Blog About Photography

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The green arrow is me

Soo, I know you’re all just dying to know what it is I’m doing here in the Big Bad City. So far, aside from seeing the big Stephen Shore exhibit at ICP and spending an afternoon at Dashwood Books with Christian, I’ve done absolutely nothing photography-related. Shen Wei and Amy Elkins both have had an opening and closing respectively, and I was unable to go to either and I still haven’t seen the Nina Berman show at jb, let along the thousands of other things there are to do and see in this place every single week. I’ve also flaked on Elizabeth Weinberg twice.

So what have I been doing? Well. After staying at Emily Grenader’s aparment for a little over a week (the cat and I are best friends), I finally moved into this ridiculous building called “The Tea Factory,” (because it used to be one, the landlord told me) on Stockholm in Bushwick. I wouldn’t have named it that and also I’m sort of like the very posterboy of gentrification, but these are the things I’m going to try not to think too much about. But anyway, the place is awesome and my roommate (I brought him with me from DC) is awesome and I’m pretty happy with it. Pictures will come as soon as it’s not such a ridiculous fucking mess.

I’m still working for Wonkette, I may have a monthly feature there pretty soon, which would be pretty exciting and hopefully hilarious. I also picked up a second and more lucrative but perhaps lessed prized blogging gig for the political news site Raw Story. What’s cool about that one is I get bylines from time to time and can do some freelance reporting for extra money. Most significantly though, I was just hired as an assistant for Katie Brown, public television’s home and gardening empress. This is a semi-creative position that going to involve a lot of writing and production work, some photography and probably a whole lot getting coffee and stuff. Most importantly: salary and benefits.

I’m not any less committed to photography. I’m still taking pictures constantly, my new series is almost finished.

Having spent 4 years in the District of Columbia, I feel almost immediate kinship with other artists hailing from the Mid-Atlantic region (particularly if they’re doing interesting work, though the shitty work can be pretty engaging also). Work of the former category that has recently caught my attention, the SAME TIME Project is a collaboration between Brad Walker (Baltimore, Md.), a graphic designer, and Michael Lease (Richmond, Va.). For a year, the two take a photograph every night at 7:15 pm. They are paired side by side, and the rather extensive gallery, divided month by month, yields some gems. I might suggest losing the captions or turning them into roll-over image descriptions instead, but on the whole the project works well, especially considering the size of the undertaking.

Well, so I’m a little late to game writing about Fjord, but I have to check in on this one because I’m so excited to be a part of it. Fjord is a book project spearheaded by Grant Willing and Alana Celii, which they describe this way:

The drastic shift in the way work is being presented today has become especially noticeable in the more technologically adept generation. Fjord’s goal is to bring together a collection of notable photographers from the internet and showcase their work in book form. This transition from internet to book will allow a different audience to experience the work thus bringing emerging artists into the public’s view.

As we all know, photography lends itself rather well to internet and, as a result, there’s a rather vibrant community of young photographers here. There’s no arguing the fact that our dialogue is having an impact on they way images are created. Fjord will be a beautiful catalog of this transitional moment. Though we are contemporaries, I have viewed many of these artists as mentors as my passion for photography has grown over the past few years. I’m exceedingly proud to be included with them in these pages!

Be sure to peruse the gallery. There are familiar names in there and also less familiar ones, but all the work is absolutely wonderful!

Lastly, gettingFjord to bookshelves is a is a grassroots effort. If you can help us promote the book in any way possibly, from sending some cash to linking to the website to simply distributing some postcards, we’d really appreciate it. Any extra dollars you might have can be sent to Alana thru paypal at sailbellyup at gmail dot com.

Phew! Here’s a newsflash: moving to New York isn’t really that easy! Even so, I managed to get moved into a pretty sweet loft in Bushwick - Stockholm right off Knickerbocker. It’s a phenomenal neighborhood, bustling and busy, and will soon be the subject of extensive photographic documentation. I’m realizing how much I love to focus on describing neighborhoods or parts of places that somehow relate to my life - this is what I did with La Brea, my upcoming project, The Honorable Parts does this also and now I can’t wait to start shooting Bushwick. Anywho, my roommate Will and I are all moved in and now I’m ready to start participating in my life again.

Another reason why I’ve been so slow to blog - I’m still working for Wonkette and I picked up another blogging gig for Raw Story, which is about 30 hours per week. That’s a lot of blogging! So after I’ve done that for 8 or 9 hours, it’s tough to sit down and write my own blog, but I’ll try to get better at it. This, after all, is important.

Anyway, more will trickle out about my life soo, I’m sure, but for now I have a couple of other posts to write!