Grant Ernhart photography

“The development of a self-aware critical discourse will signal photography’s equal passage into the world of contemporary art.” - from Qualifying Photography as Art, or, Is Photography All It Can Be? by CHRISTOPHER BEDFORD The majority of blogs that I come across fit a sort of recipe(this blog included). There are plenty of blogs where artists, curators and others in the photo industry weigh in with their opinions, showcase other artists and highlight other interesting things they deem worthy of being brought to the fore.  But the Los Angeles County Museum of Art(LACMA) is proposing to start something interesting and a little bit different. Words Without Pictures is attempting to be a forum where essays about photographic theory will be posted on a monthly basis and then the forum will take shape organically as participants read, process and respond to the essays. While attempting to foster more community in the photography world, it seems that an unwritten goal of the site may be to create a new framework for understanding and speaking critically of the medium. At least that would seem to be the tone as set by the first essay, which was written by Christopher Bedford. Bedford is an art historian and critic based in Los Angeles. He is currently a Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In his essay he suggests that photographic criticism suffers from a sort of anemia when it comes to critically discussing work that falls outside a “conceptual process” framework. It is his opinion that new terminology, understanding and considerations need to be given to all the seemingly quotidian choices that photographers make concerning their medium and the effects such choices have on the final product and its meaning.  

“Photographers who instrumentalize photography as one component of a broader practice have therefore accrued far more critical and commercial traction than photographers who hue more closely to the essentialist, “observe and record” model of photography, simply because their work is more accessible and intelligible to art critics. The latter process of seeing, electing, and shooting is too connoisseurial, too ineffable, and too intuitive to qualify as an intelligent and intelligible conceptual strategy according to the imperatives of the contemporary art world, where a premium is placed on conceptual sophistication. As Maurice Berger has noted, such work is assumed to be “weak in intentionality.”     

- Christopher Bedford

I really like the questions he brings up and the points he makes regarding current photographic criticism and who gets criticized. It is a very well written and engaging essay. I encourage you to read it and to tune into Words Without Pictures to see what unfolds. You can read the essay here.

I like what Whitney writes about her project Nothing Happens in June:”This project is a study that is both autobiographical and documentary. I want to describe with pictures what it is that connects us all; the loves, the sadness, the happiness, and the fears; the vulnerability and the resilience that make us human.”In her statement that she submitted for the Center Photography Competition last year, she goes on to say that she is creating a “map of [her] world” and I find that interesting. I think about much of my work in similar terms.

If you happen to be in the Bay Area this week and find you have a spare minute or two stop by the Worth Ryder gallery at UC Berkeley. I am in this show which was partly put together by Equal Access, a student group at SFAI that tries to promote diversity among the SFAI community. The image on the poster is the image I have in the show.

Want to say “Thanks” to Joerg Colberg for his post of my work on his blog Conscientious! Take a minute and check out his blog, always a great place to see new work.

Thanks again Joerg.

I found this in the street:

and it made me think of some landscapes by Anselm Kiefer.

One of the main differences of course being that my street kiefer is the size of a receipt and his actual paintings are monumental. Another difference being that while mine was made by a car tire, he intentionally includes materials like clay, lead, gold leaf, plants and seeds. Still I think Kiefer might smile at the little scrap I found.

I like Kiefer’s work quite a bit. I like how the work feels raw and immediate and the materials, while being simple come together in a way that renders them changed. In his work Kiefer deals with the relationship between heaven and earth often working symbolically. I also enjoy the visceral experience I have when I look at his work.

Dropping Ryan off at the airport the other day got me thinking about my first trips to Europe and I would be lying if said I was not a bit envious. It also made me think of something I wrote for a friend’s burgeoning magazine a while back:

FAMILIAR: adj. Often encountered or seen

I remember one of the first times that I flew to Europe. At some point towards the end of the flight I shifted in my seat and leaned my forehead onto the small plastic window and looked straight down. I was heading to Germany and as I gazed below me the European continent moved lazily past. The brownish-green land continuously slipped by and after a time I realized that somewhere down there, were people. The spell had been broken, and I felt that I was moving over thousands of lives. I found myself daydreaming about all of these invisible inhabitants. I was trying to imagine how they lived and what they were doing at that very moment, as if I were some anthropologist who had just stumbled upon a lost tribe. I don’t know how long I was caught up in this endeavor but, I vividly remember that all of a sudden, as if miraculously I knew what they were doing. They were waking up, eating breakfast, making love, laughing, fighting, going to work, telling jokes and wanting to be understood. It was at that moment when my notions of foreignness faded.

Two days ago I drove my good friend Ryan Kellman to the San Francisco airport. Ryan is heading to Tirana, Albania on a Fulbright scholarship. He will be living there for ten to twelve months all the while photographing the city and his experiences. And I imagine that there will be some interesting times, according to the BBC:

Currently, the city suffers from the problems of overpopulation, such as waste management, lack of running water and electricity as well as extremely high levels of pollution from the 300,000 cars moving around the city. The problem is exacerbated by an aging infrastructure. Despite the problems, Tirana has also experienced a very rapid growth in the construction of new buildings, especially in the suburbs, where many of the new neighbourhoods do not yet have street names.

Congrats and Good Luck Ryan!

These images are part of a show that was put on by the Photo Alliance and the San Francisco Arts Commission. The show is hanging in a lower level of the San Francisco City Hall. It is a rather big show with a very diverse group of images. I need to go back and take another look. It will continue to be up until Sept. 21 drop by if you happen to be in San Francisco.

This print was recently returned to me from a group show that I was in. The show was at the NewSpace Center for Photography in Portland, Oregon. I actually flew up there for the opening reception and met some other photographers and saw some nice work.

Additionally, I am donating this print to the Root Division’s 6th Annual Art Auction. The Root Division is a great resource for artists here in the bay Area and it was started by some SFAI alumni. The auction should be a good time, I am looking forward to it.

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