wall space gallery | the flat file

April 20, 2012

Brian Shumway

Filed under: Critical Mass — Tags: , , , — The Flat File @ 10:00 am

Artist Statement and Bio

B L A C K  G I R L

“Modeling is an addiction.” Johanie, 24, aspiring model

Titled after a Lenny Kravitz song extolling the unique beauty of black women, Black Girl is a portrait series about aspiring models. Having a documentary background, I began photographing models to challenge myself professionally. However, my notions about modeling and the kinds of women who pursue it were challenged as I gradually recognized a central paradox: so many black women choosing to pursue modeling despite the industry’s persistent preference for white models. On one modeling website alone, there are over 3000 aspiring black models within the New York City area. Only white women surpass that. After organizing shoots, I realized this was an opportunity to explore a large, yet isolated corner of the modeling world.

Part anthropology and part make-believe, Black Girl is subtle and multifaceted. Because this project was collaborative (the models and I would discuss wardrobe, make-up, pose, concept, location, etc), the results demonstrate one way in which they choose to be seen. The act of modeling allows them to enter an alternate reality and assume an alter ego. Conversely, it opens a space to unveil a dormant side of themselves and grapple with issues about the body, identity, beauty, sexuality, youth, and fantasy. How they express themselves not only says something about who they are individually, but reveals clues about the broader socioeconomic class and cultural milieu to which they belong.

Black Girl is a small sampling of black women with a passion for modeling. It attempts to capture how they see themselves in the role of model and is not meant to represent all aspiring black models nor black women generally. Far from being cookie-cutter fashion or runway models, they deviate from the industry’s stringent definition of beauty. At core, Black Girl is a story of bitter irony, of beautiful women who dream of a profession where they are systematically devalued. Yet, they prove that an undeniable drive to attain a dream cannot be diminished.

B I O

Brian Shumway is a New York City based photographer whose work blurs the line between portraiture, documentary and fine art photography – a distinctive output of journalistic responsibility and artistic perception. He has worked for Reader’s Digest, Smart Money, People Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, XXL, TV Guide and the New York Times, among others. His work has appeared in American Photography, Communication Arts, Shots Magazine and the Photo Review as well as exhibited at the Central Exhibition Hall Manege in St Petersburg, Russia, Soho Photo, Fraser Gallery, Griffin Museum, and others. Brian was one of Magenta Foundation’s top 25 ‘Emerging Photographers’ in the USA in 2006 and 2008. La Chureca, his story on the city dump in Managua, Nicaragua, was a finalist for the (Santa Fe) Center’s 2008 Project Competition.

April 19, 2012

Jesse Burke

Filed under: Critical Mass — Tags: , , , — The Flat File @ 10:00 am
Postgame

Hang (After Velazquez)

Gladiator

Father

Bio:

Jesse Burke’s photographs evoke a deep lushness with images of velvet black darkness, blankets of pine needles, blood, love, and sadness. He photographs the natural world around him as well as the men who are a part of his life, whether family members or friends, to explore the vulnerability of masculinity. He is drawn to moments where a rupture or wound is physically, emotionally, or metaphorically inflicted. He employs concepts such as male bonding and peer influence, masculine rites and rituals, and man’s connectedness to nature in order to expose these instances.

Jesse is an instructor at Rhode Island School of Design where he received his MFA in Photography. His work has been exhibited in New York, Tokyo, Milan, Stockholm, Madrid, Miami, Los Angeles, Seattle, Tucson, Providence, Ottawa, Boston. Jesse was the 2008 recipient of the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Aaron Siskind Fellowship. His monograph Intertidal was recently published by Decode Books. He is represented by ClampArt in NYC and Platform Gallery in on the west coast.


April 18, 2012

Selena Salfen

Filed under: Critical Mass — Tags: , , — The Flat File @ 10:00 am

"Extracting the Gold"

"The Punishment Buzzcutt"

2nd Lt. William S. Salfen

"4024, Interior"

Bio: Selena Salfen received her MFA in Photography, Video and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts and her BA from Columbia College Chicago.  She lives in Brooklyn, New York but returns often to the rural Midwest to photograph.  Her work can be viewed atwww.selenasalfen.com.

