Felver recently directed and is currently screening a documentary film about his long-time friend and collaborator called Ferlinghetti.
From the interview:
“Some people never want to meet their heroes,” says Felver. “As a photographer and documentary filmmaker, you have to. That has been my mission from the beginning: to find a thread to connect all these people I admire by photographing them or making films about them, their lives and their work. The camera became my welcome wagon.”
The camera is his welcome wagon into the lives of his heroes — or anyone else he photographs, for that matter.
I feel the same way much of the time. Meeting, photographing, and getting to know people — even if just for the few minutes we spend together as photographer and subject — is one of my absolute favorite parts of what I do.
Put your ideas in the Speak up! comments section below. C’mon, you’re creative. Come up with something good, not just a two-word response. Oh, and be nice.
The best answer will be chosen by a panel of Armando Bellmas Photographer associates and announced on Thursday, June 18, 2009.
The winner will receive a 8×10 inch print of this photograph.
So spread the word and let’s hear your ideas. Come on, get really creative with it!
Two opportunities to see my mug and hear me prattle on about photography and how it affects the aggregate level of balances available in the banking system, and thus impacts the federal funds rate.
The first video is from the gang at OK Great in Durham, North Carolina.
The second one is from the cool kids at CLTBlog here in Charlotte.
I love how some of my fellowphotographers choose to warn you about the pending delivery of our promos to your inboxes.
The best, however, comes from good ol’ Thomas Broening in a blog post titled Brace Yourself:
If you work in advertising, used to work in advertising, or if your neighbor’s dog worked in advertising then brace yourself because you will probably get this spam from me in the next 48 hours.
It’s nothing more than a few feet of heavy wire, three aluminum three-eighths of an inch push-pins, and an assortment of photographs, print ads, drawings, tearsheets, and artists that inspire me.
I’ve been showing my book to ad agencies and magazines for years now and most everyone has been nothing short of gracious and hospitable. It’s one of my favorite parts of being a photographer.
I traveled to Atlanta recently to visit and meet with a few agencies. Met a bunch of wonderful art buyers, art directors, and designers that were very receptive to my visit and my work. I’m so grateful to each and every one of them for making the time.
One agency, however, went a little further in welcoming me to their offices. Sitting on the receptionist’s desk was this sign:
Don’t call me a soccer mom.
The Little League World Series Aug.21-30, 2009
Only on ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC
Just funny and quirky enough to fit the photo. Plus, given that ESPN’s ad work in the past has ad that air or quirkiness put Jenni’s entry at the top of the heap. And for that, Jenny wins an 8×10″ print of this photo. Cheers!
Honorable mention goes to Lindsay’s idea, which strikes a chord with husbands and boyfriends everywhere:
So, you forgot trash day, again.
And you never told her that her haircut looks quite pretty.
The Xbox has probably been on a little too often lately.
And you just polished off the last of the Chubby Hubby.
The seat was left up in the middle of the night—that one was really bad.
Please God, don’t forget to feed the dog for the 3rd day in a row.
Nothing avoids looming conflict like flowers.
Go to flowerscansaveyourasss.com.
I love that tag line: “Nothing avoids looming conflict like flowers.” Heh.
So congratulations to Jenni for winning this month’s What could this photo be a print ad for? contest. Thanks to everyone for playing along.
[NOTE: Subscribe to the RSS feed or follow me on Twitter to stay up to date on blog posts and next month's contest.]
Donald Sultan has been one of my favorite artists ever since I came face to face with the immense work Aqua Poppies, Dec 10, 2002 at the Mint Museum here in Charlotte a few years ago. (See a tiny version of the painting here.) It’s an 8×12′ mixed media piece worthy of a long look every time I visit the Mint.
This piece, Five Blue Flowers with Flocked Center, March 10, 2002, is not the one at the Mint but it similar in style and color:
It’s the shapes and simplicity that I love most about Sultan’s work.
Check out more at Mary Ryan Gallery (click on the Donald Sultan link; Flash site with no direct link), Meyerovich Gallery, and artnet.com (the most comprehensive collection of his work online).
Times being what they are, coupled with a relentless drive to get my name out there, so to speak, I was struck by this quote I recently read from the late writer David Foster Wallace.
You can’t make sure that everybody’s going to like you, but damn it, if you’ve got some skill you can make sure that people don’t ignore you.”
Put your ideas in the comments section below. The best answer will be chosen by a panel of Armando Bellmas Photographer associates on Thursday, March 19, 2009.
Our winner will receive a 8×10 inch print of this photograph.
So spread the word and let’s hear your ideas. Come on, get really creative with it!
I thrive on collaborations with other creative folks.
Art directors, designers, other photographers, painters, writers — I just love the flow of ideas that comes from putting creative minds together and the process of shaping them into something more.
It makes me feel truly alive.
So when I came across this video recently I was elated. It’s a collaboration between filmmaker, graphic designer, artist, and director Mike Mills; writer, director, artist, and poser Miranda July; and musicians Blonde Redhead. And it’s brilliant.
One of the things that pushes Mills, July, and even the members of Blonde Redhead to come together to make a video like this is their diverse means of self-expression. They draw, film, direct, perform, write, and create — constantly.
That relentless pursuit of the muse — no matter which road they chose to chase after it on — only makes them more worldly, more able to choose the form of expression that best suits the idea.
