artist-in-residence

I have just begun a two-month artist residency at the Carter Burden Leonard Covello Center for the Aging  at 109th Street between 1st and  2nd Avenues, NYC.

I have a big room to do anything I want in.

I've started by pinning up some reproductions (women in art history) on the wall, and drawing from them. And weaving with them.


Van der Weyden

Lautrec

Velazquez

Realized they are my muses: excited to see what happens there.

All photographs © Ellen Wallenstein 2014.

Interview with David J. Carol, Photographer

David J. Carol attended the School of Visual Arts and The New School for Social Research where he studied under Lisette Model. He was the first assignment photographer for The Image Bank photo agency (now part of Getty Images) at the age of 26. He currently works as the Director of Photography at CBS Outdoor. He is a contributing writer for Rangefinder Magazine and PDN’s Emerging Photographer Magazine. He also serves on the Board of Advisers for the Center for Alternative Photography.

Q1. You seem to be a "voice" in the photo world, maybe even a loud one by now. Was this your intention and/or expectation? If so when did it come about when did you feel you really had something to say to other people?

A1. That’s a really interesting question(s) to me for a few reasons. First of all I have no idea if I'm a "voice" or what the "photo world" is. That being said, I think I’ve figured some stuff out over the last 34 years and I do get satisfaction when I state an opinion or give advice and it actually benefits someone.

I’ve always been opinionated about pretty much anything I care about. I will be completely candid here for better or worse. I have strong beliefs about how photography needs to be approached to be authentic, honest and valuable.  If you take pictures for the right reasons, which basically means, shoot for yourself with no regard to how others will view it, then you’re already ahead of the game.

One caveat here, I’m not talking about commercial work. This is strictly regarding work done as, for lack of a better word "fine art" purposes. There are too many juried shows, instant online books and photo blogs called magazines. It’s a chicken and egg deal going on these days. We have uneducated self-proclaimed curators diluting the photography world through social media and hype. "You too can be in a show, have a book, be on a blog and have instant unearned fame!" This nonsense just didn’t exist a few years back, which gave people time to evolve as humans and artists if you will. 

But you have to feed the social media beast with "product" and what you get is banal, insipid and disposable work that has no value or insight. There are way too many naked emperors with the ability to build a website and blog.  I only care about and respect photographers that take pictures based on internal influences as opposed to external influences like the aforementioned shows, books and blogs. How often do you get Facebook invitations to another show of the same trite colorful vapid garbage photos? Everyday!

I don't care if you shoot landscapes, buildings, people or bugs, just do it for yourself and it wont matter who likes it or hates it. If that's the loud voice you asked about then you're right Ellen. I hate all this bullshit 'commerce" driven photography. There are many great photographers working today making insightful, interesting, inspiring and meaningful work. The problem is all this crap dilutes the photo pool and the McDonald faction of the photo world continues. Popular does not mean good, it only means popular. The best and worst thing about the digital photography era is that it made taking pictures easier, cheaper and more available to everyone.

Q2. When you started photo school (School of Visual Arts) what did you think your options would be (+ 30 years)? I'm interested in what you remember wanting, how long it took to get, if you had a plan…?

A2. In my first year at SVA I figured out two things. First, I never thought I could make a living as a photographer and I was fine with that. Second and most importantly I thought that if I could get two pictures a year that I really loved I could have an interesting book of photographs by the time I was 50. These two principals saved me. It took all the pressure off. I just didn't think about the idea of showing work, making books and being "famous". It gave me the freedom to just take pictures for myself.

In fact, other than a few friends, nobody saw any of my personal work between 1983 and 1999 the year I had a show at the Stephen Daiter Gallery in Chicago. So to answer your question I never considered any options and my plan was to take pictures for 25 years then make a book of my best pictures. Interestingly my first book came out in 2004, which was 24 1/2 years after I started SVA.  I think I just realized that for the first time. Hey, and I still had a few years until I was 50! Damn, that's cool.

