In Charlotte...

Hello Hello! So, after a super rough month of end of the semester projects, stress, no sleep, and so on... also in the midst of all of this I had a group show and open studios which resulted in some not to nice comments from the people i live with (more in a second) and then two days later my uncle died, the only one left in my family on that side other than my dad and little sister... Then i drove his jeep all the way down to north carolina a good 10 hours without any music by myself not knowing if im in a death trap or not! haha... but i made it safe and sound and i'm here with my girlfriend, which is the best part!
So... Finals are finaly over and its made me realize just how much of my life is dedicated to grad school studies... all of it. And now i am on break but it doesnt feel like it becuase i still have so much to do... and even more emotional repairs and cares to take on now that i have time! but all that said... it comes with the territory and its great... just overwhelming. It also made me realize how this blog has become more about the school stuff than what it used to be... which i dont really like... so i'm going to try to shy away from that...
So, to start - my work has always been and probably will always be the type of work that is considered racy by some... there is a lot of nudity and so on that reoccurs throughout my work... but it is in no sense classless or tasteless or ill considered. And i guess living in the art bubble that i do with all of my fellow artists i never really get any negative feedback in that area, its all just kinda accepted without too much thought. Nudity has been in art for centuries, actualy since the beggining of art history, which is accredted most often to the Venus of Willendorf - a nude female most popularly thought to be a sign of fertility. So, it should come as no surpise that thousands of years later we still have nudity in art.
All of that said, in the show/open studios that is a part of my program, two pieces of work were chosen from my most recent series which shows my girlfriend nude and one of my lower torso and legs and her nude in bed. The two pieces were chosen by a commite of people to be a part of the show and i didnt have any say really. Anyhow, i was going to display them in my studio anyhow, so they were to be shown.
I invited everyone i knew in NY (not too many people) including the family that i live with. Only one of them was able to make it, the 22 year old daughter, and she reported back to her mom who completely blew everything out of proportion and got really upset with me. I do not need to go into any details here but it was very upseting... I just couldnt understand how a 22 year old could be so immature but more importantly how her liberal mom would be so offended by simple nudity.
anyhow, it made me reconsider how work is seen and interpreted and it really makes me confused for the most part...
so thats that.... i'm going to try to update the blog more often now that i have some spare time...
i hope everyones hollidays are what they desire.

Site Update

So, I've finally had a chance to update my website. There has been a period of about six months where I could not even edit my site at all - we've since fixed that problem only to be wound up in another, where some of my code is unresponsive and the domain is locked to my old server while I'm transitioning to a new one (due to the above problems!).

ANYHOW, its updated - there is a new series with the working heading of "In Progress" It is a collection of 20 new images from my exploration of sex in photography.

Also, I am starting a new series that I'm very excited about, coming from a very related conceptual background as the sex photography. I am asking people to send in images taken from their cell phones that they either took for, or took-in-the-manner-of, their lovers if they were absent from them. The resulting self portraits are a diverse range of mainly sexy-like myspace images of varying quality and size. I then edit these photographs and pick one from each person and I will draw that picture on a 30X40 inch scale.
The idea here is taking the vernacular and personal and bringing into the public sphere and as art... Thats the simple version... we will see how it develops.

so anyhow, check out the new work on My Site.

Fancy Cameras...

So, I have always wanted a Mamiya 43mm f4.5 superwide lens for my Mamiya 7II camera... but the damn thing is so expensive! So, now that I'm at ICP I decided to try my luck and see if they would buy one so that I could use it... I e-mailed this person and that - nothing, wait wait waiting... so I decided to take matters a little higher and e-mailed the head of the entire school, Phil Block. We'll he looked it over and sure enough, he went ahead and told the director of the photo cage/ darkroom/ digital to order one. A week and much anticipation later, I biked down to the school and finally held this beautiful lens in my hand for the first time. The damn thing is perfect. There is no distortion, its a 43mm hitting a 6X7 negative frame... were talking you can practically see your feet and the horizon in a single frame with no distortion! The advantage of this lens is that its pretty much the only superwide for a handheld camera with no distortion and this large of a negative. It compares very much to the Hasselblad Superwide Camera, however the Hassie lacks in a couple fields, first its a smaller neg. second, there is not focusing mechanism - you have to measure or guess and third, the Hassie is more expensive. The only complaint I have about the Mamiya is that the external view finder uses up the hot shoe so you cant use on camera flash and that the going back and forth from view finder to rangefinder (which controls meetering and focus) is a little cumbersome - but well worth it!
Here are some images -




The focal distance at f16 and 22 is 1 meter to infinity! and this is what the frame looks like from eye level. There is a handy little bubble in there if you want exact parallels.

