You don't need me to tell you about the dumbness--and if you care at all about the arts, the embarrassing dumbness--of the artist statement. It is said that artist statements originated somewhere in the early 1990s but I remember them earlier than that. I've never seen a good one and…
[Originally published on December 5, 2011] Filmmaker Ken Russell died last week. Most of his work will fade into obscurity save the film Tommy which is, of course, a music version of the album of the same name by The Who. Likewise, I think much of the work of The Who…
Forty-eight years ago John Szarkowski, the director of the Museum of Modern Art's photography department--a department that more or less was leading the world in taking photography seriously as an art--published a book entitled Looking at Photographs. In his book he shared one hundred images from the Museum's collection, some…
About fifteen years ago I switched from shooting 4x5 film to shooting small sensor digital. The switch was a big one--I had to give up resolution and important controls regarding what was in focus and the shape of things as projected on the film. But what I gained was mobility,…
[Originally published in an old blog on February 9, 2012] I’ve quit photography a few times, the first time in the 1980s. As the art on display got worse and worse, as the praise for the same works gushed and gushed, I thought, “Fuck it. This is a stupid way…
In 2005 I found myself passing through Albuquerque and thought I'd stop by the Petroglyph National Monument. It's not very big. Maybe at one time it used to be out there, on its own in some pristine setting, but now it's butt-up against the sprawl of the ever-sprawling city, "adobe"…
The photobook Zaido by Yukari Chikura was published last year and has been featured in nearly every "top ten" list. The book is now listed as "out of print" by Steidl, the publisher, although stock remains at booksellers. You can see my review of Zaido here. I chatted with the…
Many years ago many of the camera manufacturers also had their own magazine. One of the less well known of these is Exakta Magazine, which highlighted the today equally obscure Exakta camera. To set itself off from the rest, Exakta Magazine hired several of the top graphic designers in the…
My idea--I'm a genius at marketing my work, it should be obvious by now-- was to send a free copy of Computational Photography each month, given postage-free* to a reader drawn randomly from my subscriber list. I mean, I would ask them first if they even wanted a copy of…
We've talked before about furniture films (also called static films). Prof. Justin Remes specializes in this interesting genre of experimental filmmaking and here shares with us his "top ten" list of historically important static films, aimed at introducing readers to the development of films that exist somewhere in the space…