Q3. Name 3 influences & if you can remember what they said to inspire you.

A3. I’ve had many influences like Crumb, Kubrick, Zappa, Salinger, Vonnegut, Kerouac, Erwitt, Frank, Winogrand but I’ll keep this to people in my real life that have personally influenced me early on in my life.

First I would have to say my father. He was a total disaster at his jobs, fathering and working. He was unreliable, lied to me all the time and was a constant source of disappointment. When I got my first real photo gig doing assignments for The Image Bank in 1985 he asked me what they were paying me. I told him, I think it was $30k a year, and he said, "That's not very much money." This from the guy that lost all his money in the stock market and hair-brained get rich schemes. He lost our home when I was 16 and left me to live on my own with no guidance or financial help. So he was a big influence in many ways. 

Second would be Abby Robinson, my teacher at SVA. She taught me many things about photography but possibly the most profound might have been this. We were doing class critique and she pointed out a little something going on in the corner of one of my photos that she liked. I said something like, oh that was an accident. She smiled and said, "If it keeps happening it’s not an accident." I still say that to my students, know why? Because its true and it says pretty much everything that needs to be said about how we take pictures.

This is really tough, but for my third influence I'll pick Lisette Model my teacher at The New School. She was looking at my photos one day and said, "You must respect your subjects." I knew exactly what she meant and I never forgot it. If you're ever looking at one of my photos and think I'm mocking my subject, you're wrong. I may present an honest image but I assure you I'm not demeaning them.

Q4. Who would you consider to be the best photographers (dead and/or alive?) People you feel have influenced the "fine art" culture as you put it?

A4.1. Eliot Erwitt -should be that photography doesn't have to be serious to be good and or important. 2. Garry Winogrand is the best street photographer of all time, big influence. 3. Lee Friedlander showed me that you can be cerebral and funny. 4, 5, 6. Diane Arbus, Irving Penn and August Sander taught me portraits are not boring. 7. I saw Les Krims in my freshman year at SVA for the first time. He was just so weird it fascinated me. 8. Lewis Hine, like Penn, Arbus and Sander took amazing portraits, but he also documented history in a unique way. I love that! 9. Josef Koudelka for the honesty and grit in his photos. 10. Robert Frank because his photos showed such emotion and truth.

Q5. How do you balance work/your work/family/other obligations (CBS, portfolio reviews, writing for RF, etc.)?

A5. Well that is the biggest challenge in my life these days. I have one priority over all others, my family. Next would be my personal work and working with other photographers. It’s strange how it all blends together and I never ever have enough time for all of it. I think I take on too much, but I have trouble saying no to things that either seem fun or helpful to others. Yeah, I’m not good at the balancing act. I think one day, maybe next week I'll just say that's it. I'm done...who knows?

Q6. Would you encourage your kid to be a photographer? If so, why and if not, why not?

A6. I would advise my kids, two boys, to do whatever they had a passion for. I’m lucky, neither one wants to be a photographer!

My advice to anyone wanting to be a photographer these days is simple. Get a regular job that won’t be a daily torture and take pictures for fun on your own time. If taking pictures isn't fun, then do something else.

7Q. What question would you like me to ask you?

7A. Ask me what its like to have a one person show at MOMA and ask it to me the night of the opening.

8Q. Bonus question: Are you any relation to (or wish to be related to) Leo G. Carol(l) (Topper)?  :)

8A. It’s funny you should ask. That show was in repeats on TV when I was a kid and I actually felt connected to Topper because I saw ghosts too!

**

www.davidcarol.com

David will be sharing his wisdom in an upcoming program “The Artists in a Professional World: Three Photographers Three Perspectives”  on April 29, 2014 at The Penumbra Foundation in New York City, along with Paris Visione and Eliot Dudik.

Link: http://capworkshops.org/11156-2/

Interview © Ellen Wallenstein 2014

Photographs © David J. Carol 2014

American Suburb X

I am now a contributor to American Suburb X, an online photography magazine.

