The Great Julius Shulman

This is a repost of a comment I left at Atomic Indy about the Great Julius Shulman who passed away on Wednesday at the age of 98:

As an architect and photographer, I have always admired Shulman's work. I have seen him speak a few times and spoke to him briefly after a lecture in Houston. What a gem.

He half-jokingly referred to himself in lectures as "The Great Julius Shulman," a moniker I'm sure he picked up by hearing himself referred to as such. But he was actually an enormously down-to-earth, hardworking artist who was one of the first to share the vision of the early modern California architects. The Case Study House Program owes a great deal of success to Shulman's vision of modern living.

What I remember most about his lectures and what inspires me most today is the complete dedication to getting the shots and getting the work done regardless of itchy business realities such as whether he would be paid or not. He did this casually, cheerfully, and jokingly, and he knew how important it was to represent California modernism so ideally in pictures. Philosophically, he knew that success would come if he just continued to do good work. And he was right. Shulman came to the site, he spent the time, he waited for the moment, he got the shots. The amazing shots.

What is lost in our hindsight and reverence for the Case Study House Program is the fact that it was groundbreaking, difficult and financially stressed. Yet Shulman brought his best because he believed in the art.

Not only that, but he continued working well into his eighties (maybe later?). Lugging view camera equipment around and staging shots is not for the meek, even with assistants.

I don't feel that he will be missed the way I often do when people pass. For Shulman, I feel that his amazing legacy will continue to be revered after a long and fruitful life. What more could a person want?

I'm looking forward to seeing this film about Shulman... it would be great to see it screened in the Toby at the IMA (hint, hint).

Ruins of Truth in Content

The most blogged-about topic on photography blogs this week is The New York Times Magazine's publishing and subsequent pulling (from the web) of Edgar Martins' Ruins of the Second Gilded Age which the Times commissioned from Martins last fall. One blog commenter compared this charade to the Oprah-James Frey incident.

Martins is a 32-year-old Portugese photographer who has produced an incredible body of minimal, conceptual photographic work. He has advertised his work as being "without digital manipulation," which is quite a cavalier statement, even taken liberally. With few exceptions, every large format photographer who prepares museum-quality prints utilizes some level of post-production for the simple ability to remove dust or other aberrations from the picture which are natural and inevitable to shooting. This is really no different than the analog tedium of dust removal and retouching of prints in old-school wet photography.

Claiming "no digital manipulation" and no post-production is very ethical high ground in photography. Most who genuinely do this shoot large format (up to 8x10) or ULF, ultra-large format (up to 20x24) film and contact print or still enlarge wet - primarily black & white. Martins' work however is pristine color work, and frankly it's difficult to believe that it is without digital post production. Analysis of Ruins of the Second Gilded Age at PDN seem to agree, and now bloggers are combing through Martins' earlier photographs and pointing out bits of editing in the work.

Which brings us to the most interesting question: Why? Why do this? If you are Martins, you are a fine artist whose work is strong enough that it does not need further justification by claiming no digital manipulation. If you are the New York Times Magazine, why hire a Portugese fine art photographer to document an American housing crisis? I can think of quite a few who could have produced this project exceptionally well in the required editorial means (no manipulation to change the content or meaning of the work). Why did these get past photo editors - was there some gambling with grace or did they really not catch it?

This incident is also a lesson on the ubiquity of the blogosphere and it's ability to affect change at the highest levels of media. Image posted above by Edgar Martins, 'raw flip' evidence animation by a blogger here.

One blogger on APhotoEditor claims that Martins will soon respond. I look forward to the dust settling on this one.

Pining for Texas

I miss Texas a lot. It's one of those places that you grow to love : the smells, the heat, the genuine friendliness of the people, the slow and articulate cutting edge - in its dullness, sharper sometimes than the competitive edge of the east coast, and more tangible and relatable.

I really dig photographers who can speak Texan in their images. One of my favorites is Allison V. Smith. Her work feels like Texas to me.

Judy Levy Memory Cloud @ IMA

My pal Judy Levy has a fantastic installation at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in the atrium. If Orly Genger made you nervous, you'll like Judy's installation. I only wish I had stilts to see more.

Social Justice

The events surrounding the elections in Iran these past couple of weeks really have me thinking.

I think about my own preconceptions about Iran, formed by believing what has been poured forth in the news media in recent years. I am amazed that such a great number of the Iranian people are marching and fighting for freedom and justice. Who would have thought that this election in Iran would reveal the same courage and thirst for change that our own election brought less than a year ago? We are very much alike.

