We’re in the age of self publication, and a couple of talented photographers are foregoing traditional gallery/publication avenues for sales and offering work direct from the source. First, during my hiatus from blogging, Susanna Raab announced Rank Strangers a self made publication of her work for sale from her “Off Season” series. I immediately bought a copy, and have enjoyed it greatly. At $15, it is an addition to my photo library that I prize over many of the $50 and $60 books I have.

In addition, this morning Liz Kuball announced an edition of 25 copies of the photo above (also featured on Flak Photo) for $20 each. There are as of this writing only 2 left (less than 12 hours after the original announcement), so get on it!

Several weeks ago I got a copy of the comments left for me by Critical Mass reviewers- the organizers compile these comments and pass them on to the participants. I was skeptical about the whole Critical Mass process when I first began it, mostly in terms of the cost compared to what was given in return, but I must say that the organizers make every effort to make the process as meaningful and useful as possible. Whether it will help me or not in the long run I can’t say, but I certainly didn’t feel it a waste of money as I initially feared.

With the exception of very useful and extensive comments from Lisa Hunter, most of the comments I got were very brief- one or two sentences. One very familiar issue that came up in my comments is people’s ongoing love/hate relationship with my titles. Most people seem to have very strong feelings one way or the other. They’re either a great addition to the work or a pretentious bit of junk that ruins the effect of the photograph itself. I certainly don’t mean them to be pretentious- they’re something I add to amuse myself with word play and the underlying narrative elements of the work. Most are inspired by events leading up to the actual making of the photograph. Every time I get negative comments about the titles I question my inclusion of them anew, but I still feel they’re an important component of the series, so so far I’ve kept them in.

On a related note, I was excited to see Joni Sternbach get the hard cover book award. I’ve admired his series about surfers for some time now, and will be very excited to get a copy of the book.

There are a lot of advantages to being a professor- steady paycheck, the support that comes from being part of an academic environment, the energy that comes from working with photo students, summer break, etc. However, the flip side of it means there are times when my job overwhelms all other aspects of my life. The end of the semester is usually one of those times, and this spring it was especially bad. We’re now two weeks into summer, and I’m still going to school every day trying to get myself caught up on things. I’ve spent part of the morning cleaning the spam out of my blog (5000+ spam comments! I’ve got to figure out how to get better spam fighting plugins working), and am now anxious to start posting again.

I’ve got all sorts of things to report from the last month, so I hope to get several post up in the next few days.

It’s not enough that 20×200 has been getting all sorts of press lately (NY Times, Houston Chronicle, WIred Magazine just to name a few), or that they’ve featured some big shot artists like Brian Ulrich. They now have added to their accomplishments an edition by two people in the highest level of art stardom, Mike and Doug Starn.

I am really bummed to have missed out. I was in meetings during the middle of the day when the announcement came out, and I’m sure it sold out in minutes- everything was long gone by the time I got to it. I will be waiting with my trigger finger on my mouse for part 2 of the edition, and just hope I am lucky enough to be at my computer when it is announced.

This is a crazy time of year in the academic world, so I’ve let up a little on the blogging. However, if I have any readers in the local area, I want to let you know that Catherine Chalmers will be speaking at Eastern Michigan University in the Halle Library auditorium tomorrow (4/8) at 6pm. I’m excited to have her coming. It should be a fascinating talk. Be sure to say hi if you come (I’ll be the one introducing her).

Someone help me out here.

I haven’t had a chance yet to look at work from all the artists in this year’s Whitney Biennial. It’s on my to-do list, but so are a lot of things right now. However, a post on Justin James Reed’s blog got me looking at Olaf Breuning’s work.

My first response was that it is the type of work I don’t usually give much notice to- all over the map, and an anti-aesthetic sensibility that seems to come more from technical incompetence than a conscious denial of the canonized art aesthetic.

Yet since my first visit to his web site a few days ago, I have returned multiple times, and watched probably 30-40 minutes of his video work (that’s saying something, as I usually have little patience for video pieces). I am completely captivated.

So my question is, am I interested in his work from a smart conceptual art type perspective, or from a “Jackass” “Viva la Bam” type perspective? In this day and age, does it even matter?

I’m happy to report that “Somewhere in Middle America” made the top 50 in this year’s Critical Mass. I am in good company, joined by  fellow photographer and blogger Susanna Raab and grad school colleague Ian Van Coller. I look forward to going through the work of the other winners.

Beth Dow also made the top six, who are eligible for one of the book awards. I’ve admired her field work series for some time.

Spent the morning at the Detroit Institute of Arts. For the past month, I have been trying to get there to see the Julie Mehretu exhibition, and I finally found a window of time to do it. I’ve heard Mehretu speak before, and seen her work reproduced, but have never been able to see it in person. The full scale pieces did not disappoint.

As an undergraduate math major, I’ve always been attracted to Julie’s ability to distill larger patterns into discrete chunks, and think her work is quite brilliant (the MacArthur Foundation apparently agrees with me). 

I also spent some time in the contemporary galleries and am appalled to report that there was not a single photographic piece in the five galleries of “contemporary” work. The DIA is opening a “separate but equal” photography gallery in the museum on some undisclosed date in 2008.

I drove home from school today in a snow storm almost identical to the one in which I made “The Seeming Impenetrability  of the Space Between” (yes, I’m aware that spring began a week ago, please don’t rub it in).

Wow. I am stunned and ecstatic by the outcome of my 20×200 edition. In my most optimistic hopes I saw the small edition eventually selling out, but never in anything close to 28 hours. Thanks to everyone who made it a success- Liz and Amy for their blog postings (I hope I am not missing any other posts- much to my continued annoyance pingbacks are still not working on my blog), everyone for their comments and encouragement on my blog (for 12 hours I actually received more legitimate comments than spam!), and of course everyone who snatched up a print- I hope you enjoy it (I think you will).

If there are any high rollers out there who missed  out on the small edition, there are still plenty of prints left in the larger sizes…

Which is worse, ego surfing, or neurotically watching the remaining prints go down on your 20×200 edition? I never really took to googling myself, but with Wednesday afternoon being work time for me when I’m usually glued to my computer, I’ve found myself guilty of the latter. Thanks for everyone’s support!

I’m going to get away from my computer now and enjoy what’s left of the day- it’s supposed to be cold again tomorrow with snow forecast for later in the week.