My latest article:

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2014/04/up-close-and-personal-fuchs-projects.html

photograph © Brenda Ann Keneally

from "Up, Close & Personal"

Fuchs Projects, Brooklyn

through May 13th.

As they describe themselves:

WHAT IS ASX?

Started in 2008, AMERICAN SUBURB X / ASX is an ever-growing archive and fiercely edited look at photography’s always relevant past, rapidly shifting present and dramatically unfolding future. The mission is to provide and provoke, to educate and titillate those who are obsessed with art, photography, visual culture and all of their beautiful moving parts. We believe that by bringing together the intellectual and the visual in a powerful dance, ASX will foster new generations of artists, scholars, collectors, and patrons.

With over 130,000 site visitors a month and more than 50,000 Facebook fans, ASX brings crucial and addictive content to the worldwide lovers of this rapidly changing beast that we call visual ‘photography’.

 (Copyright for all images and text, except for works in the public domain, rests with the original publishers, authors, or photographers. Copyright holders are welcome to contact us at info@americansuburbx.com if insufficient acknowledgment has been made or an image or text removal is requested.)

I'm pleased and proud to be part of this. 

A little amazed at the size of the audience.

Link to ASX

This is the first of several current articles/reviews I am beginning to post on the website AmericanSuburbX.com, where I am a listed as a Contributor: 

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2014/04/review-michael-schmelling-land-line-2014.html



They also published my interview with Larry Clark, from Spot Magazine, 1984:

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2011/12/interview-larry-clark-outlaw-no-more-1984.html

some pairs of pictures

from an ongoing project, nyc squares

                     

                   

                   

                   

                 

                 

                 

                 

                 

                 

                 

all photographs © ellen wallenstein 2014

all rights reserved

Carrie Mae & Garry: some laughed/long & hard & loud

This is a second blogpost in response to the Carrie Mae Weems retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum.

Something that brought me up short while looking at Carrie Mae Weems’ exhibition at the Guggenheim was seeing Garry Winogrand’s photograph “New York City 1967” appear twice in the backgrounds of two of her works.  

You know the photo. Fifth Avenue, late afternoon, beautiful light: an interracial couple (blonde woman in gold earrings and paisley scarf, man in tie and jacket) holding a pair of monkeys dressed in children’s clothes. Winogrand includes himself in the frame as a shadow cast on the man. At the bottom right of the frame, behind them we see an “actual” (White European) child dressed in a coat with a velvet collar and matching hat, holding an unseen hand.

In Hilton Als’ brilliant essay “Animals and Their Keepers: Garry Winogrand and Photography After September 11^th”, he writes “….That Garry Winogrand confronted our fear and distrust of these two “different” groups in a single image more than 30 years before the fact was not noticed. But it can be seen now, in the most controversial image in “The Animals.”…. In projecting what we will into this image—about miscegenation, our horror of difference, the forbidden nature of black men with white women—we see the beast that lies in us all. “ *

It’s an interesting photo, summing up with visual acuity and wit the fears and confusions of an era of change and revolution. It’s also totally offensive and racist as hell.  I remember seeing it when I first discovered Winogrand's work in school in the 1970s, and reacting to it with a smirk.  Embarrassed now, that I’d thought it funny; but in hindsight understanding my own ignorance. (Racism needs to be un-learned.)

In The Kitchen Table Series, (1990), the photograph in question appears in the background of the second image of the narrative.  In this image, a woman (CMW herself, representing everywoman) sits at a table with a man, playing cards and smoking cigarettes.  It is an image about equality, in relationships and power. Winogrand’s photo is subtly pinned to the wall behind the woman, one of several images surrounding a large photograph of Malcolm X, hand raised.  The juxtaposition could be a reminder of how the greater photo world (in which Winogrand was canonized) saw race relations.