I also got one of these -



The Leica C-lux camera is a handy little thing... its about the size of my cell phone and shoots at 7.2 megapixels... After my Canon 40D got stolen I felt lacking not having a digital but realized that I dont really need the bulk and cost of something like the 40D (or the new 50D)... I dont shoot profesionaly with digital anyhow and the only thing that i really enjoyed about the 40D was all of the control I had over it, but i was still just shooting friends and such. So this little thing i carry wherever i go, it weighs less than my cell phone, and is great fun. I kind of wish i had bought one of the higher grade Leica compact digitals, but that is just me being picky - for what i use it for, it hardly matters.

Finaly...

I have a minute to write!!!
ICP's master program has been amazing so far... but honestly its a lot of really intense work that doesn't leave me much time to do anything else but work on stuff for classes and sleep - the sleep part being the most neglected. I find myself trying to "take breaks" by looking at and reading about photography - or even drawing a little... but this just leaves me up until the wee hours of the morning. Not to mention I bike at least an hour a day, but that hardly helps to relax in NYC.... I've only been hit once so far though... so that's a plus (i guess?).
anyhow, i've been doing a lot of research on sex in art and photography... specifically the sexual act as portrayed by photographers/other artists such as a Jeff Koons, Mappplethorp, Serrano, Natacha Merrit, Barbra Nitke (one of my professors), and so on... After looking at hundreds of images and a few films, what i've noticed is that the inclination of these artists is to really get into the nitty gritty of what the actual act is... with the exception of some of Nitke's work and maybe some of Merrits... Serrano just kind of catalouges the different aspects of sex in his "history of sex," Koons goes all out porn sytle with huge photorealistic paintings of him and his wife, and the rest just looks like really well done and historically relivent works due to sexual frustration and/or shock value art... I do not discount any of these artists for their acomplishments - in fact i love most of their work (voiding Koons)but the research has left me lacking... I am embarking on my own photographic project dealing with the nature of sex and really feel its important to develop a narrative... sex is very interesting and multilayered... the anticipatory feeling one has sitting at a bar with a beautiful partner can often rival the feeling of receiving oral sex for example... so are those feelings not just as important? and what of the sex act itself... their is this huge build up of expectations, emotions, chemical reactions, and so on... untill its all done and one cums or whatever happens and then its like this dramatic fall after the slow and powerful build up... what about that fall? its not the cum shot as in Koons' work... (its not really shown in many others)... there is something more complex and almost depressing about it - so far i've only seen this depicted in Geoffroy de Boise's work (or maybe merry alpern's images of the women counting their money after being paid for their sex)... but even that seems like excitement and not depression. When i speak of depression i dont mean in the literal depressed state, but more a depressed feeling after a huge build up, a return back to normal... Also, i see very little of any sexual expression, gender reversal, or feminism... (seranno excluded and possibly Merrit) Everything seems to be so male dominated and kind of ridiculous... I've asked myself, and have not articulated the answer to, what is the difference between porn and art that looks almost exactly like porn??? Anyhow in my series I am challenging myself to entertain notions of extended narrative, gender reversal, intimacy, and transformation of porn-sex into art-sexuality. who knows how it will turn out... but i'm going for it!

looking at thousands of photographs

So, since wed. i have basically been sitting at home, at the kitchen table, for about 8 hours a day looking at photographs and reading about them... both in books and online... my eyes burn, my head is going to explode... but ICP has given me a week off before classes start and i guess i am just trying to prep myself... plus i am really feeling lacking in my own inspiration as far as what i will take pictures of. its not easy moving from a place where no matter where you go, everyone pretty much knows you, to a place where you know almost no one... and those you know live in brooklyn or something and you have to schedule appointments with them to meet up.
anyhow, i have also been researching what i think will be my next series... an exploration of my memories through journaling and ultimately photographs... not an easy task but one that i am willing to embark on.
anyhow, try looking at a billion photographs over the course of a few days... its insane... your mind stops working... photographers names run together, you forget things you know you know... its weird...
but its what i want to do for now.

NYC

I am now living in New York City. I was unbelievably lucky to find a place via fellow chicago photographer, Jordan Schulman, in the upper west side right next to central park... I love it here and the neighborhood is fantastic. I had orientation at the International Center of Photography and it was fantastic. The facilities are just incredible... they gave me keys to my studio... i met the other nine students in the first year masters class and some of the second year class... it just seems so perfect in all ways!
for some reason i already feel at home here in NY, even though i have only visited before and never lived here. I am truly a city boy at heart and i just love it.
Biking here is very similar to chicago except i've noticed that you just have more of those close call situations and the roads are horrible... there will be holes, huge mountain like hills of pavement, uneven grates, yada yada... and the cabs come just that much closer... but i love it! all the more invigorating! i revamped my bike, putting white cut off risers, finally a front break instead of no breaks (already has come in handy), a new silver and black chain, and i bought a kriptonite chain lock...
I cant wait to begin working... i have so much that i want to print and develop...
More updates to come soon!