Artist Statement:

My grandfather has been a consistently frightening figure in my family. He returned severely damaged from the nine months as a starved and violently interrogated German prisoner of war in World War II. Functioning through the remnants of his untreated traumatic experiences, re raised a family in a physically and psychologically abusive household, governed by his alcoholism and nonsensical rules.  He worked ad a mortician, stealing from those he embalmed and bringing a desensitized relationship with the death home to six children. This traumatic environment cultivated self-destruction and dysfunction amongst the children, leading to suicide, addiction, and many life-long struggles. The legacy of my grandfather’s experience in the war and the resultant abuse of his family has mutated and transmitted itself through three generations. For this project, I use the camera to disrupt the pattern of silence that had guarded our family’s dysfunction, while reconnecting the family and redefining their experience within my grandfather’s environment.

To make this body of work, I flew members of my family back from their scattered locations to the house in Missouri where my grandfather still lives. This process mimics the treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, referred to as exposure in vivo, in which subjects are directed to return in the physical location of a trauma and confront their fears in order to heal. The photographs I make in these locations are reconstructions of stories from the past, as well as observations of each descendant’s reimmersion into the historically traumatic location. In addition, I excavate the space, searching for evidence of past and present dysfunction amongst my grandfather’s neglected animals, rotting food, and sixty hears of hoarding.

April 17, 2012

Laura Heyman

Filed under: Critical Mass — Tags: , , , , — The Flat File @ 10:00 am

Gerlot Batravil

Blondine Herard

Timoun Rezistans

Michel Ricardo and Casseus spotted

Stephanie Yvens

Artist Statement and Bio:

Pa Bouje Ankò: Don’t Move Again began with the following question; “Can someone from the first world see/photograph within the third world without voyeurism or objectification?” In November 2009, I began to test this query by opening a formal portrait studio in the Grand Rue neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, and inviting members of the local community to have their portraits made. Shot with an 8×10 camera, the photographs follow the example of artists like Mike Disfarmer, James VanDer Zee and Seydou Keita, who used the commercial and utilitarian aspects of their practice to portray their subjects with a consideration and respect that is both clear-eyed and beautiful.

I was highly conscious of everything that stood in the way of a real exchange between myself and those who sat for a portrait; race, class, opportunity and lack of opportunity, the ability to move freely through the world. These things make communication difficult, as they are ever present, but rarely discussed. Because I was aware of the current and past difficulties between Haiti and the United States, I felt compelled to control the context of the images, not show them beyond Haiti, and leave their circulation in the hands of their subjects. I was afraid the images would be misconstrued or changed once they were removed from their original environment, and wanted to avoid enacting the familiar and problematic situation wherein the first world artist takes home a photograph of “the other” as souvenir. What I did not realize at the time was that this very idea – that the context of the images was something I could designate or control – was exactly what I sought to avoid.  It was, in fact, both colonial and paternalistic.  The context of any artwork is constantly shifting, and the context of these particular images has now shifted again. In addition to whatever they were initially, after the earthquake, the images have become both record and memorial. That event has also shifted the focus of the project, which has evolved to include various rapidly expanding communities in Port-Au-Prince. Reconstruction has introduced a new population: United Nations officials, NGO employees, volunteers, business investors, and local politicians. The first of these non-Haitian subjects I photographed was the U.S. Infantry, in May 2010. I’m sure the project will change again as I continue. It’s somewhat ironic that the title of the series is a request for stillness, while the project itself demands mentally elasticity, an open mind, and an ability to function in a constant state of flux.

Laura Heyman is an artist and curator who has exhibited at The Deutsches Polen Institute, Darmstadt, Germany, Ampersand International Arts, San Francisco, California, Light Work Gallery, Syracuse, New York, P.S. 122, New York, NY, Senko Studio, Viborg, Denmark, and The National Portrait Gallery, London, UK. Her work has been published in Contact Sheet, The Photo Review and Frontiers. She is the recipient of a NYFA Strategic Opportunity Stipend and a Light Work Artist Grant. Her most recent curatorial project, “Who’s Afraid of America” featuring the work of Justyna Badach, Larry Clark, Cheryl Dunn, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Zoe Strauss and and Tobin Yelland, was exhibited at Wonderland Art Space, in Copenhagen, Denmark.