I also can't help but think that if these actions are in some part inspired by the change in philosophy and administration of our American government. If so, Barack Obama, by sheer inspiration, has done more to bring democracy to the middle east than years of warring and a trillion dollars will ever bring.

When I step away from the computer, the news, my phone and all the worldly information brought by modern living, I look for signs of social justice in my city and my neighborhood. Just a block away from my home, Larry and Beverly Newman protest quietly every Saturday, in every form of weather. They are humble and they are diligent. Humility and diligence are waning in America, replaced by self-consumption and addiction to immediacy. Is the current recession enough for us to regain our sense of humility as a people and become diligent and ethical in business and social responsibility? I fear that it is not - not in the way that 9/11 briefly unified us as a people.

I have been photographing the Newmans and will continue to do so as long as they stand quietly every Saturday morning for their deep belief in social justice.

Festival

In the studio tonight sorting through prints as I get ready for IMAF (the Independent Music and Arts Festival) this Saturday at the Harrison Center for the Arts in Indianapolis. I've never done a local festival, but I have spent much time at IMAF in previous years. Good music, good people, good brew = good time. I'll be somewhere on the newly-landscaped Harrison Center lawn at 16th & Delaware, at the south end of the adjacent Talbott Street Art Fair.

Stop by if you're in the neighborhood. I'm pulling out original (mostly one-of-a-kind) prints from my experimental work from the mid-90's, many proofs and a few edition prints from Economic Entropy. Perhaps even a few large pieces... let's see what fits in the truck. Maybe I'll bring a camera. Economic recession pricing and Facebook friend discounts apply.

Abstraction and Humanism

I'm hoping to get to NYC this month to take in a few shows, foremost The Edge of Vision at the Aperture Gallery. I cheated myself and bought the beautiful monograph first, something I don't usually do before seeing a show.

Abstraction, or a broader classification that I call 'experimental' photography, was what first drew me in after years of dispassionately knowing the techne of the medium. I learned photography at an early age from my father, a Marine Corps photojournalist and instructor. But I was never attracted the idea of being a photographer - no yearbook or newspaper staff in school, no photographic curiosity to speak of.

What first piqued my interest were crossover artists: Laslo Moholy-Nagy, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Smithson, Sol LeWitt, and LeCorbusier the architect painting (often in the nude) to exercise his vision and sense of composition. Bolstered by friends immersed in art and literature, I began experimenting with painting, collage and photography to inform the aesthetics of my architectural work. Along the way I discovered great image-makers who forever changed the way that I see: Harry Callahan, Ray Metzker, Barbara Morgan, and Sigmar Polke among others. I searched for ways (relatively unsuccessful to this day) to generate architectural form and aesthetics through art mediums.

My early experimental photographic work was largely predicated on dissolving the illusion of deep space and expanding the 'frozen moment' into something not so... singular. Reading these abstractions, I made many attempts to translate the resulting forms back into architectural compositions. The only results which I thought began to translate successfully were in my brief series Brutalities / Cartographies. These images began as recording architecture and in a sense were regurgitated into a more interesting image of an architecture. I made a few line drawings and projections inspired by my friend Mark Kroeckel (of OpenShop Studio) and his exploration Acting Space, but alas, I let the project rest. All of these photo>architecture translations seemed forced, arbitrary, and ultimately aesthetic.

Which brings me (via the scenic route) to a thought about Joerg Colberg's Not a Review of the Edge of Vision show. As a photographic outsider (in a sense, never formally schooled in photography) I find it very interesting observing the differences between the few aesthetic ideologies in contemporary photography today. Joerg states, "I have never spent much time looking at abstract photography, because, well, I find most of it too decorative." I admire Joerg's eye and his blog commentary. A fair opinion, I suppose.

What I find interesting is that in the field of architecture, formal and visual abstraction is actually the basis of modern and conceptual design - quite different than in photography. The antithesis of this kind of architecture might be postmodern architecture... which is very different than postmodernism and all of it's derivatives in the world of art and photography.

Based on my history, my inclination here is to make a connection between abstract photography as seen in The Edge of Vision and modern design. Maybe that connection is simplistic. Maybe the connection is in the relation of the two mediums (photography and architecture) to people - how each affects our thoughts and interactions.

From reading his blog for a couple of years, I deduce that Joerg seems largely intrigued with portraiture - the relationships among: the photographer, a person as subject, the camera and ultimately the art object result on the wall. Among these relations are intense subtleties which reveal interesting aspects of the human condition. Eyes looking there, the gesture of the hand, light revealing lines on skin... all captured in the medium and speaking to us about what it is to be human.

There is much more here to think about here... I'll rest my fingers for a while. Maybe I'll expand my thoughts on abstraction and humanism in photography at a later date.