Milan Fashion Week

Welcome to Milano: Fashion Week! by Douglas Stockdale

In a bit of a marathon today, I finished posting my photo project Milan Fashion Week. I just hope that I really don’t need to explain that it may be a social-cultural satire, but you can never tell.

Another aspect of this project is how it is shared, sans formal gallery, nor a self-published book that few, if any will ultimately purchase. Constructing and designing a blog that allows the project to unfold is about a democratic and open distribution. This is also about what we do with a completed project, that provides some underlying structure and accessibility.

The implications are that if this is a better means of sharing access to a project, then I have some work cut out to restructure my prior projects. But first things first, which is to determine how well this particular experiment works.

Best regards, Douglas

The New Renaissance Man

A good friend of mine, Larry Vogel, has started a new blog this last weekend, called The New Renaissance Man. Although Larry is primarily a photographer, represented by the Susan Spiritus Gallery here in SoCal, he is muti-talented to the point of considering himself a new Renaissance Man.

His blogging intentions are stated here:

This blog is dedicated to the original Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci. It is open to a new Renaissance Generation who explore the world as Creative Seekers. If you have ever been called creative, or perhaps you have been described as a “Renaissance Man”, you are in the right place to share and explore your creativity!

Creativity is an elusive quality, so we can use all of the help we can get.

Please check it out, and let Larry know that I suggested that you stop by;- )

Best regards, Doug

Photographic book reviews – part II

Reflections from the project Insomnia: Hotel Noirphotography copyright of Douglas Stockdale

I have been reading and assessing a lot of photographic books recently to publish on The Photo Book, and to a lesser extent, photographic reviews at galleries, but still looking a ton of images on the Internet. One aspect of these reviews that I bring with me, probably unstated, but there nevertheless, is my personal background and experiences in photography.

Case in point, my photographic “training” has been heavily derived from experience, that is that I do not have a BFA in art or photography. That could be a strength or it could be a weakness, nevertheless, it is. As a result I have not taken formal classes on art criticism or photography criticism. Now I am reading the related texts on the subject and it is providing me with more insights on the process of reviewing and assessing art and photographs, but it also helps me understand where I am at and why I probably understand certain types of photographs better than others.

But it also helps me understand more about what my book reviews are about and who my audience probably is. As I do not have a post graduate academic degree, e.g. Ph.D. in art history, my writings are not academic in nature, e.g. convoluted with academic theories and jargon as to be unfathomable to most photographers. So my audience is not probably going to be the academics and the related academic world. Nice, eh?

Now I realize that having only John Szarkowski’s book The Photographers Eye to help guide me, as well as the types of photographs I had made in the 70’s & 80’s, pretty well had locked me into a Modernist viewpoint. Thus my understanding of Post-Modernismas it applied to photography was very limited and narrow. Which in retrospect was kinda weird, because as a painter, I leaned towards Abstract Expressionistic work. Yeah, I don’t quite get it either, but again, it is what it is. Perhaps why I am so comfortable with the development of current photographic project, Insomnia, which I now think is Post-Modernistic.

So taking my photographic book reviews seriously has led me to purchase addition books on art and photographic criticism as well as critical theory, such as Terry Barrett’s Criticizing Photographs and a collection of writings edited by Ashley La Grange, Basic Critical Theory for Photographers. Thus my Aha! and realization regarding the fact that I photographicly developed as a Modernist, but tempered with some aspects of Post-Modernism.

It allows me to better understand my book review process. I like to live with a book for a while before I publish my assessment. That duration can be a couple of weeks to a couple of months, or more, depending on how comfortable I am with my thoughts and feelings about the book. First I complete a quick read of just the photographs, making some equally quick notes, sort of a first impression. Then I read the introductions and artistic statements, making more notes. Afterwards I will keep coming back to the book to refine my thoughts and impressions and then start drafting my review.

I also try not to read other reviews about this particular book until I have essentially finished mine, and most times, I prefer to wait until I publish my review. And I don’t usually contact the photographer during the book’s assessment period.

So for those who are familiar with the kinds of photographic criticism, I hope will probably agree with my own self-assessment that I lean towards Exploratory Aesthetic Criticism (per Ralph Smith) and Applied Criticism(per Andy Grundberg). In plain speak, that means that 1.)I try to understand the books aesthetic aspects as completely as possible to ensure that the readers will experience what can be seen in a book and 2.) what I write is practical, immediate and directed at the work (book).

So as you might imagine, some of this new knowledge is going to roll over into my reviews, but I will do the best I can to continue to ensure that my reviews are practical, immediate and directed at the book itself.

