Grant Ernhart photography

Wednesday, July 8, 2009
San Francisco City Hall Lower Level PUBLIC RECEPTION held Wednesday July 8, 5:30- 7:30
5:30 pm

PhotoAlliance and the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery are pleased to present 10 x 10 x 10, an invitational exhibition with 100 works of art on the ground floor of San Francisco City Hall. For this exhibition, 10 local arts professionals selected a photographer that they felt deserved greater attention and support. The 10 artists that were invited to participate will exhibit 10 photographs that were chosen through a discussion with their curator. The curators also submitted a statement about the significance of their artist’s work, and the reasons behind their appreciation.

The photographs in this exhibition are an eclectic mix of images ranging from raucous street photography to sublime landscapes, and from elegant portraits of meat to bleak images of corporate America. 10 x 10 x 10 marks the third annual large-scale exhibition collaboration between the SFAC Gallery and PhotoAlliance.

The opening reception is tomorrow night beginning at 5:30. I will be there for sure as my friend Mark Mcknight was picked by Paul Schiek and has work in the show. I am also looking forward to seeing a bunch of pictures by artists that I had not heard of until now. Way to go Photo Alliance for a great idea!

© Allison Grant

Allison Grant was one of the new people I was lucky enough to meet at my Harold residency last summer(By the way, today is the last day to apply for this summer’s residency! Hurry up if you are interested). I think her work is interesting for multiple reasons. First, I find that much of her work is very seductive, in the sense that her images make me want to spend time with them and to parse out the way she shot them and the purposefulness behind them. Allison is trying to meld her interests with photography with her questions/concerns over the reality that humanity is slowly consuming our environment and irrevocably hurting nature. One of the things I most admire about her work is that in order to tackle these issues she has sought ways that she can contribute to the existing dialogue without being overly didactic or being overly obvious. She is not flying all over the world to photograph the receding glaciers or melting ice caps, the whole while releasing loads of carbon emissions, thus contributing to the current dilemma. Instead, she is working from her surroundings in Chicago, utilizing the materials of the everyday that are slowly piling up everywhere in our throw away culture.

© Allison Grant

© Allison Grant

In her own words Allison says:

“These photographs examine the natural world through objects we use and discard regularly: plastics, disposable goods and printed media. Using these materials, I construct and photograph landscape scenes that at first seem untouched and pristine, but reveal their artifice upon cLose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exerciser inspection.”

I wanted to let everyone know that my work is currently on display at the Marin Moca as part of a juried show called Depth of Perception. The photo above is one of two pieces I have in the show and the juror Linda Connor awarded me with an Honorable Mention because of this picture. The show will run until March 1, 2009. I had never been to this museum before, but found it to be a really beautiful site. The museum is part of the Hamilton Field development, in Novato, which was formerly an army base but all of the buildings are built in a sort of Spanish Renaissance style. If you have time drive the 25 minutes out of the city and enjoy a little road trip and see a bit of photography.

Also as a side note, Linda Connor, a well known San Francisco photographer and SFAI professor has a brand new book on the shelves called “Odyssey”. It is a great collection of her photographs from all over the world. You can check out the book here.

The Humble Arts Foundation is announcing the release of The Collector’s Guide to Emerging Art Photography, a source book aimed at connecting new and emerging photographers with collectors, art dealers, gallery directors, photo editors, museum professionals, and independent curators. The book is 180 pages long and contains the work from 163 photographers who were invited by Humble to take part. I am thrilled to be included in this project because many of the other participants are truly top-notch photographers that I feel are doing interesting work! The book will continue to be distributed to collectors and industry professionals through the end of March with a release party to coincide with the Volta Show in NYC. I will post details as I learn them. In the mean time, show your support for another Humble project and check out the monthly online group show and solo show, which currently features the work of my friend and fellow SFAI Alum Seth Lower.

The New Year has started out on the right foot! I have been really busy with all kinds of photo related business which has felt really great. One of the newest things to happen is that I have finally found a studio space here in San Francisco and have moved in. For those who do not know, I had been looking for place to work outside of my apartment for almost a year. I had identified a need to move my art operations out of the living room and into a dedicated space sometime around May of 2008. To make a long story short I found an amazing space down in the Mission district with my friend Andrea Wyner, but as soon as I signed the lease the building went under construction to replace the awesome warehouse style windows that we had on two walls. It was a beautiful space, and so I thought I would just hold onto it until it was remodeled, how long could that take anyway? Flash forward to October, when I finally could get in there, but some of the appeal was gone for me, the light was not as nice and it just felt stagnant because I had been wanting it for so long, The studio had become connected to a feeling of annoyance in my mind. Luckily, a few buddies(ryan, josh and nick) and I found another work space relatively quickly. It is definitely less glamorous, but it is also less money$ and cLose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exerciser to my house. However, that was around the Holidays and so we really just moved in and got going the beginning of January!

It has felt great to get in there and be working. I have used it quite a lot already in preparing for my recent Photo Alliance lecture(which went quite well I must say!), as well as making some prints for upcoming shows. Thats right, making prints! This is probably the biggest excitement for me in this new year….. I purchased a new Epson 9880 inkjet as a sort of early Christmas present to me and my practice. Epson was giving amazing rebates and prices were lower than normal probably due to the economic downturn. Luckily I had a bit of cash saved up just for a moment like this.

