Tomorrow is the online release of my Phoenix 20 series. I am excited and nervous. I am excited to have a new audience that will view the work, I am nervous that I don’t have a strong enough connection to my new audience to get any feedback about the work. I am also curious about how my new online network will aggregate, judge and ultimately ignore or promote the work. I would love to know why or why not.
In the art world if you recommend something to another person and that person doesn’t like it your taste is questioned. This is very bad because “good taste” is the ultimate art collectors, curators and academics commodity. Good luck trying to break into that very tight herd unless you can distract (controversy) or convince (politic) the leaders of the community to support you.
I have a feeling social media may have a more democratic answer to this problem, though I don’t believe it to be an intrinsically better system. I think it has the potential to do great things and level the playing field, which is one of the reasons I am in this space and trying new things. However it is important to remember that democracy in it’s purest form has the potential to be even less forgiving and may be a far more difficult herd to tame.
I am trying to say as varied as possible with my lighting and composition. The repetition of the series is really dominating the work and I am finding it difficult to create new ideas with the same faces. I am seeing the end of dog a day just ahead and frankly I am a little sad. I enjoyed this project.
A fellow photographer told me that the transition from pets to fashion couldn’t be bridged. I always like a challenge like that. I hope that you all have enjoyed the series as much as I have. Thank you for your participation and allowing me the opportunity to share these documents, experiments and photographs with you over the last month.
I know it isn’t over yet but I felt like thanking you.
An article was just posted at Phoenix Artspace about my new abstract series that is being released on May 1st. There is also a book that has all 20 final images from the series being released on May 15th. More info forthcoming.
I hope that you head over to phoenixartspace.com and read the article and let me know what you think in the comments below. And of course you can view my soft edit of the series on flickr. All comments and criticism welcome.
And finally a link to the page where the final series will be released online May 1st, 2008.
Awww. Sleeping brothers. The other four can be seen by clicking on the image above. Enjoy.
This is the new image for dog a day, it is also my wife’s “favorite image so far.” and I agree.
My education on the history of photography is one of my most cherished possessions. And so the reference to early photo history and the pictorialist movement in this image really excite me. It was a movement that tried to establish photography as a fine art often by distorting the lens in an attempt to mimic the effects of the impressionist painters that were popular at the time.
With no intention of doing so (I realized as I was writing this entry) contemporary photo history also has a reference as well by one of the artists to cause controversy for National Endowment of the Arts, Andres Serrano. Of course this image is far less controversial and has no intentional religious or political foundation. It was just a creative way to photograph my dog Huxley.
For me being able to reference work to the past elevates the experience of creating. Do you think understanding history is an important element when creating? Or is it enough to be talented with color, composition, lighting, following trends, etc?
Recent Comments