Current Reads

Been enjoying Fred Ritchin's book After Photography. His essay "Photographing the Invisible" was an influential read in graduate school. Ritchin's essays remind me of how much I like thinking about and creating interdisciplinary/lens based work.

P. 58 From Chapter 3, From Zero to One, After Photography, Fred Ritchin (In response to Walter Benjamin's notion of the Aura) "Douglas Davis, in a digital era response six decades later, asserted: "Here is where the aura resides-not in the thing itself but in the originality of the moment when we see, hear, read, repeat, and revise."

www.cabinetmagazine.org

Cabinets 38th issue is on Islands-a near and dear interest of mine. Other highlights includes Inventory / An Anthology of Memories from Cabinet’s Published Past by Alejandro Cesarco

 Wish I could have seen the exhibit-almost a decade ago. Good book found in the stacks of the WSU library.

Picked up a copy of Bas Princen's book Five Cities Portfolio: Amman, Beirut, Cairo, Dubai, and Istanbul. While I was in Monograph bookworks (www.monographbookwerks.com) in NE Portland, the owner layed this out in front of me opened up. I couldn't resist. You can learn a bit more about Princen's book:

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/refuge.html

www.vankranendonk.nl/artists/

Thinner Air by John Mann

www.rockpapercloud.com

The Middle of Nowhere

The December 7, 2007, This American Life episode #253, titled in The Middle of Nowhere, has a brief, sobering article about the largest rubbish piles in the world, which are in fact in the middle of the ocean. 

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1057

You can learn more about Captain Moore and his research. 

http://www.algalita.org/

The New Real: Photoids

In he February issue of Art in America, there is an article on the exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art entitled, Reality Check, Truth and Illusion in Contemporary Photography. In the article, Peter Plagens coins the term"photoid" which he writes is derived from Norman Mailer's term "factoid". Apparently Mailer coined the term in the 70's which can be describe as "an alleged fact that has no existence previous to its publication." Plagen extends this terms to photography by coining the term "photoid."

I personally related to the article on a number of levels. More specifically the article resonated with me in terms of my current photographs the are both real and imagined.