It feels like a big change to be actually printing my own work again, as well as having to bone up on my Photoshop skills, but the prices at local labs were just to terrible to face. Every time I wanted to create new work I would dread the dent it would put in my wallet. Plus, beyond being expensive I always walked away feeling like I was only 85% satisfied with the final product. Now I can make sure that images are finished the way that I want them to look which is really satisfying.

So, a lot of new things have been filling my time in 2009, things that feel like the right kind of work regarding photography. I am optimistic about this year and I wish the same for everyone else!

The Bay Area Video Coalition has curated a show around the idea of the Panopticon. This show is part of their on going series of exhibitions called Roh Stoff(Raw Materials).

The Panopticon was originally an idea for a new methodology of prison design and management put forth by Jeremy Bentham in England in 1785. In theory, the design of this new building would allow one guard to observe(opticon) all(pan) the prisoners but from a vantage point that would not allow the inmates to know if and when the guard was actually watching. The prison as Bentham wanted it built was actually never erected during his lifetime, but the idea of the Panopticon has endured in no small part because of the french theorist Michel Foucault. Foucault theorized that any structure of hierachy such as the army, the factory, the school and the corporation have all evolved to resemble a structure of power similar to Bentham’s prison. Foucault felt that within society we are always being normalised by the powers that may be watching because we are powerless to know if they are or are not watching our movements.

We do not have to look very far to find evidence of Foucault’s Panoptic theory. Next time you leave your home to go to work begin to look for and count all of the surveillance cameras that you encounter on your trip. The surveillance camera is the panoptic eye. It is always there but rarely do we know who is watching or if it is even on.

For their exhibition BAVC is actually setting up surveillance cameras and gathering footage to see what happens under the panoptic gaze. In January, there will be a closing party in which the product of the surveillance cameras will be on display along with the photographs of people who had pictures taken of them without their knowledge. I have some work in this show along with Ryan Kellman, Josh Smith and others. The photography will be on display starting October 13th you can stop in any time during BAVC’s regular business hours to view the work.

Yesterday, I added yet another commitment to my plate. I began working for San Francisco based photographer Michael Light as his studio assistant. I was honored when he contacted me asking if I might be interested in the job. I took the position not so much for the extra income but because I felt that I could learn a lot from him in regards to running a studio and navigating the art world. Michael has completed projects comprised of images that he has shot, as well as, large projects of found imagery, most notably 100 SUNS and Full Moon. He creates photographs that explore the classic notion of the sublime in the form of aerial photography. He actually flies his own 600 pound airplane over the areas he wants to photograph and then shoots the images with a 4×5 camera. As I looked over a recent catalog that he produced for his current exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art I was surprised at the variety of images. I guess I had sort of equated aerial photography primarily with surveillance and that sort of aesthetic. However, the photographs I saw in the catalog varied from classic landscape to beautifully abstract imagery. It was interesting to realize how scale became a tool for abstraction in relation to how high above the ground he was when he took the photographs.

Another interesting thing about Michael’s process is that he seems to envision his projects in terms of books. Yes, he has wall mounted exhibitions in museums and galleries but as he told me during my interview he feels that books ultimately open a photographers work up to a larger audience. Most anyone can purchase a book of work if they want to and then they can enjoy that work however and whenever they might choose.  His books also vary from large runs such as his work with found imagery of atomic explosions for 100 SUNS, which has been printed in 19 editions world wide, down to small editions of very large books, which I will be working on in house. 

I am having a show opening in San Francisco this Thursday from 6:00-9:00! If you are in town please stop by and say hello. If you will not be in town on the opening night don’t worry… the show will be up until the 21st of November. The venue is my good friend Matthias Brandt’s shop Underglass at 268 Church St. in the Castro district of San Fran. He is a great guy and his shop is quite nice. He is looking to put Underglass on the list of places to see great photography here in the city and has other shows in the works after mine so check in with him from time to time to see what is going there. Thanks Matthias!

I met Thomas Macker while in Chesterhill, Ohio during my residency with Harold Arts. Thomas was great because he seemed to be up for pretty much anything, including driving around the windy roads near the farm and enjoying the summer night while looking for interesting things to photograph. It was interesting to go out with him because whenever we saw anyone near the road he would stop and go out to ask them if he could make their picture without hesitation. Meanwhile I sat in the car having mixed feelings, partly I wished I was the one who went out to ask to make their picture and partly I really felt that I was not interested in them at all. While I did take quite a few pictures of my fellow residents at Harold it was still difficult for me to ask complete strangers and somehow whenever I tried I was turned down. I guess I feel like I probably approach portraits like I do landscapes, which means I have some sort of feeling about the scene or situation that creates in me a desire to photograph and perhaps with people I just take too long to decide whether I want to take a picture or not. So, it was interesting to go out with Thomas and see his sort of unrelenting approach to portraiture, where nearly everyone he came across was a potential sitter.  Anyhow, Thomas is a great guy and really down to earth. I had a fantastic time talking with him on the front porch about girlfriends, photography and life in general. I see on his website that a lot of the work he made during the residency is in the project called With God, All Things are Possible go and have a look and also check out his series on Gardeners and Housekeepers.

I will have a photograph in the Texas Photographic Society’s 17th National Competition. Lisa Sutcliffe, a photography curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art acted as juror for this large call for entries. The show will open on September 4 at the Dougherty Art Center in Austin, Texas after which it will move to the Center for Contemporary Art in Abilene, Texas. I am happy to report that my good friend Ryan J. Kellman also had a photograph from his recent work in Albania accepeted into the show as well. For a complete list of accepted works and artists names click here.

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