April 16, 2012

Thomas Jorion

Filed under: Critical Mass — Tags: , , , — The Flat File @ 10:00 am

Isu

Fantasia_Rosso

Basketball

Artist Statement

My work is based on our perception of time, how it passes and especially its lack of linearity. Some places seem frozen as time passes by. While our society is developing and changing very rapidly, these places are submitted to a distorted passing of time. They seem to be lifeless or in a waking state, although in reality they have their own link with time.

I travel the world with one idea in mind, to find and show timeless islands. I choose to enter closed and abandoned places formerly alive, and often places of leisure or prestige to capture and share them. My fascination for the esthetic of abandoned places is the extension of an older tradition. The Romantics enjoyed strolling amidst the ruins of long lost civilizations. Centuries earlier, painters such as François de Nomé (1592 – 1623), Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) and Hubert Robert (1733 – 1808) dedicated part of their work to these forgotten places. Somehow my photos are part of this process.

The existence of timeless islands stems from a variety of contemporary phenomena. Though each of these islands has a particular origin depending on its location, all eventually evoke the disappearance of men.

In Japan, the line between leisure and consumption is often blurry. Leisure activities that are deemed old-fashioned are disposed of – similar to those handkerchiefs, the “nuigishi,” given out for free on the streets by pretty young ladies. An example of this occurence (occurrence – deux R) is the three-storied, 108-lane bowling alley in a Tokyo suburb. Being out of use for some time, it soon is to be demolished. The expansion of new forms of leisure activities has also led to a booming hotel industry. Better and cheaper flight connections and the growing mobility of global citizens made the world a village, with every destination easy to reach. The province of Izu, which used to be a popular summer destination for the Japanese, is now competing with international destinations as in China or Korea. Hotel complexes or amusement parks now open for business or shut their gates according to short-lived trends in the tourism industry.

In America the consequences of the economic crisis have been more disastrous than anyone could hardly have imagined. In the vast landscape of the United States, the possibility to build on new land is considered limitless. The habit of constructing new buildings instead of renovating old ones has proven rather catastrophic for the country. The dramatic consequences can be seen in cities such as Detroit MI, where the “white flag” phenomenon has made matters even worse. Other cities, such as Memphis, TN, or Bridgeport, CT have followed suit. Those cities’ entire cultural and social identities have decayed into ruin. The first places to have become useless for society were theaters, movie theaters, sport centers, schools and churches. Health care institutions, public housing, and judicial systems suffered, too… The failure of American Utopias, photographed by Joel Sternfeld in the late 70s, was already heralding deeper phenomena observed today.

On the old continent, the reasons are multiple and the consequences are often the same. Struck by a major structural transformation from industrial to post-modern societies many countries had to turn away from their heavy industry. Gigantic textile factories in Northern Italy have completely disappeared, even sumptuous villas of industrialists were forsaken and left to decay. Twenty years after the reunification this development can also be seen in Germany, where factories became completely unsuitable for the global economy and whole regions became deserted due to migration.

There is no denying that these abandoned places now cover all continents and in the name of the profit motive tends to amplify this phenomenon.

As for my photographic practice, I wish to conserve the rawness of the places that I observe.  This represents a challenge.  The frame must be arranged in accordance with the layout of the space and the available light.  For me, this reinforces the immaculate and timeless aspect of the place.

My use of a large format camera allows me to make sharp and detailed images that contain a variety of focal points, textures, and depths.  Capturing the richness of such pictures takes much time, which in turn reduces the number of photographs I can take.

The choice of color film is important because it anchors the place within the present moment and allows for a faithful rendering of things seen.  This eliminates the austere quality of certain spaces.  For example, in the Piedmont theater, the blue, yellow, and brown are muted and soft colors, but they correspond well together to reveal a new beauty.