Photoshop

So I have worked so many hours i cannot even begin to count editing photos on photoshop. Heres the deal - three people in my family died and i had several other planes to catch all in one month... stupid me left my film in my camera bag without any hand checking or lead bag (i was just in a different mindset at the time - hopefully understandably so!). So I was using all 400 speed film (dont listen to them when they tell you it will be fine! IT WONT!!!) So i go into the darkroom, develop my film - it looks a little strange but i just think its the photo-flo... no not the case... after many photo-flo sessions the first print comes out looking like complete shit with little white squiggles everywhere and something that looks like very strange dust. So now my eyes are burning from de-dusting these images for my clients and its driving me up the wall. i would have thrown this shit out a long time ago if it werent for clients... its making me question my pricing... but more than anything its made me learn a lesson i thought i already knew. HAND CHECK YOUR FILM!!!!!

At long last...

So... I apologize in advance (if anyone even reads this blog) for not posting in over a month. All I can really say is that three people died in my family, i have been on somewhere around 12 planes and have desperately tried to catch up on my work (not an easy task!)... Anyhow now i am in the mountains of North Carolina co-teaching a class with Alan Cohen at Penland School of Craft. First, i have to say it is so beautiful up here i cannot begin to describe. it is a community without locks on any door, only artists of all kinds live here and go to school here, and the landscape and weather (oh and foooood) are just fantastic! i dont lock up my bike anywhere, i leave thousands of dollars of equiptment and supplies wherever and so on... it is very different than any place this city boy is used to - they stare at us when we order our triple shot soy lattes every morning.
anyhow, teaching has been very stressful and a full time job... very full time, very draining... but tonight, to add to it all, Alan and i had to give a slide show lecture of our work to the school. Alan's equiptment failed, i had to feverishly transfer it to my computer and make it work, and then ended up with negative time to do mine, so i just rushed through it. However, that said, the stress and beating heart aside, it went really well and i had lots of really nice comments afterwards. But it is strange... it brings me to the thoughts and feelings offffff..... I teach all the time and every time i get nervous before class and every time it goes really well... and so why should i get nervous before a slide show like this? why do my hands start shaking and so on? It just seems weird... i have been doing public speaking since i was very young and recently i am doing it weekly if not daily... so i dont have the answers to that question... i just think its interesting to bring up.
so i'm sorry to anyone who might read this for the absenteeism... check out Penland if you get a chance, its totally worth your time to know about it.

ICP

So, i have just received word that i have been accepted into the ICP-Bard MFA program in NY, NY!!!! I am so excited its crazy as this school is and always has been my first choice MFA program... i do not have words to express all of the feelings and thoughts i have, so i will just leave it at that!

journalism in danger

Throughout history, photographers and journalists have put their lives on the line to try and portray different events around the world. There have been many cases where images like this one taken in Vietnam and this one taken in Sudan, both pulitzer prize winners, have fostered change around the world by tapping into a basic sense of humanity and not allowing people to ignore what is going on in distant places. However, to take a picture like this, the photographer has to distance themselves to a certain extent. I will not try to attempt to describe what this is like because I am not these photographers, however i have been in similar but far less severe situations where i have come to the realization that i either engage in the situation or i take the time to make a picture and disengage with the "real life" action.
Found over at Exposure Compensation, I was engaged with this article about yet another image that won a pulitzer prize, yet ironically by taking a photograph of another journalist being killed in Myanmar during the protests in September of last year. The absolute senselessness of the killing is a striking reminder of the senseless murder that is going on all over the world, both on a street level and by governments. Even while the journalist was being shot, he was still trying desperately to film - i cannot even imagine the fear one would feel in this situation and yet he is so dedicated as to film the person who is shooting him! I think we should all be aware of not only the scene portrayed by documentary photographers and the fear and desperation often portrayed but also the sacrifice that people go through to make images like this and put them out into the world to bring about a much needed global awareness that is still severely lacking...

editing...

