Hello 2008

Between the holidays and getting ready for my midwinter review today I haven’t had a whole lot of time to see stuff or to write about the things I have seen. I did go to the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, an amazing building by Tadao Ando, and to the SF Camerawork opening for the Katsushige Nakahashi show I wrote about in my last post. The completed submarine is quite cool, floating suspended in the gallery, if you are in San Francisco I’d recommend checking it out.

As for my own work, the project that I have been working on most recently is a large map of Martha’s Vineyard, where I grew up, that is made up with a combination of burn marks and my handwriting. Below is an image of the piece with me standing to one side to indicate scale (roughly eight feet high by twelve feet wide).

Photographers and Martha’s Vineyard, Part II

First I would like to thank Stephen DiRado for making this blog’s inaugural comment and for directing my attention to other photographers who have worked on the Vineyard, particularly Les Krims. Krims has some of the best titles I’ve seen.

Acolyte Hillary Clinton Supporter Wearing a Minnie Mouse Shirt Looks On in Disgust as a New World’s Record Is Set in a Watermelon Seed Spitting Contest by a Young Republican Boy—a Hazy Day, the Allen Farm, Chilmark, Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, July 1994, Les Krims

Cigar-Smoking Shark Tournament Contestant with His Head in the Mouth of His Catch Some Years Before the Imposition of Politically Correct Anti-Smoking Laws, at the Oak Bluffs Monster Shark Tournament, Martha’s Vineyard, The People’s Republic of Massachusetts, Summer, 1994, Les Krims

Affluent Children Dressed by their Parents in Absurd Outfits, Already Displaying Scatterbrain Sexuality, Disdain, and Lust, 4th of July, Edgartown, Massachusetts, 1989, Les Krims

Also, as I was looking around at other photographers, I remembered Alfred Eisenstaedt, Life photographer and long-time summer resident. Eisenstaedt probably falls into the (here for examples). The reason I bring him up is for yet another photograph of that oak tree in West Tisbury.

Giant Oak Tree, North Tisbury 1969, Alfred Eisenstaedt

Photographers and Martha’s Vineyard

I’m on the Martha’s Vineyard for about a week visiting the folks and doing some shooting. Being here got me thinking about photographers who are working here now and who have worked here in the past. They basically fall into two categories, the photographers who photograph the Vineyard and those who photograph on the Vineyard. What I mean by this is that for some photographers the fact that the photographs are taken on the Vineyard is essential and for others it’s secondary. Alison Shaw definitely photographs the Vineyard. From early in my consciousness of photography I remember her work as an editorial photographer for the Vineyard Gazette and maybe that’s why I still prefer the graphic reductive simplicity of her black and white work.

Stephen DiRado, on the other hand, photographs on the Vineyard. I first learned of DiRado’s work on Alec Soth’s blog (here) and was reminded of him in last Friday’s edition of the Vineyard Gazette (Sept. 14, 2007). The article focused on DiRado’s Jump series and the difficulty he has had showing in Vineyard galleries. This difficulty, I think, is due to the fact that his work isn’t explicitly about the Vineyard and thus gallery owners think that it won’t sell. Interestingly, the series made me think of another photographer who worked on the Vineyard, Aaron Siskind, and his series Terrors and Pleasures of Levitation.

from Jump by Stephen DiRado

Terrors and Pleasures of Levitation, No. 474 by Aaron Siskind

I don’t think the Terrors and Pleasures of Levitation were shot on the Vineyard, but I do know that Siskind photographed sea weed abstractions, stone walls and other things, including the tree below on the island.

The Tree, Martha’s Vineyard, 1973 by Aaron Siskind

This tree is in the town I grew up in. I rode by it on my bike on the way to kindergarten. It’s across the street from where the bakery we bought cinnamon rolls used to be. Branches have come off in big storms. Here is what it looks like today.

Tree, 2007, Michael Silva