April 13, 2012

Lauren Semivan

Filed under: Critical Mass — Tags: , , , — The Flat File @ 10:00 am

I met Lauren Semivan  in Portland at Photolucida in 2010. Her work is moody, mystical, graphic and lyrical – like great music, I want to swim in the images. Her images give me fodder for my imagination. These beautiful black and white images are symphonies using elaborately crafted backdrops, make a two dimensional art form full of depth and substance.

"Labyrinth"

"Backward from Four"

"Hinged"

Biography -

Lauren Semivan (b.1981, USA) earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI and Bachelor of Arts degree from Lawrence University in Appleton, WI. Her work has been exhibited at many galleries and museums including the Xiang Sha Wan Art Palace, China, The Griffin Museum of Photography, Meltem Birey Gallery in Philadelphia, PA, Cranbrook Art Museum, Cleveland Institute of Art, Kinkead Contemporary in Culver City, CA, David Klein Gallery in Birmingham, MI and Daimler Chrysler Financial Services Headquarters in Berlin, Germany.  Lauren’s work was selected for Photolucida’s Critical Mass competition in 2009 and 2010.  In 2008 she received the Griffin Award through the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA.  Her work has been published by Wright State University Press, in Photography Now: 100 Portfolios, and in Shots Magazine. Lauren lives and works in Richmond, VA.

Artist Statement

The staged photograph exists as a document of a preconceived, imagined event. It can be compared to a scientific apparatus, utilizing both control and the unknown. My ongoing body of work, Observatory, combines characters real and imagined with a partially autobiographical record of dreams, preoccupations, desires, anxieties, and symbols within the collective unconscious.

In scientific disciplines, a line is classified as an event. Something as primitive as a scrawl on a surface reveals an aggregate of events, intersecting and changing course. Drawings made on the seamless backdrop function as a narrative tool used to describe an emotional space.

Within each image, ghosts of previous drawings create a sense of time suspended, evoking gesture, atmosphere and memory. Photographs allow me to access the extraordinary, to keep a record of dreams, and to employ the uses of the unknown.

April 12, 2012

Michael Sebastian

Filed under: New Directions '11, portraits, submissions, wall space gallery — The Flat File @ 10:00 am

I met Michael Sebastian in Santa Fe, at Review Santa Fe in 2010. His series, 52 miles, documents his commute form his home to his office. His vision of an east coast suburban landscape is anonymous, free of human portraiture, yet filled with specific ideas of human connection through architecture, space and contained environments.

 

 

In 2011, Michael was part of David Bram’s curated vision of “A Moment of Being” our New Directions exhibition. Focused on portraiture, Moment of Being gave Michael a chance to showcase his depth in finding a connection to his surroundings.

K, West Virginia, June 2010

Michael Sebastian was born in New Orleans, and grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Dallas, Texas. He starting making and developing photographs around age eight  using the Kodak Brownie of renowned my-first-camera cliché. Once its brittle Bakelite finally yielded to his ham-fisted ministrations, Michael graduated to a well-used Zeiss Ikon Contina with a broken light meter, which further disappointed him by failing to bounce resiliently from concrete.

Undismayed, Michael wound up graduating from medical school and two residencies, photographing all the while—with greater or lesser frequency—around life’s other obligations. Along the way, he married a Kentuckian and moved to Louisville to raise two children. When not shooting, he practices anesthesiology in central Kentucky, in roughly that order of precedence. Fortunately for both cameras and patients, he now drops things far less frequently.

April 11, 2012

Thomas M. Johnson

Filed under: Critical Mass — Tags: , , , — The Flat File @ 10:00 am

Tom Johnson is passionate about his town. Lakewood, California. It is his deep connection to Lakewood that comes through the lens as he exposes us to what could be an overlooked, undervalued part of the American Experience.

I first glimpsed this work in 2010 in Critical Mass. What makes these images memorable is in the reflection of his lens, exposing his commitment to find out what makes Lakewood so special to him. Johnson gives us as viewers a glimpse into a history and memory raising up an area that, just outside one of the most visible cities in the world, Los Angeles, might never be seen.