Blown away by the performance Byrne puts on during his Everything That Happens Will Happen Today tour, Hogan writes:
So here’s my theory on why Byrne is so youthful, and why his concert felt as contemporary and relevant as any Bowery Ballroom set by the latest blogosphere buzz band: the guy keeps up. He doesn’t sit around all day reminiscing with his fellow dessicated rock stars. He reads, he thinks, he sees art and film and music. And his creative portfolio is radically diversified. He paints, draws, blogs, directs, runs a record label, composes for film, composes for dance, designs funky bike racks, and god knows what else.
There’s a common sliver of creative DNA running through Byrne, Mills, July, and every other artist that is still relevant, still working, still exciting and excited, still creating beyond their best known medium.
Each brings a variety of methods and experiences to the table, making the collaboration, the art, and the experience more diverse. Sometimes the results are amazing and sometimes far from it. The upshot is: come what may.
Not only is it a great way to make a living, it’s a great way to live.
It was tough in that the photo is so dark and the woman is expressionless. That ruled out anything that would bring on happiness or satisfaction, such as anti-depressants or household cleaning products.
Burtposted an idea that was funny and kind of true, so it gets an honorable mention:
A self promotion ad for a photographer.
Ultimately, the panel of judges decided on this one from Darcy B as our winner:
An ad for an upcoming TV show based on the book “The Time Traveler’s Wife.” Caption reads: How do you tell your soulmate the first time you meet that you’ve actually known him your whole life?
The mood of the photo works well with this idea. I can see it in TV Guide as a made-for-TV movie.
So congrats Darcy B! A print of this photo is on the way.
We’ll do this again next month. Thanks to everyone for playing along!
Put your ideas in the comments section below. The best answer (chosen by a panel of Armando Bellmas Photographer employees and family members) will receive a 8″x12″ print of this photograph. Cool, huh?
Jamie Tao is an art director, designer, and illustrator (among other things) based in Miami. She has a bunch of lovely and imaginative work on her website, such as this one from her batch of personal stuff.
Under what looks like a Polaroid snap of Miami’s man-made grid of lakes, quarries, and a land ripe for strip malls and subdivisions, taken from a descending airplane, Tao writes:
I usually sleep from take-off to landing. I was coming home from one of my recent trips and never really appreciated Miami until I saw it from an airplane. This is home. Welcome.
I agree with Jamie: Miami from an airplane is a sight to see. A flat land divided up into squares and rectangles with various other shapes occasionally dropped in to the grid to break up the pattern. Whether flying in from the swamps of the west or the beaches of the east, Miami from above is a sublime visual spread.
I read Jamie’s passage over and over again as if each reading revealed something I, too, knew but never wrote down or realized. What I realized was this: I never really appreciated Miami myself — my hometown and, for better or worse, the place that helped me become the person I am today — until I saw it from eight hundred miles away.
This photograph makes me happy for a bunch of reasons. The main one being that it’s a shot in the right direction.
As an artist you get this vision of where you want your work to go, where you want it to take you, of what you want it to look like based on the ideas in your head. Sometimes it’s hard to put it into words. This shot, however, does all the talking — it just looks and feels right to me.
This pride in my work jives perfectly with this quote from Kurt Vonnegut (via The Onion’s A.V. Club):
I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’
I love photographing people. I’m constantly fascinated by the way people dress and carry themselves; by their faces and body shapes; their expressions and mannerisms. Most times, I’m not shy about going up to a person I find interesting and asking if I can make a photo of them.
Which is why this project by photographer Simon Hoegsberg looks and sounds so cool to me. It’s called Faces of New York.
Once in a while I see a person on the street who immediately attracts my attention. I’m fascinated by the appearance of the person and feel a strong urge to walk over and say hi.
I know that impulse well. Check out Hoegsberg’s whole Faces of New York series.
From a feature on Catherine Opie in Art in America magazine’s December 2008 issue:
[For her] “Domestic” series (1995-98), [Catherine Opie] traveled the country photographing lesbian couples and families in their homes — her own version of the great American road trip embarked on by such photographers as Stephen Shore or Robert Frank.
[There's] the intimate, unkempt interior shown in Joanne, Betsy & Olivia, Bayside, New York (1998) (above). On the table are the remains of breakfast — coffee cups and half-eaten bagels — and toys litter the floor in the home, where two white women live with their adopted Asian daughter. Opie describes this work as a “conversation” with Tina Barney, whose photographs portraying conventional, wealthy families (below) were being widely exhibited at the time. But of course it was more an argument than a conversation, a challenge to the idea that a family must be defined within a heterosexual framework.
The Impossible Project aims “to re-start production of analog INTEGRAL FILM for vintage Polaroid cameras in 2010. We have acquired Polaroid’s old equipment, factory and seek your support.”
Short video excerpts of David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, John Lurie, Arto Lindsay, and more from The Kitchen Presents Two Moon July (1986).
The television production Two Moon July was a multidisciplinary event that featured experimental video, film, visual art, performance and music in a theatrical framework. This production reflects a moment when art centers were experimenting with new modes of presenting the arts for television.
It’s strange, polarizing, entertaining and makes you stop, if not to smile, to ask WTF?
…
They can be as strange as they want and the more out there they get, the more people will talk about them and when this talk hits people who like Skittles, they’ll find themselves picking up a bag when they’re in a grocery or convenience store.
…
There’s no need to be so serious when the people who actually do consume the products [e.g., teenagers - ED.] aren’t serious themselves when they’re enjoying them. All we need to do is help them have more fun and give them more reasons to talk about a client’s product.
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