So, when i read this quote
"When you begin a picture, you often make some pretty discoveries. You must be on guard against these. Destroy the thing, do it over several times. In each destroying of a beautiful discovery, the artist does not really suppress it, but rather transforms it, condenses it, makes it more sustainable. What comes out in the end is the result of discarded finds. Otherwise, you become your own connoisseur. I sell myself nothing." - Pablo Picasso (1935)
found over at wan.der.lust.ag.ra.phy I was initially reminded an ex girlfriend, and good friend, who once commented on a painting that i did when i was still getting to know her that she found hanging in our highschool one day.... She said something like "i dont understand why you destroy all the beautiful things that you create"... a thought that has always stuck with me.
But this quote is not about creating something beautiful and destroying it to make the final product, its about the process to make something beautiful (not necessarily in the aesthetic sense of the word) enough to be sustainable. So from there i am reminded of the ongoing process of editing in photography... There is of course great amounts of editing that goes on in other art forms but photography is surely near, if not at, the top of the list of editing... One could argue, most of photography is a process of editing, from the edit, or cropping, of the image in camera to the final edit of a cohesive body of work. One can not say enough about the process of a successful edit in photography... something to be left for another time.

Contemporaneous emotions

So, I have been feeling quite horrible lately... my stomach will not leave me alone, I feel nauseous for most of the day, i'm not exactly happy, not exactly depressed... just kind of in this strange in between state that im not quite sure how to put my finger on. But today i received an anticipated letter in the mail which made me smile, but much to my delight -despite the lack of text- it was accompanied by wonderful visuals including a very beautiful Polaroid which made me smile all the brighter. Not to mention Polaroid is no longer made (products will be available until late '08, early '09 according to Polaroid corp.) and so experiences like this will soon be a memory rather than a reality. very sad indeed. the good news is that Polaroid is making the product licenses available to any company that wants to buy them but i wonder who will have the start up cost to go through with that when the profit margins have to suck...
Anyhow, cheers to nice girls with polaroid cameras and blah to feeling bad and Polaroid abandoning the products that we all love and cherish.

Voyeurism in Photography

I was reading this post over at 40 watt about sex in photography and was struck by this question "photography that deals with sex without being voyeuristic? Is that even possible?" When i read it my first reaction was not to answer the question but to ask if it is possible to have photography without voyeurism or rather "Is voyeurism inherent in photography and if so, in what way does it function?"

They word Voyeur comes from the French work voir, "to see," and from the Latin word Videre, also "to see." Here it becomes interesting because apparently there is a semantic debate about whether to see means to wait and see something or to actually take part in the action of sight. Semantics is Semantics however in this situation i believe it becomes important to grasp because if one is lying in wait to see something that is very different from the simple act of sight. Both instances are relevant in photography - one could say that the photographer often lies in wait to see and then capture, we are all familiar with the philosophical musings of the photographer as hunter - and then we have the photographer who "sees" the image and makes it permanent on film (or cv cards).

But what i am really interested in here is not what the photographers relation is as voyeur - without going into detail I will just say its my personal belief that photographers or the act of photographing is not inherently voyeuristic - I am interested in Photography in general but more specifically how the image functions in society. I am therefore led to the question "Is the viewer of a photograph inherently a voyeur?" The answer to this question has interesting implications about photography in general.

I don't have a solid answer, nor do i wish to come up with one... however i feel instinctively that the viewer is a voyeur and for now i will just share some thoughts...

You never know who is looking at photographs... so the viewer of photography is engaging in an act of viewing in which the subject portrayed does not/will not know who is viewing the image of them. yes, it is an inanimate object that the viewer views in reality, but it is of a person whom they have most likely never met and even if they have, most likely were not at the scene in which the photograph was taken and therefore they are a voyeur of the scene portrayed - due to their absence in the consciousness of the person portrayed and their meditation and pleasure (in whatever sense) of the scene/person portrayed.

Desire V. sexuality. so much is wound up with sex in voyeurism but doesn't it just have to do with some sort of desire... from the roots of the word, there is no relation to sex, but maybe we have an inherent desire to see?

Identify or objectify. to objectify is to be a voyeur as to be an object is necessarily a perception of one or nore of the senses and to identify is to view in a way that one understand what is happening in the imagery due to personal experience which is objectification plus.... and that plus makes it non voyeuristic (unless the identification is identifying with a certain voyeurism)

OK and lastly, i will leave with a quote from Thomas Pynchon's book V.

“V. needed her fetish, Melanie a mirror, temporary peace, another to watch her have pleasure… An adolescent girl whose existence is so visual observes in a mirror her double; the double becomes a voyeur…. But such was her rapture at Melanie’s having sought and found her own identity in her and in the mirrors soulless gleam…”

any thoughts? lemme know what you think about the matter...

Images, feelings, and thoughts on war...