Artist Statement:

Portraits from “Lakewood, a Photographic Journal of a Sacred American Suburb.”

For nearly ten years I have been photographing the people of my suburb.  The residents of Lakewood – a modest enclave in the southeast section of Los Angeles County – are generally conservative, middle class, and consider being normal an attribute.  Most of them don’t see foreign films or visit museums, and they often ask, “What kind of camera is that?” when they see my Hasselblad (yes, I shoot film).

Initially when I met someone from Lakewood, who I believed would make for a provocative portrait, I would set-up a shoot. However, this method never seemed to work.  In preparation, they would create an emotional façade that would hide who they were.  I found I had more success when I approached them in the midst of their day-to-day existence and asked if I may take their photograph.  Only then could I capture whom, at that moment they were, before they could think to conceal themselves. Of course many declined this unusual request from a stranger, or some of the images I made did not work because the personalities would or could not reveal themselves.

In return, my portraits do not aim for the cliché or mock those who dwell in suburbia.  And even though I may see the world differently than those I photograph, I understand and respect them for how vigorously they strive to maintain their toehold on the American dream.  However, my portraits are not benign; not only do they illustrate a sampling of America’s middle-class, they express the hopes and anxiety’s of this shrinking demographic.

Artist Biography

For nearly two decades Tom M Johnson has been commissioned by a variety of journals to photograph the most established and provocative artists, performers, and intellectuals inhabiting Los Angeles, such as Frank Gehry, Tom Ford, Bill Maher, and Jared Diamond.  However, it was 9/11 and its aftermath that compelled him to delve deeper into subject matter and to tune his focus upon long-term concepts. Tom’s first project, “Lakewood” returned him to the streets and neighborhoods of the suburb where he was raised in search of visuals and memories of his boyhood.  His next endeavor brought him back to where he lived and romanced as a young man, Paris, the city that awakened his senses, and inspired him to become a photographer.   There, he rode the Paris metro to each of its 29 ends to photograph a different part of Paris, one unseen by most Americans as well as his Parisian friends.  Tom now lives in Lakewood with his wife and two finches and is in the process of working on a book of his Lakewood photographs.

April 10, 2012

Jessica Hines

Filed under: Critical Mass — Tags: , , — The Flat File @ 10:00 am

I am honored to feature Jessica Hines’ series, My Brothers War. I first saw it in 2010 during my jurying of Critical Mass. I found it so moving, so powerful I could not get it out of my head. Family histories are so complicated, and Jessica helps us through her beautiful images and poignant text to see we are all one family. In a post Vietnam era, in the midst of war now, she helps to bind the wounds of the past, hopeful to clarify our future.

I was also honored to have her be part of the gallery’s mammoth effort last year for Japan, Life Support. It was with her photographic contribution we were able to help in a significant way to aid the people of Japan recover from the Earthquake and Tsunami that hit its shores.

My Brothers War has received great acclaim. She received the Humanitarian Documentary Grant from the Pollux Awards, was part of the New York Photo Festival, received awards form Lens Culture, IPA, and many more. Her Blurb book, designed by Elizabeth Avedon, is a beautiful tribute to this compelling narrative.

 

Artist Statement:  My Brother’s War

My older brother, Gary, was drafted into the army in 1967 during the Viet Nam War. Because our parents were ill and Gary was our caretaker, he made a request to Senator Stuart Symington seeking his help to avoid the draft order. A letter arrived on October 9th 1967, informing him “we regret that it could not have been more favorable to your wishes.” He was instructed by the Commanding Officer to report to the United States Army Overseas Replacement Station in Fort Lewis, Washington on October 31st for further assignment overseas. On November 4th, my brother arrived in Qui Nhon, Viet Nam. It was my eighth birthday. Because my parents could no longer care for me, I was sent to live with various relatives. Gary and I didn’t see one another for years.

