The online catalogue for the Resurrection show is now up.

After a review of the catalogue the variety and quality of work in this show makes me think that the potential for this show to be an important event is there but I wonder if Portland will realize it. I see a lot that is wonderful in this show and it would be a shame if it went by unnoticed.

My boys do not like being photographed by me because "I take too long with my old man cameras". I liked the illumination in the morning but had to take the picture hand held because I didn't have time to set up a tripod. I think the exposure was 1 second so the picture looks fuzzy but that's okay because I like to think of myself as a modern pictoralist. The photo-secessionists can go screw themselves.

Lone Fir Infrared Goldtoned.

I haven't made anything new in months so I've been going back through prints I made that at the time I didn't like to see if they now look any better. Sometimes a print that just didn't come out the way I expected looks better after a few months when I've had time to forget what my orginal expectations were and can just accept the print for what it is. I took this picture using one of the few rolls of Konica infrared film I had managed to find in 120 format with my Koni-Omega camera a few years ago. I didn't really like the picture and I tried goldtoning the print last fall to see if that helped any. The only thing I ever really liked about this picture was the way the birch leaves picked up the sunlight and the way the gold toner shifted the color in the upper part of the print where the leaves filtered the sunlight. I exposed for the shade and where the sun is brightest all the detail is lost. I could try burning those areas in but the picture still doesn't motivate me to want to revisit printing it.

Here is the official E-card for the Resurrection show at 23 Sandy Blvd. May 2-31 with a complete list of all photographers represented: Jody Ake, Keliy Anderson-Staley, Chris Bennett,
Rita Bernstein, José Betancourt and Susan Weil,
Ray Bidegain, Victoria Bjorklund, Brianna Burnett,
Alison Carey, Rebecca Clark, Joy Goldkind,
Kate Kaznowska, Tom Kearcher, Heidi Kirkpatrick,
Galina Kurlat, Matthew Larkin, Jim Leisy, Stu Levy,
Michael Mazzeo, Chip McDaniel, Paul Mckee,
Eric Mertens, Jeannette Palsa, Jan Potts, David Prifti,
Thomas Rutter, Rosanna Salonia, Elaine Sedgman,
Joni Sternbach, Ian van Coller, Peggy Washburn,
Matthew Yates, Ryan Zoghlin
I've been looking at the work of the other photographers who will have pictures in this exhibit and I feel a bit intimidated. This is going to be a very impressive show. If I never have another picture in an exhibit I'll be fine with that because of the level of quality of the other photographers my picture will be hanging with.

"New Documents" curated by John Szarkowski An exhibition of 90 photographs by three leading representatives of a new generation of documentary photographers--Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand--will be on view at The Museum of Modern Art from February 28 through May 7(1967). John Szarkowski, Director of the Department of Photography, writes in his introduction to the exhibition, "In the past decade this new generation of photographers has redirected the technique and aesthetic of documentary photography to more personal ends. Their aim has been not to reform life but to know it, not to persuade but to understand. The world, in spite of its terrors, is approached as the ultimate source of wonder and fascination, as less precious for being irrational and incoherant."

http://www.chambersgallery.org/exhibitions08/newas.html

I noticed that another show at a downtown gallery will be an exhibit of 19th century style photography. Called "The New Antiquarians". It just opened this week at the Chambers Gallery which I believe now occupies the space where once was one of my favorite old restaurants from the 80's the name of which has now slipped my mind. I managed to go down and check out this installation on my lunch hour today and found it quite interesting. The collection of photographs many done using antiquarian techniques all have an antiquarian aesthetic. The pictures had a primitive quality to them in subject matter as well as in form; landscapes, portraits, nudes rendered in monochromatic and processes where the imperfections are part of their charm. I also remembered the name of the restaurant that I think once inhabited that space, Crepe Faire.

I picked up my framed photographs yesterday and I'm pleased. I don't think I'll have anything to be ashamed of in my first picture at an exhibition. I deferred to the taste of the framer which was a good idea since I have no experience in such things. The frame is of course black and the matte is a light ivory with a thin black bevel which compliments the gold toning. I printed the dogwood print with no cropping and allowed an irregular border of reflected light off of the negative carrier to frame the image. The bonsai tree looks especially nice the framing really improves the image. I thought it was a little flat but the black and ivory gives it a little more "snap". I don't know what I was thinking with the third picture I wish now I'd selected something else to frame considering the cost. I'm glad I had the bonsai image framed and it won't be in the show there is no risk I'll lose it. I'd like to keep it and have another one of those bonsai images framed to hang beside it. Today I went to the museum to check out the new aquisitions for the photo collection. Very nice a bit hard to find though. I needed a boost of some inspiration. I also wanted to look at the way artists signed their photographs. I decided not to sign on the matte but instead will sign the back. It's not like my name contributes anything to the print. I wish I had one of those bright red stamps that asian artists use with just my initials. Maybe I could have one made.

Hubert Damisch defines the photographic process as follows: Imprinted by rays of light on a plate or sensitive film, these figures (or better perhaps, these signs?) must appear as the very trace of an object or a scene from the real world, the image of which inscribes itself, without direct human intervention, in the gelatinous substance covering the support. Here is the supposition of 'reality' that defines the photographic situation. A photograph is this paradoxical image, without thickness or substance (and, in a way, entirely unreal), that we read without disclaiming the notion that it retains something of the reality from which it was somehow released through its physio-chemical make-up.

By total accident I found this definition today of the photographic process that really articulates what I've been trying to say about what happens when a real camera takes a picture.

Also the picture below was accepted in the juried exhibit "Resurrection: A new look at old photographic processes" at the 23 Sandy Gallery in May.