Wednesday, January 24, 2007, 06:49 PM
The Wall Street Journal did a very nice article on Bruce Berman and the Getty Museum exhibit Where We Live: Photographs of America from the Bruce Berman Collection. I think the article captures both the Village Roadshow offices with its amazing photo collection and Mr. Berman quite well. Of course the article did overlook one very important detail. The Village Roadshow Pictures movie Happy Feet was nominated for an Academy Award yesterday for best animated movie.
It is a wonderful film; it is probably the best computer animated film made to date. I know I am biased here, but I have seen just about every computer animated feature since the ground breaking Pixar short Tin Toy was upscaled to Toy Story. I even remember rippling water getting a standing ovation at SIGGRAPH film festivals in the early 90's, but Happy Feet brings computer animation to a whole new level. And it is a fun flick with toe tapping music. Check it out...
Happy Feet
Wall Street Journal Feb 24th 2007
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Monday, January 1, 2007, 09:01 AM
Mahnomen County Fairgrounds, Mahnomen Minnesota 1980
In his blog on documentary photography 2point8.whileseated.org Michael David Murphy raises the issue of street photography from photographers who are primarily using large format in the Getty exhibit Where We Live Photographs of America from the Berman Collection. If you look back to the 50s and 60s it really was Frank, Friedlander, Winogrand, Arbus and the street photographers who carried on the FSA tradition of Evans and Lange. It therefore should not be too surprising to see their influences in work from the 70s to today - even those of use who use sheet film cameras.
When I was a student Lee Friedlander would stop by to visit his old friend, and my mentor, Jerry Liebling. He had been a visiting instructor at the University of Minnesota a few years earlier and his influences were still widely felt in the late 60s and early 70s. It was hard to ignore, even if you were, like me, more drawn to Pop Art than street photography. I often feel a bit of Friedlander - it is most obvious in my photo of Mahnomen in the Getty show. But you can not pick up a camera, turn it on the real world, and not be aware of those who stalked the streets with a Leica.
It is also nice that Murphy picked up on Sheron Rupp's work. In a show of great photographs her work stands strong and tall.
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Thursday, December 14, 2006, 12:06 PM
John Turula, a sculptor who's work I must confess graces my front yard, back yard and the steps leading up to our front door has been doing a Web site of some of the artists that live along the Mississippi River here in Western Wisconsin. He has chosen me as his artist of the month this month. John also ran a short lived gallery - Gallery EE, that was listed as one of the 10 best undiscovered places to view art near the Twin Cities. Alas, it is gone but his site is worth a look to get a sense of what some of us along the backwaters are doing.
http://www.nopointink.com/
By the way, he explains what No Point means on the site. It is point on the river, that is really not a point at all. Get the point?
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Wednesday, December 6, 2006, 11:49 AM
The blog TinyWindows has a short review of the Where We Live Getty show. He has also picked out two books he really likes: As a lover of postcards I found his book pick of Real Photo Postcards very interesting. It is worth a good look. Also his Non Facturé: Rejected Photographs on rejected snapshots looks wonderful! I do not know who the blogger is, he remains anonymous, but he has a real understanding of the vernacular.
ltinywindows.wordpress.com/
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Sunday, November 19, 2006, 03:50 PM
This weekend's newspapers feature three articles about the Getty Center's Where We Live: Photographs of America from the Berman Collection. In the San Diego Union Robert Pincus focuses in part on the Walker Evans influence on many of us. This should not be surprising since Bruce Berman has made it very clear that he began his collection looking for that very influence. In my case it came from going through a box of original Evans prints that the Minneapolis Institute of Arts had received for a show they were organizing in the mid 70's. (Curatorial policies were a bit looser in those days; I frequently would visit the MIA photo department and be handed recently arrived photos to look at or would sit down with a vintage copy of Camera Work magazine and read it like last months Popular Photography).
The Walker Evans prints were from collector Arnold Crane, who had purchased much of Evans' well known work in the late 60's and was offering it to museums. (The Getty also purchased work from this collection a few years later). Seeing the work first hand had a deep impact on me. Although I had been out of grad school three years, and teaching photography - including photo history - for five years, I finally got it. I understood for the first time what Evan's was up to. He was photographing for history, not just creating Government sponsored feeds for the contemporary media.
The second is by Nancy Ganiard Smith from the Palisadian Post from Pacific Palisades. It looks at the show as a meandering trip through overlooked American life. She sees the show as an "off-the-beaten-path road trip through the United States. The 170 images by 24 contemporary photographers tell of beauty, loss, decay, hope and desire with voices as disparate as the country itself."
The third article this weekend is one of those hometown boy does well in the big city articles from my local paper by Ruth Nerhaugen. It is a bit ironic that one of the images in the show is of the Pierce County Fairgrounds in Ellsworth Wisconsin. (Which is reproduced for the article and above). It was taken 4 years before I moved to rural Wisconsin in Pierce County. At the time I had no idea it would one day be from "my own fair." Like many of the buildings pictured in the exhibit it has undergone changes in the past 10 years; it was repainted a different color a few years back.
San Diego Union by art critic Robert Pincus
Palisadian Post from Pacific Palisades
Red Wing Republican Eagle by Ruth Nerhaugen.
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