I Am Done Poem

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Portfolio to end all portfolios is finally done.
Big spam went out, got a nice note from designer Chip Kidd.
Happy to see it didn't say "Unsubscribe"
Artist's Proofs from the portfolio printing available, inquire within.
No reasonable offer refused.

Chair Accident Polaroid

Don't wanna get seduced by a nice looking polaroid, all ephemeral and soft.. but it's hard not to.

100 Eyes : The Echolilia Interview

Andy Levin , editorial director of 100 Eyes wants to know what this Echolilia thing is really all about. TA is not telling! Well really he tells all and learns some stuff amidst the questioning.
Read it all HERE.
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American Idol

Before it is made illegal, I need to send forth another spam campaign.
Please vote for your favorite...or more accurately, please vote for what may be most successful.
Constellation Spam? Vacuum Spam? or Arm Spam?

Girls

It's not appropriate for my Echolilia project...it is just too literal. But I thought it was funny.

Spring Sabbatical

The house is silent. It has been evacuated by everyone. The suburban home that was created to be an island, a little city that contains the enrgy of four people is empty. My wife and kids are out of town and I've stayed back to work. It seems like a meditation retreat where everyone has agreed not to speak for a weekend. The neighbors are quiet, I am quiet. I lock the front door, open the back doors and never need to get dressed.

Try to set up shoots, work on paperwork and make calls in the day. Speak to as few people as possible...just the most necessary connections. Print portfolio from 7-9. Address the Echolilia project from 10 to Midnight. Try to visit someone a dinner time or trick someone into visiting.

Beer tastes great at nine am. Chicken wing flavored pretzels do not....they are for the evening, when the sun goes down. Not a big vice, they can't be detected in a blood test. The tight system that the house contains, that holds me together and gives me structure is gone. It is now being rebuilt with a foundation of chicken wing flavored snacks.

I Like When People I Know Win Stuff

Archibald: The Kids Are Alright shot gets into American Photography Annual!

Brian Ulrich, Byron Wolfe and Suzanne Opton each grab a Guggenheim! WTF?!

Jonathan Saunders' I Like To Tell Stories guns down a Webby Award!

















Credits: Top, Archibald, bottom, Saunders

Weird Shapes and Jagged Edges

Got a call mid week last week to put together a story for TIME Magazine...kinda quick turnaround: 4 shots over 3 days, starting tomorrow. Bill Carwin, the photo editor, calls me at 1:30 am his time. We connect the next day and he lays it out:

We have a story here that we want you to instill your voice into...it needs to hold together as a series of your shots. Bad news is it is utterly boring subject matter. We need a visual something to hold it together.

Bill throws out this idea of shooting low rent panorama shots and stitching them together with a photoshop application. I typically hate digging into technical stuff that I've never done before, but for some reason I kind of embraced this...it seemed easy and would fit in to the traditional image making workflow without a big disruption. It seemed like something directly out of flickr, but still I was feeling like it was worth trying. Before we hang up he makes an off handed comment...inferring that if this fails and the story looks boring, someone may lose their job. I don't think he was referring to me.

Sunday night I process the panoramas and they sprawl across the screen: odd shapes, jagged lines, not totally in focus and everything seemed too far away. I like them in a refreshing way, but doubt they'll be used. They have a retro 90's Chip Simons reference, but woven by the technology of today. Mid-morning I get a note from Bill. He successfully sold them on these panoramas...I couldn't have been more surprised. For a moment, just then, I have faith in editorial photography again.

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1985 Schenectady, N.Y.

A friend visited our hometown this weekend and sent me this shot I took but had lost from Winter 1985.

I was trying to be a low budget Bruce Davidson Americana type of photographer, as you can see.

Constellation

Snapshots from TIME magazine shoot

More on the TIME shoot we did last week once the issue comes out. Gotta keep quiet on these things in this blog-speedy time period we are in...can't show any shots obviously. But we try to practice our snapshot skills while waiting for the subjects...

Sellout: Core Memory 20 x 200

IBM 360 Model 30 Tape Drives 1965 by Mark Richards

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Mark Richards joins forces with the Jen Bekman Project 20 x 200 phenomenon, selling prints to the masses by the pound!

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8 x 10, 11 x 14, 16 x 20, 24 x 30...you can literally log on and watch the numbers tick down. Better get in while you can...

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Buy or Die HERE and HERE.

Interview With Myself

Q: So what is up with your Echolilia book?

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TA: Oh, I layed out a bunch of spreads with the Blurb software, printed out the screen shots of the spreads on inkjet paper and started to...oh just play with them. Look at them, see if they work as a project, see if this whole concept holds together.

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Q: Just you?

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TA: No. What I've been doing is tapping into my contemporaries here...the people I have a dialogue of sorts with. I isolate them by taking them to lunch, forcing them to sit down with these spreads and give me their take on the project. I don't really give them direction, just want to see where they go with it.

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Q: Who are you forcing to deal with this stuff?

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TA: Mark Richards, Emily Nathan, Suzy Poling, Thomas Broening, Amy MacWilliamson, and then my brother who was at the house the other day. I got good stuff from everyone. Took notes after I left the meeting...its like Review Santa Fe, but...better. More about furthering a project, not as much about getting a book deal, a gallery deal, etc.

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Q: Like what did you get? Gimme.

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TA: Lots of advice on working on the next step. What is the next step? Is it writing...maybe give him a voice in this. Maybe its more photographs shot collaboratively...maybe with a film camera and polaroid. Some were bumming about it being done on digital...which I understand...its just not as pretty as it could be, and she felt it showed a lack of commitment to the project. Might be something I need to live with. Someone else felt the Dad needed to have a voice in the photographs, a prescence in the series, and all of the coping mechanisms he's got. And then advice on acknowledging the diagnosis, the autism, finding a way to share that that has been part of this. Then someone was going off on trying to dig in and find and arc in this...find a climax in the series and use it to structure this non-literal arc. Then, she was big into me making shots with no kid or no object...just scene setting shots that show where this is all going on.

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Then killing shots for sure. I had some shots in the mix that were...like gentler...friendlier...I thought it would expand the range of emotions. This person was like...no, nix those. Keep it on the note that you can hit most consistently, most solidly. Let that note, that tone you hit with the photos and scans define the title of the project...they define "Echolilia", a word that no one will know what it means. Let the shots that define that best be the project, and nix everything else.

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Q: What do you think?

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TA: I couldn't agree more.