I’ve discovered a photographer whose work I really love: Michael Massaia. He creates stunning black and white images of desolation and emptiness, but not in a way that leaves one depressed, but more in a way that leaves one fascinated. To top it off, Massaia uses large format film cameras and creates his look in the darkroom. He is an incredibly skilled printer.
Take a look at his portfolios here. Watch a video about him and his process here.
Afterlife
I’ve been following Susan Kae Grant’s work for several years and am still in awe of it. For some reason, I just assumed that the tableaux that she creates were paper cut-outs meticulously staged and then photographed. Turns out I couldn’t be more wrong about her process—these are life size tableaux that are meticulously staged and photographed. Take a look at this video and her process:
Direct link to the Night Journey video here.
What is even more interesting is that she has spent many nights in a sleep center and had the staff wake her from REM sleep, then she records her dreams. This is what provides the material for her work. I have some issues with insomnia and undertook a sleep study many years ago. For me, being repeatedly woken up during REM sleep was an extremely agitating experience, making me all that more impressed at Kae Grant’s dedication to her art.
She’s Grasping Her Behavior, #006
Please take some time and take a look at her gallery of images here. I just can’t emphasize enough how gorgeous I find these images: The swirling backgrounds, the pools of light, and the jet-black subjects—it is a form of photography that that has human depth—it combines the psyche with the beautiful. I find the term ethereal is often excessively used, so I decided to dig into the dictionary and to really understand the definition of the word. This is one definition I found:
Extremely delicate and light in a way that seems too perfect for this world.
I’m not sure I could find a better description.
This is a photograph of a dancer I took during a production of The Shed in Red Hook back in 2007. Truly a great example of modern dance in Brooklyn. I don’t usually post images that are already in one of my online galleries; this one is in the Film | Dance gallery here. However, I was testing a new Word Press plug-in, and needed an image to test with and this one popped up in a search. I looked at it anew and am still absolutely blown away by the tonality.
I’m still stunned by the tonality of this shot.
I recently was contacted about selling one of my prints, a black and white panorama of an old wood mill incinerator in Eastern Oregon (Download a free .pdf of this panorama here). That got me thinking about panoramic image print formats:
Lao New Years, that is. The Lao celebrate their New Years or Pbeemai (pronounced pi-mai bi-mai) on April 13th, 14th, and 15th. The 13th is the last day of the old year; the 15th the first day of the new. What is interesting to me is the 14th: Sangkhan Nao or day of no day. April 14th isn’t part of either year, it’s a day of rest and fun. One of the activities is the throwing of water on friends and passersby—something of a purification ritual.
Since this is going to be a bit of a party, I thought I’d put my Botanica Obscura folio on sale for 50% off. That’s right, for the rest of April, the print folios will be priced at $45 instead of their normal $90.
Sale!
Atlex.com Rocks!
I generally don’t review suppliers unless I really feel it worthwhile, but in this case it is really warranted. I’ve been buying inkjet ink from atlex.com for at least a decade simply since they always had the best price. But recently I’ve purchased two printers from them, and had some serious issues with one of them. Of course this was a few weeks before I was due to hang two shows of my Botanica Obscura prints—can you say stressed? At that point I decided I’d really had enough with the inkjet manufacturer that I’d been using since 2001, and went with a new manufacturer—and the biggest printer I’ve ever owned, the Canon imagePROGRAF iPF6300. I’ve never had a better printer. I won’t gush over it now (although I may in a future post).
What I do want to gush over Read More
