Debra Frieden Photography Blog ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Please visit www.debrafrieden.com

Great video on

HOW TO MAKE A DAGUERREOTYPE

by Takashi Arai

Making of Daguerreotype by Takashi Arai from Takashi Arai on Vimeo.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!

The Dagguerian Society

2010 Symposium will be held October 21-24 in Atlanta

From the collections of George and Susan Whiteley at the Atlanta History Center’s McElreath Hall.

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4 Reasons to Love Chuck Close

by David Schonauer

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Last week, artist Chuck Close appeared on The Colbert Report, and he killed. Stephen Colbert took the comic lead, and Close backed it up with perfect deadpan timing. But the interview also prompted a few late-night musings about art and artists. I now have 4 new reasons to love Close.

1. Size Matters
As Colbert notes, Close is known for his giant portraits: “Do you have enormous friends? Why do you choose this scale?” Funny, but Close’s answer is better: “I used to say, the bigger they are, the longer they take to walk by, and therefore the harder they are to ignore.” That is about as sensible a reason as I’ve heard for the super-sized art that has proliferated so since Close began making his paintings. (Could we say, in fact, that Close helped create the trend with his work?) I’ve always thought that the popularity of big art has something to do with the amount of visual distraction we face in our multi-media, broadband world. Maybe, after all,  it’s simply that it takes longer to walk by. Close’s forthright answer is bracing, which leads me to my second reason for loving Chuck Close….

2. Inspiration Follows Strategy…
Rightly, we honor artists because they see things and do things and take chances that most of us can’t, don’t, and won’t. Colbert falls into that way of thinking (listen to his voice take on a slight affect, as though he’s talking to someone whose first language isn’t English, as if artists are alien-like) when he asks Close why he started doing representational portraits back in the day when abstraction was king. “Did that put you on the outs with the elites?” he asks. Close’s answer: “Well, painting was dead, and representational paintings was even deader, and portraits were beyond the pale–nobody wanted to do it. So I thought, well, this was a good area to go into so I won’t have much competition.” Close was almost certainly being a bit disingenuous–charmingly so–but there has always been an aspect of marketing in art (being charming and disingenuous on a TV show is probably a powerful marketing tool). And there are more ways for creative people to market themselves now than ever before. We get so caught up in the awe of creativity that we forget that it’s also a product.

3. …Or Vice Versa
Having joked about his “hit ‘em where they ain’t” art strategy, Close gets to talk with Colbert about method and inspiration, which, it becomes clear, is indeed the motivating force behind the art (whew!). He takes “pleasure” in the intricacy of the work. Colbert asks Close if the buyers of his work are simply rewarding his OCD…and actually that’s a pretty good question, for any artist. I already knew that in 1988 Close suffered a seizure that left him paralyzed from the neck down. (After rehabilitation, he learned to work in new ways. Filmmaker Marion Cajori focused on the method and the impact of Close’s work in a 1998 short called  Chuck Close: A Portrait in Progress.)

I didn’t know until the Colbert interview that Close also suffers from prosopagnosia–a disability that renders him unable to recognize other humans by their faces. He didn’t become a portraitist despite the condition, but because of it.

4. Humor Helps, As Long As It’s the Truth
We want our artists to suffer, sort of like football fans want NFL players to hit hard. It’s part of the purity of the game. Jokingly, Close told Colbert that he suffers because his portrait of President Clinton hangs in the National Portrait Gallery between portraits of President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush.

Or maybe he wasn’t actually joking, but revealing something true. And that’s the artist’s prerogative.

Article & Content used with permissions by David Schonauer

Thanks DS! – DF

Please visit Davids blog “I Like to Watch” Visual Culture at link below.

http://thevisualculture.blogspot.com/2010/08/5-reasons-to-love-chuck-close.html

A VISUAL TRIBUTE TO HERMAN LEONARD‘S WORK

The BBC has an excellent post:

“His black and white images from the smoky post-war jazz clubs helped immortalise the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis and Frank Sinatra…..”

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ FULL BBC ARTICLE HERE —>Herman Leonard

Images copyright Herman Leonard Photography, LLC. (Herman Leonard portrait courtesy Getty Images.)

Music by Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington and his Orchestra, and Billie Holiday.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ FULL BBC ARTICLE HERE —>Herman Leonard

FLOR GARDUNO

FLOR GARDUNO MAKES MY LIST OF IMPORTANT FEMALE PHOTOGRAPHERS YOU SHOULD KNOW

I discovered Flor Garduno while visiting a small fine art photography gallery called The Tulla Booth Gallery.  I was visiting Sag Harbor on Long Island New York recently, and slipped into this lovely gallery, modest in size, huge on excellent collectible fine art photography.   When I returned home I visited the Tulla Booth Gallery’s online website and their represented photographers portoflios.  Some of the names I had known and admired, such as Steve McCurry and Bert Stern.  It was Flor Garduno’s work which popped off the screen and made me have to dig deeper into who she was, about her work, and more importantly seeing more of her work.  After visiting her website I am convinced Flor Garduno should be recognized on this blog as an important female photographer in today’s fine art photographic circles.  I believe her work will become highly collectible in future art markets, auctions and many major photographic collections which will hold the test of time.

Flor Garduno, is an important photographer, particularly as a female photographer.  Her body of work, history, talent and quality is exceptional.  Rather than write a long post, I am including the link.  The images speak for themselves.  If I could choose one?  I would choose “Eden.”

http://www.florgarduno.com/

National Press Photographers Association Competitions

Monthly and Quarterly Contests

The NPPA has a number of contests that run on a monthly or quarterly basis. These contests are limited to NPPA members who were paid-up as of the period covered by the contest.

Quarterly Clip Contests

Winning entries earn the photojournalist points towards the appropriate Photographer of the Year awards.

Monthly Clip Contest

Winning entries are put in the running for the monthly National competition, and earn the journalist points towards the regional Photographer of the Year award.

Monthly Multimedia Contest

Photojournalists who produce multimedia for the web may enter the peer-judged Monthly Multimedia Contest

Best of Photojournalism

Designed by photojournalists for photojournalists, the Best of Photojournalism (BOP) contest attracts tens of thousands of entries each year.

*****BOP is open to Visual Journalists and Editors from around the world*****

*****There is no fee and you do not need to be an NPPA member to enter*****

GO DIRECTLY TO INFO HERE:   http://www.nppa.org/competitions/