairwell Gallery at NESOP but there will be a banging opening for the Hallway Gallery show. Expect live music, wine and crackers, a great audience of people and great art.

I realize that the opening reception for the Hallway Gallery is the same night as Alec Soth's show at Mass Art, which believe me, I almost want to not attend my own show for his haha. But just so everyone knows, the Hallway Gallery usually lets it openings run way later then most places would. We will probably be there till 10-11 pm. So after the Soth show please make your way down to JP, it will be well worth it.

Monday, September 21, 2009

View of the Prudential

These images are from a smaller series idea I have been working on that sort of fall in with some of my other landscape work. When I was shooting the empty plots of land for the Missing Teeth series I had noticed that within different neighborhoods of Boston, and even outside of the city, I was still able to still see the Prudential building. I found that to be interesting to me since the Prudential is not quite that big of a building. I'm keeping this in mind with the fact that I grew up in Chicago with some of the worlds tallest buildings, and how easily the view of downtown Chicago could be obstructed.

I became interested in the roll the Prudential started playing for me in my experience with the landscape. How I could be in a different neighborhood or even at a place like Jamaica Pond or the Arboretum, where you feel like your miles away from the city yet at a glance the Prudential building was still peeking at you, reminding you where you are. Not fully letting you escape. I though I would start shooting the different views of the Prudential from different areas, to show that reminder it gives us. These three images below are a small selection from this series. Please click on them to make them larger, since the Prudential is at times way in the background and barely viable with the smaller image.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Exhibitions

This year I submitted several entries into the 2009 International Photo Awards competition and was lucky enough to get honorable mention in the following categories:

Fine Art: Landscape
Fine Art: Self-Portrait
Nature: Landscape

Please click on the links to see my images along with hundreds of other wonderful images form talented artist all across the world.

Also The wonderful people at The Art Of Photography Show just had a booth set up at the Beyond The Border contemporary art fair in San Diego with two of my framed pieces and a small portfolio box of my work for people to look at. I was lucky to have two images selected last year for the show. The booth they had was to market their current 2009 show and to also show the work of some of the recent names they have had in previous shows. It was a great privilage to be a part of the fair and to be a part of the 2008 show. Please check out the current Art of Photography Show here.

Friday, August 7, 2009

New Landscapes: Jamaica Plain & Roxbury

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Missing Teeth: Mission Hill

A photograph I took last week in Mission Hill. There are several new properties being built right in front of this cliff, one of them is about five feet behind my tripod. Though at times known as a rougher area in Boston, Mission Hill still has a unique presence in this city, from its diverse community to its towering shoulders. I'm hoping that this sort of redevelopment will enhance that presence and really start to put the hill on the map.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Landscapes: Jamaica Plain

A couple random night shots I took about a month ago in Jamaica Plain. Something a little different compared to my typical landscape style of shooting, but I am enjoying the break away.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Portrait: Adam Foam

Tonight I ran into a good friend Adam, who I use to work with back in the day at Trader Joe's. I don't see him too often these days but I still consider him one of the greatest guys I ever met since I've been in Boston. Adam is the co-founder of The Whitehaus Family Records in JP and also plays in a band called Peace, Loving (A must see live act).

Though I photographed Adam just several months ago, when I see him I am always reminded of a photograph I took of him back in 2005 while I was a student at The New England School of Photography. This photograph hangs in my living room at this moment and will always remind me of great times. Oh the power of a photograph.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Haystack Mountain School of Crafts

These photographs were taken in the fall of 2008 at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine. I was able to spend several days on their wonderful campus and make art. Most of my time was spent doing poetry installation's but I was able to shoot of a couple rolls. My time spent there may in fact be my most memorable moment of this decade. Enjoy the images as I enjoyed taking them.

"Moon Over The Atlantic (1 Hour Exposure)" 2008

"Sun Peeking Through Forrest" 2008

"Painting With Light" 2008

"Behind The Print Shop" 2008

"Moss" 2008

"Dead Seal" 2008

"Flower Box" 2008

Monday, July 6, 2009

Boba Fett? Boba Fett? Where?

Taken in New York City on Halloween, 2007. I have to give Jess Habalou credit for pointing out this photograph to me. Thanks Jess!

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Six Film Stills 2008

This image below is an 8 1/2 x 11 Digital Ink Jet Print. The image is made up of six photographs taken with a digital camera of my computer screen that is playing an adult film. It is from a very short series of images I made that focused on facial expression in adult films.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Older Photographs: Filip in Four

This polyptych was taken in 2000 in Chicago. I leave this series open for interpretation and hope it raises many questions for you as it does even for me. The top polyptych image is how the four images should be viewed, from left to right in sequence. The bottom images are just a closer look at each individual image. Enjoy

Monday, June 29, 2009

Wild Turkeys

These two wild turkeys chased me today in The Fens. There were three of them crossing the street as I passed by on my bicycle, so I decided to get off and take a closer look. Other people were fairly close to them so I thought I would be fine. I was walking my bicycle with me and I think it must have offended them cause these two guys charged right at me. I literally had to run across the street away from them. It's not often I get to run from wild turkeys, albino squirrels yes but not turkeys. They are lucky though I didn't have my bow and arrow with me, little jerks.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Polaroids: You Are Not Forgotten

I just found out today that my great uncle Eddie past away. It had been expected soon since he was not recovering from his cancer treatments, but the cancer itself was not expected when he was diagnosed just less than two years ago. I didn't know Uncle Eddie extremely well, but I did know that he was a wonderful and simple person.

I only got to see uncle Eddie twice since his diagnosis, and this photograph below was from the first time. We had talked about drawing and photography for over an hour that day, and I took this photograph because I didn't want that great moment to be forgotten. Now with his passing, I don't want his existence to ever be forgotten.

These are three photographs of relatives who have within the last three years passed away. I show these photographs in the utmost respect to them as individuals and their wonderful existence. They will never be forgotten.

Uncle Eddie 2008

Grandma Walker 2008

Aunt Annie 2005

Friday, June 26, 2009

Older Photographs: A Decade of Me

Last fall I got to show my self-portrait work to my friend Stephen Jacobs Beginning Color Class at The New England School of Photography. He was giving out a self-portrait assignment and had several people come in and show their work and discuss the process and different ways/styles of executing self-portraits. I normally would just show my graduating portfolio from NESOP and talk about that process, but this time I wanted to do something a little different.

I gathered up every self-portrait that I had with me here in Boston and put them in a box. when I got to NESOP I had an hour to figure out the way I wanted to show them. I scattered them all about the tables and for the first time ever in my career I saw ten years worth of my self-portraits all at once. I had never really thought about doing that before, especially since the different groupings of self-portraits were done for different assignments or projects. Some of the ideas from one grouping may have led to ideas in other groupings but they never really crossed over in my mind.

I basically laid them out in chronological order and figured it would be best to describe the different stages of the work, and what each grouping meant for me at the time and what it means to me now. The work became more related to each other than I thought and it was quite amazing for me personally to see that progression, of not only maturing as an adult in the images, but also maturing within the work as a photographer.

These images here are selects from different parts of my life this past decade. Some were used in final portfolios for classes, some are out-takes, and some exist just by themselves. Please enjoy the progression as I do.