Grant Willing

Check him out here.

Michael Schmelling

Michael Schmelling takes some great images of the music world and beyond. Check him out.

Back in Brooklyn

Christmas in Tucson was 60-70F, sunny, and well spent with friends and family. But I am glad to be back in Brooklyn. A crisp 45F and sunny ain't bad.

Larry Sultan, Aug 14th 1946 - Dec 13th 2009

Larry Sultan, a great photographer and artist, dies at 63. Obit

Here is part of a letter (posted by Alec Soth) Mr. Sultan wrote to friends during the end of his battle with cancer:

“After hellish days and nights in hospitals, I have chosen not to be medicalized, but, instead, be here at home. Here in this house with my family, full of sleeping kids and wrestling dogs, and French toast cooking while next door in my studio, Dru is laying out a box of prints to edit. This is where I want to be. I realize whatever grace I’m ultimately leaving with is directly linked to my deep understanding that I have led a charmed life. So many charms, and the more there are, the easier it is to let go – at least today while I write this.” (Via)

Todd Hido

Todd Hido is a San Francisco based photographer whose work is a taxonomy of homes, motels, landscapes and portraiture. Photographing in various conditions, his images are studies in light and dark, layers, and atmosphere. There's a video revealing a bit of his process here, and an article about him here (requires some hunting but offers additional info.)

Simon Norfolk

Simon Norfolk's work takes an unconventional approach to war photography. Instead of depicting people and narratives, he documents landscapes influenced by war: from building ruins to technological landscapes (eg. Ascension Island, The Panopticon*), to war reenactments on movie sets.

His work "Et In Arcadia Ego" gets its title from two Poussin paintings of tombs, and translates "Even Death [personified] exists in Arcadia [i.e. Paradise]." The title has an alternate significance for the Freemasons (today known via The DaVinci Code), whom interpret it: "the [dead] person buried here [in Pousin's painting] once lived in Arcadia" (in this case the person in the tomb is not Death personified but the Virgin Mary). Norfolk doesn't reference either the Freemasons or Mary in his work, so it is hard to say if this is of significance. He does reference Stanley Kubrick's Space Odyssey in his series The Supercomputers: 'I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that,' ostensibly to foreshadow a technological doomsday.

A blogger's response to an interview with Mr. Norfolk (here) suggests he builds on the work of Paul Virilio.

*Wikipedia doesn't mention the Panopticon in it's Ascension Island entry, nor does a Wiki search for "Panopticon" yield any result. Same for Google.

Janelle Lynch

You won't find any people in Janelle Lynch's Common Grave series, which shares the same name as the area of Mexico City she shot. Her statement reveals it is "a mass burial site for corpses of the indigent and unidentified."

Adam Bartos

I remember my first encounter with the work of Adam Bartos was at my local coffee shop on a winter's eve in late 2008. The weather was cold and drab and next to where I sat lay a flier with a lone blue late sixties Mustang amid an overcast L.A. landscape. It fit the mood, and reminded me that California sunshine doesn't always best the Big Apple's (above photo from Adam Bartos' Los Angeles).