Right now i am sitting in a loud, populated porch area of a local hot spot... people are drinking, they have been since morning, the music is loud, there are dogs playing with one another, people laughing, and the weather is beautiful. This is the place I jokingly call my office but currently i am struck with the decadence of it all. I have been reading about and watching videos related to the Iraq invasion by the United States. I can't even begin to relay the feelings i have had, the emotions that cut through me like the sharpest of knives... Yesterday, i found this article via Conscientious but didnt have time to read it until today... however last night i stayed up late, captivated and disturbed by this article found at Exposure Compensation. You have to watch all the video's, not just the intro, which is powerful enough!
I am just reflecting on the current election and cant help to think that it is just such a backlash from all of the shit we have been through as a result of the fuckhead who needs not be mentioned... but a well needed and healthy backlash it is!
if you are not highly disturbed by the links that i just posted i really feel a deep sorrow for you... how can humans do such horrible things to one another? This war has led to the highest casualty rate for journalists in any war ever... not to mention the lies and how many civilian casualties or the soldiers who are fighting for what again? our freedom? is that really what it is about? WTF? How is any of this ok...

NYC here i come...

So I just received word from Pratt Institute that I have been accepted into their MFA Photography program. While this is not my first choice school, they certainly are reputable and i am extremely relieved that I will at least be attending this coming Fall. I've applied to four other schools and ICP is my first choice, so we shall see. I am more relieved that I will be moving out of Charlotte and to New York. When i first graduated undergrad from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago i was kinda of bewildered at what my life might be like without the intellectual environment/constant stimulation of school so i just started reading photography books and blogs all the time, kept up with my fellow students and so on. All and all it worked out really well however I am so ready to get back into a consistent dialog with fellow intellectuals and photographers. There is something to be said about the rigor of higher level institutions, especially in art programs I think. I know there is a huge trend for going to grad school and so on right now in the art world and its getting a lot of criticism, however I really believe in it and feel that even if there is an overload currently but i think if anything, that will just make the environment that much more competitive and hopefully the work will be that much better.

So, this is the most disturbing thing I have seen since a relative of mine sent me an extremely racist e-mail about Mexican immigration into the U.S.
These films brought tears to my eyes immediately but I dont yet know how to conceptualize them or even really understand them - further complicated by the fact that I really cannot bring myself to watch either twice.

What do you think?

watch here


and here

So the other day, at the end of class, one of my students asked me "so what do you do?" I didnt really know how to respond so i said "well, what do you mean? like for work?" and she said yes. So i said, "well, i teach photography classes here, i have my own gallery-based practice, i photograph for local publications, and i work at a local art store sometimes - so basically i look at, talk about, think about, read about, and make art 7 days a week."

I hadnt even really thought about that too much myself and was kind of hit with the fact that is what i do all the time. Then, last friday i had the pleasure to meet up with Brian Ulrich while he was in town for a show that opened at the Light Factory and he mentioned the profound luck that we have the opportunity to just make and talk about art all the time instead of fight in a war or hide out in a bomb shelter or for that matter, sit in a cubical all day. Its really amazing. Its not like its easy to make art or teach, its probably a lot harder than most other jobs, but we are still just thinking about and dealing with aesthetic and historical concepts of image making and that actually puts food on the table.

So, today i was directed to an audio clip of the art critic Dave Hickey by exposure compensation and while listening to his very interesting (though i dont agree with all of it) and entertaining lecture i was struck with the same thought again as he mentioned what he does for a living. At one point he basically said that there is no place for art critics, there is no heirarchy or art critic specific jobs (i mean of course there are things that art critics do, like write for instance - but there is no art critic job proper) - anyhow, go check out the audio clip, he explains it a lot better than i can out of context and by memory. But the point is - he brings up the fact that all he does is think about, talk about, buy, and write about art. And i know this is about to get redundant but i started reading an interview with Hickey by Believer Magazine where he says “HONESTLY, I NEVER SIT DOWN TO WRITE ANYTHING WITHOUT THINKING, THIS IS A WEIRD THING TO BE DOING! WHY AM I SITTING HERE WRITING?”

ok enough with it all... just wanted to share - go read and listen to those links!

the beginning of the end

So a while back (i think a year ago when i graduated from undergrad and confidently yet blindly embarked on my no-job but making pictures career) i decided it might be a good idea to start a multi-user blog for artists. So, i did but none of the other users ever posted and i refused to be the only person... so alas it died. Recently i've been toying with the idea again and have heard from several friends in the art community that i should and so here we are! the inaugural ramble...

so hello, my name is ryan and you can see my work here www.ryaneaster.com