1. Spend a lot of money on inkjet supplies so I don’t run out while making prints for my portfolio- DONE.
2. Order portfolio box- DONE
3. Obsess over whether my prints are too dark and I need to re-do them all- DONE
4. Oder leave behind cards- DONE
5. Prioritize my requests for reviewers- DONE
6. Obsess over whether my prints are too dark and I need to re-do them all- DONE
7. Re-prioritize my requests for reviewers- DONE
8. Prep any images from the past 4 months that I’ve never printed larger than 8.5×11 and didn’t bother to perform dust removal/sharpening on- DONE
9. Make contact sheets for the 12 rolls of processed 220 that will be waiting for me when I get home today.
10. Do final scans for any images from above rolls that I want to include in my portfolio
11. Process scans from #10 and get them ready to print
12. Print files from #11
13. Obsess over whether my prints are too dark and I need to re-do them all
14. Determine what images I’m taking and how I want to sequence them
15. Put together 10-12 folders with a print, CD, and resume.
16. Re-determine what images I want to take and how I want to sequence them
17. Update website with the new images/sequencing

20×200 is having a 20% off sale for any prints purchased between now and Monday night. If you do the math, that means $16 for a small print, $160 for a medium print, and $1600 for a large print. What’s even cooler, they’re still giving the artist the normal full price commission on any sales. Nice on the collector, nice on the artists.

Now’s the time to go back though past editions and see what you missed the first time around. There are still two large prints (30×40″) of my edition available, now at $1600 if anybody’s been thinking about it…

I spent last week in the great art mecca of New York. I’m fortunate enough to have a brother who lives there, so I try to get out at least once or twice a year to see what is going on. This trip was a different experience, as I had two of my colleagues with me, a drawing professor (who does lots of stuff besides drawing) and a graphic design professor (who does lots of stuff besides graphic design). This meant that rather than focusing all my time on photo galleries and exhibitions, I saw a much wider range of art than I normally do. A few highlights:

• Cai Guo-Qiang at the Guggenheim. I’ve been fascinated by his work for some time, but this exhibition just fell short for me. I found I was much more interested in the performative aspect of his work, which the exhibition of course at best can provide a record of. The documentary videos of him making the gun powder drawings were beautiful and mesmerizing, the drawing less so (with two or three exceptions). The exploding car didn’t have the effect I was hoping for either. This was maybe a case of letdown from having seen nothing but reproductions of his work for some time and imagining it a certain way.
• Whitney Biennial. Everyone loves to hate the biennial. I’m in the everyone camp on this one. The Polaroids by Mapplethorpe in that strangely out-of-the-way photo gallery upstairs were quite wonderful though.
• Chelsea. Same old same old. Not that there wasn’t some great work. There was, as there always is, but there were few surprises. The highlight was not a photo show (though I missed several I had intended to see), but the Warhol/Basquiat show at Van de Weghe Fine Art.
• New York Photo Festival. I’m embarrassed to say I spent very little time here- a quick run through of the exhibitions and the publisher’s displays. Most of my time there was spent at a bar down the street chatting with Amy Stein, who was wonderful to talk with. With her book award the following night and upcoming exhibition at Koch Gallery (a solo show at Kopeikin just wasn’t enough for you, huh?), I’m glad I got to talk with her before she’s too famous!
• Murakami at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Easily the highlight of the trip for me art-wise. This show was FANTASTIC! As opposed to the Guo-Qiang show, this was a case of the work meeting and/or exceeding my expectations in every way. While it got off to a slightly clumsy start with the installation of work in the front hall of the exhibit, it was nothing but flawless after that. I don’t know what I enjoyed more- seeing the pieces I was already familiar with, or the ones I wasn’t (the video work especially was a great surprise).

Seeing such a range of art on this trip, I’m again struck by how segregated all things photographic are in the art world. Despite photography’s “acceptance” as a fine art, it still seems that the concept of “separate but equal” rules the day.

I’m going to Review Santa Fe! In a two-fer of good fortune I was pulled in off the waiting list, and managed to get travel money from the university as well to offset the cost. I’m looking forward to the trip, and now have lots of work to do in the next three weeks.

My biggest fear about going is not a complete lack of interest in my work on the part of the reviewers (though this is always a possibility as well), but that being back in New Mexico will make me painfully aware of how much I miss it there. I haven’t been back since finishing grad school 7 years ago.

If anyone else out there is going to Review Santa Fe, let me know.

 From the Project “Somewhere” by Beth Block

I was deeply saddened to learn this morning that Beth Block died over the weekend in a car accident. I spent time with Beth several years ago at PhotoFest, and we have kept in contact intermittently since. Her presence in the photo community will be missed.

I’ve been loosing comments from my blog recently. They are retroactively being marked as spam even after I have approved them. Please bear with me, and know that I am seeing the comments when they first come in even if they disappear after a day or two. I am going to work on the problem this week and see if I can track it down. If I can figure out what’s going on, I will go into my mySQL tables and try to recover any comments that were lost (I’ve already successfully done this for a few). However, doing so will take several hours, so I want to make sure I won’t loose them again if I do it. Thanks to all who are submitting comments!

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.