words on photography

46 Intercourse Coach Shop

This past weekend my grandparents property in Churchtown, Penn., was auctioned off. Pop had a sewing machine repair business and had a shop next to the house. He built the house in 1938. I am not sure when the shop was built. I might have been to the Intercourse Coach Shop as a kid when I went with him on his rounds to the Amish and Mennonite homes and businesses. I am thinking about trying to put together a multimedia piece from the sale. If I do, I will post a link.

45 been too long

Well, the semester is nearly over. It has been a busier time than I expected. I will have more later including some of my own pictures. For now, check out Chris Anderson.

44 Champions

Well, I will let Mario Chalmers’ actions do the talking.

Streeter Lecka/Getty via NY Times
Rock Chalk! 76-68 in OT

43 Larry Towell

I have been racking my brain trying to come up with an artists genealogy for myself. Larry Towell is on my list for sure. Over on Heather Morton’s blog she talks about his new show “The World from my Front Porch” that was up at the Stephen Bulger Gallery.

These are the pictures he makes when he is not off documenting the landless.

The lyricism of his work draws me in and holds me. If it is El Salvador, Mexico, Palestine or his front yard the lyricism is all the same, beautiful.

Magnum in Motion has an essay to go with the exhibition. He has great hats.

42 Philip Jones Griffiths interviews

A couple of more interviews with the late photographer have come to my attention. There is one at aperture and a couple of videos.

There is one here and an older interview here.

37 seen at SPE in Denver

It was a crazy couple of weeks with going to Houston for FotoFest and then turning it around and going to Denver for the SPE national conference. It was the first time I had been to an SPE conference. Compared to the NPPA conventions I have been to, SPE was like visiting Germany, well run and on time. The only down side was not winning the Todd Hido image in the raffle. The person that won told me she was sorry, well not really. Such is life. I managed to come to away feeling good about the experience and tired.

It was good to see Rich Clarkson after a few years. Needless to say, I ate really, really well at Elway’s in Cherry Creek. Thanks again Rich.

by Rich Clarkson

Julieanne Kost’s Lightroom lecture was killer. By the end of the weekend I realized that I drank the Lightroom Kool-Aid. It is yummy. She was also really nice and answered a ton of questions.

David Taylor’s Frontier/Frontera talk was really interesting. I liked his use of the moving still image (video). He also showed some very subtly powerful images from our southern border regions.

by David Taylor

Lauren Greenfield’s talk was intense to say the least.

I have not seen the her documentary “Thin“. The clip she showed was difficult to watch. I find it highly interesting that a rather straightforward color documentary photographer has been so embraced by the art world. I find that her images are nuanced at times, but not different from journalism. I see how Alec Soth fits into the art world. For me, placing Lauren Greenfield in the art does not add up. They are both current color documentary photographers. Soth’s methods are more aligned to the art world, while Greenfield is strongly tied to the editorial side. She is one of the few photographers who makes work where I need to look away at times. the “Thin” video does that more than her images.

by Lauren Greenfield

Zack Bent’s was the lone graduate student presentation that I caught.

by Zack Bent

He focused on his newer work which is about his wife and two sons. It was interesting to hear someone else talk about photographing their family and all that it entails.

Jon Lowenstein’s talk with others from the Blue Earth Alliance, was inspiring, helpful, realistic.

by Jon Lowenstein

Jon’s kind words nd advice were exactly what I needed. It was like speaking English with someone after speaking Spanish (grad school) as a non-native speaker. Meaningwise, thanks for the motivation.

Edward Burtynsky closed out the talks with his keynote presentation.

I had not seen a lot of his work. He kicked it off with talking about his influences. He mention Sabastio Salgado. During the whole presentation I thought about how their work is similar in both scale and ambition. In the end, I will always like Salgado’s work more.

Burtynsky makes the world’s scars beautiful. It is probably my background in journalism that draws me toward Salgado.

Also, I ran into Grant Ray, who attends Columbia College Chicago.

It was good to see him again. We met during the open house at Columbia about a couple of years ago.

Ryan Shuler sat across from me during the curatorial walk through. He attends RIT.

About five hours before I left Denver I had a nice chat with Christine Holtz, who also went to RIT and now teaches at Robert Morris University.

I probably left something and someone out.

36 Philip Jones Griffiths 1936-2008

When I sat down and saw that Philip Jones Girffiths had died from cancer today I felt saddened.

“Not since Goya has anyone portrayed war like Philip Jones Giffiths.” Henri Cartier-Bresson

His career was amazing, his pictures painful.

Here is a good interview with him. God Speed Philip Jones Griffiths.

I found a great quote from the BBC obituary.

“The only thing we photographers really want more than life, more than sex, more than anything, is to be invisible.”
Philip Jones Griffiths

David Burnett has also published a remembrance of his mentor and friend.

35 a video that makes me want to make a video

This video won first place in the POYi Multimedia Feature Story category. Jim Lo Scalzo is an amazing photographer who always put his own visual stamp on whatever image he is making.

Compared to a lot of videos that I have seen, well to be honest started to watch and then grew bored and clicked off, this one blends the still image well with the video image. I am assuming he is using two different cameras, which is why I like this. There are two different thought processes going on. Not one, with a frame grab later like the local paper likes to do.

His book is also worth checking out, from what I have heard. The online component of it also did well at POYi.

33 Crushing Deadlines

I wish I could multitask like John Harrington can. Recently, he covered John McCain’s victory party in Virginia and talked to some of his colleague’s about what they had to do and how late their deadlines were. In typical fashion Reuters and AP said they would have pictures on the wire within 2-3 minutes of McCain coming to the stage. The two newspaper photographers had until 9:15 p.m. Sometimes I miss those days and sometimes I don’t.



Say what you will about the artistic merits of the quickly made wire photo, the more important thing is that the AP image hits the first, or the Reuters, or at least that there is a clear winner in who made it first. Truly, crushing deadlines.

32 yes, another blog

I ran the idea of a class blog by Kathy Lovas, for our photo 1 class at UNT, she said go for it. It was recently updated with a bunch of stuff.