Best regards, Doug

Exposure Compensation kudos

Hutong ReDevelopment #7, 2007 copyright of Douglas Stockdale

Catching up on my reading and I found that I had received some really nice comments by Miguel Garcia-Guzman on his blog, Exposure Compensation regarding my Un-Critical Mass submission, Re:Development.  I really like his description of my work and to quote Miguel: “Doug’s work highlights a beautiful sense of space, patterns and relationships”. Thank you Miguel!

I still have some self-doubts about the small stories that I created for this series, using the triptych photographs. Especially when the response has been so strong for many of the Singular Images that are the building blocks for the stories. Well, perhaps stories is too large of a concept for the individual triptych’s, perhaps the story is when the 40 triptychs are seen together.

Created stories

“Watering Hole” copyright of Amy Stein

I had an opportunity to review a local exhibit that inculded the work of Amy Stein and a couple of other photographers. In my role as the editor of the The Photo Exchange, I am more of a reporter versus a true reviewer. Perhaps that will evolve over time.

But here in this place, you get to read my thoughts about the photograpers and exhibit. You unlucky devils;- )

SoFoBoMo day 9

Yuck, another overcast day, with the exception of about 15 minutes. You would think I was back in Michigan. And now the weather forecast for the end of next week is for bright and sunny days. hooey! By that time, I will be into some serious editing or else this book will not finish by the end of the month.

The film scanner went into sloooow mode again after brisking scanning the first three negatives this morning. So after three aborts and it is still running slooooow, I gave up. grrrrr. So it is working its way through negative number ten. hmmmmdeedum and twiddle my fingers.

But so far, I do like what I see. I think that this will work out fine. I am also noticing a couple of folks who made their SoFoBoMo deadline talk about continuing to tweak their project for a phase II edition. I suppose that’s okay, in as I am planning the softcover book for my SoFoBoMo completion and then working on the hard cover Limitied Edition version in conjunction with a Limited Edition folio after.

Speaking of softcover books, the printing proof for my softbound version of In Passing did not show up today. Bummer, as I was looking forward to reviewing that and allowing it to go to print. So maybe early next week, eh?

And speaking of books, while wearing my other Managing Editor hat for The Photo Exchange, today I did a phone interview with Jonathan Brown, the owner of Leadapron, a fine art book store, with an expertise in fine art photography, located in Los Angeles. You can find the interview here. As it always happens, after the interview, I think of another half dozen questions I could have asked. But that’s okay, there will be other opportunities;- )

Best regards, Doug

Right size for Photograph?

While I sort my stuff out after a day at the Palm Springs Photo Festival, I will leave you with a question that was posed to me from Tim Wride, (Independent curator, Director of No Strings Foundation, recently the Curator of photography at the Los Angeles Musuem of Art),  one of my portfolio reviewers, Does the same photograph in a different size mean the same the same thing?

I’m just Looking – trying to being objective?

One of the responses to the question, “what makes a Contemporary Landscape Photography?”, was the need for it to be viewed as ’objective’. I think that objectivity is what we want from a judge, to be detached from the proceedings and ensure no bias. Which is a good thing for the courts, but I am not so sure about photography. So this idea has been something that I have been wrestling with more so for the last couple of days.

Contemporary Landscape Photography?

First, don’t expect me to define what Contemporary Landscape Photography is in this post;- )

But when I saw the question asked by Miguel on Exposure Compensation  (note: I just added the link, I know, bad blogger, bad blogger) regarding what constitutes Contemporary Great Portrait Photography, it started that kernel of thinking as to how does that same question (and maybe answers) for Contemporary Landscape Photography?

Foundations – Retrospective Folio

I recently published and started distributing my first Edition Folio, Foundations, as a retrospective collection of my landscape photographs from 1975 to 1985. I want to reflect on what I have learned during the development of this Editioned Folio.

First was my intent for what I wanted to accomplish by completing the Edition Folio of prints. I have a body of natural landscape photographic work that I had completed between 1975 to 1985 that were singular images. At that time that I made these, I did not work on any specific themes or subjects per se other than my strong interest in making natural landscape images and working with the black & white photographic medium. After my interview with Brooks Jensen last November, I realized that a Folio, also called a portfolio, would be an ideal way to assemble and create a unfied body of work that would represent my photographs from this period of time.

Much like the portfolios of Adams, Caponigro and other photographers. I have not felt like this earlier body of work needed to go into print as a book, as my landscape photographs did not bring anything really new to the world. They were my collection of wonderful landscape photographs and they represented my early developmental period for me, both technically and creatively. So that was my intent, to create a collection of Singular Images from a specific period of time, which I have explained in more detail in the Folio Introduction, which you can find here.