The Winogrand photo appears again as part of From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried –this time in a more overt and more obvious manner, as both subject and subtext. This work is an installation of single images, in different configurations. Most of the photographs are framed in black with circular*** black mats protected by red glass, etched with white writing. The shape and form is like looking through a microscope at blood-stained slides.  Many of the images come from found historical sources: anthropological libraries and post-Civil War family archives.  

“Some laughed/ long & hard & loud” appears near the end of the series. The text is etched over Winogrand’s photo, which is cropped into a circle, under the red glass. That Weems includes Winogrand's photo here, placing it in the context of historical racism is shrewd and stunning.

In talking about the power of photography, Winogrand said: “It’s got its own thing. That’s really what photography, still photography, is about. In the simplest sentence, I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed. Basically, that’s why I photograph, in the simplest language. That’s the beginning of it and then we get to play the games."**

Carrie Mae Weems doesn’t play the same games. Or with the same rules. 

She’s outfoxed the foxes and run away with the prize.

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* http://www.americansuburbx.com/2013/01/theory-animals-and-their-keepers-garry.html

By the way, the 2004 reprint of The Animals, while still containing Szarkowski’s introduction and the “order of the original images” does not contain this image. Interesting right?

**(“Monkeys Make the Problem More Difficult – A Collective Interview with Garry Winogrand” (1970) transcribed by Dennis Longwell 1970

*** Weems uses the circle and text in many of her works, including the very astute “Not Manet’s Type” (1997), which is comprised of self-portraits in circular mirrors, with text below the photos.

Photographs © Carrie Mae Weems

Winogrand photograph © estate of Garry Winogrand

All writing © Ellen Wallenstein All Rights Reserved

the start of some personal responses to the work of Carrie Mae Weems

"After Manet" © Carrie Mae Weems

This blog post is a personal response to seeing Carrie Mae Weems’ brillant exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum. Of course I thought about race and class and gender, as one must. Beginning with race.

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In elementary school I knew only two black people.

Curline Mosley, my mother's cleaning lady who came in once (or twice?) a week from the south Bronx to clean and do the laundry (She knew those dirty secrets.) I think she also served me lunch when I was a little girl. I remember liking her, thinking she was kind. My mother used to give her my brother's and my "castoffs" since she also had two kids.

One day when I was about 7, she brought her young son with her (he was around my age). I remember (a VERY distinct memory because it was an epiphany) he said that he hated that his mother had to work cleaning for us "white people". This was really the first time I considered the situation.

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The other black person I knew before I was 11 years old was Ronald Tyson, a boy in my class at PS 187 (in Washington Heights, Manhattan) who was bussed in from Harlem. I imagine his life was probably very confusing, as he was the token black in a room full of whites.  He was smart and tall and wore glasses and sat in the back of the room near the windows. I sat  in the front middle (I guess because I was short and nearsighted.)

In thinking back to that time (the class was mostly sons and daughters of Jewish immigrants and survivors) he must have felt very out of place. His ancestors from the diaspora via the south I would imagine (Now. Never gave a thought to it then.) I have wondered what happened to him; I wouldn't be surprised if he became a radical or Black Panther as soon as he grew up.**

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In the early 1990s I worked for the NYC Dept. of Parks & Recreation -  first as the photo archivist and then as a manager of a recreation center. One day there was a meeting for managers of recreation centers at the Parks Department headquarters in Flushing. I was the only white person at the meeting. No one would look at me or acknowledge me; they were very dismissive. I understood, but it hurt my feelings.

Feeling the shun of racism. Understanding the lesson, from the other side.. Thankful that I don’t have to live it everyday. Sympathetic to those who do.

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**(I decided to search for Ronald and I found him on Facebook...! We have re-connected, wonderfully. Some of what I surmised is true, but it was a very positive experience for him. He is a Professor of English in New Jersey. We have more in common than I would have thought in 6^th grade, and some mutual friends over the years.)