Gary wrote many letters home while he was stationed in Viet Nam. Pictures arrived. Although in his letters he spoke of his living quarters and told us about the helicopters he flew into the front lines, he rarely discussed the dangers that he faced, so as not to cause us more worry.

Discharged from the army in December of 1969 with a “service connected nervous disorder”, we later came to know his problem as “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”. My pre-war brother, a normal and well-adjusted person had become, according to the Veterans Administration, 50% disabled. He took his own life ten years later.

More recently, while perusing Gary’s Vietnamese/English dictionary, I found it had hand-written declarations of love to him from a Vietnamese woman with whom he had fallen in love. I have since found information that confirmed their plans to marry. Gary returned to Viet Nam in early 1970 to live as a civilian. He never told any of us of his love. Gary’s reasons for leaving Viet Nam and returning home remain a mystery.

A memo pad found among my brother’s belongings reveals the names and addresses of his wartime friends. Thirty-five years after the war, with diligence, I have contacted some of them. Many of his friends are now deceased – having died young. I continue to make discoveries about wartime in Viet Nam as experienced by its veterans. The visual record of those experiences continues to unfold.

The drawings depicted in my images were made by my father, Lee Granger Hines, when he was a child during World War I.

In titling this series, My Brother’s War, I make reference to the other families worldwide who have lost and are presently losing loved ones in war.

Artist Bio:

Artist and storyteller Jessica Hines, uses the camera’s inherent quality as a recording device to explore illusion and to suggest truths that underlie the visible world. At the core of Hines’ work lies an inquisitive nature inspired by personal memory, experience and the unconscious mind. Hines began to cultivate her creative disposition early in life and her love of the arts led her to attend Washington University in St. Louis, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Continuing to pursue her interests, she studied photography at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she received a Master of Fine Arts degree. Hines’ lectures and exhibitions have been included at Unitec New Zealand Mâori: Te Whare Wânanga o Wairaka, in Auckland, New Zealand, Huazhong University in Wuhan, China, Sai Gon Thanh Pho Mo/Saigon Open City Gallery in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam, Galleria de Artes Plasticas, Universidad Veracruzana in Xalapa, Mexico, GoEun Museum of Photography, Busan, Korea, China Pingyao International Photography Festival Pingyao, China, Fototage in Mannheim/ Ludwigshafen, Germany, College of Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina, as well as at University of the Arts in Philadelphia and the Spéos Photographic Institute in Paris, France.

April 9, 2012

Manjari Sharma

Filed under: Critical Mass — Tags: , , , — The Flat File @ 10:00 am

I first saw Manjari Sharma’s work in Critical Mass in 2010. I have been following her rise ever since. While she is most well known for her Shower Series, but I really found a connection with her series about Anastasia.

 

Her cinematic, deep, shadowy vision captivated me. Manjari can peak my emotional curiosity, and hook me from the first image to the last.

 

 

Artist Statement:

Sparkles to Solitude

The town I have come to call home is one that echoes two concepts resoundingly, glamor and loneliness.

I live in New York City and I met Anastasia, the protagonist of my series over a year ago. Ana came to this country as a foreigner, so did I.

While the prospect of gain and glitz and the promise of a better life takes a lot of us travelers to distant shores, an empty void in the heart can remain.

Through extended conversations with Anastasia and having lived overseas for several years now, I have come to believe that there is something common between our sparkling lives in glossy cities, it’s solitude.

Whether we hail from the midwest or India, our understanding of loneliness is what binds our fabric as human beings. I used fragmented whispers of Anastasia’s personal life and took on the role of a fiction writer for this project.

A strong realization for me has been how as a society we can all relate to a sense of detachment and isolation, sometimes even as we stand shoulder to shoulder on a crowded subway. Day in and day out our manicured facade continues to lose against our ability to feel lonesome in the lap of noise and company. These images are a commentary on how we choose to pursue a romance with one self which is both exotic yet tragic and lush yet lonely… vulnerably finding our own secret gardens as we walk in and out of reality.
Her newest work, Darshan, successfully funded as a Kickstarter project. I anxiously await the results.

 

From her Shower Series -

http://www.manjarisharma.com/


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