Who Buys Echolilia?

Wooden Gun, 2008 from Echolilia
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Coming out with a book is like throwing a rock in a lake, you see the ripples and the wake and you see what surfaces. ECHOLILIA is a different project, kinda between my son and I, but we hoped for it to speak to everyone. Once the book arrived, for whatever reason the people buying the book opted to share some of their lives as well. Here are some notes that have come thru:

I flipped through it with my fiance, but can't completely dive in right now. You see we're getting married this Saturday and it's pretty hectic around here.

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Her name is Julianna and on our first date I told her about my childhood missions with my dogs wielding a wooden gun just like the one in the book. I was an only child growing up in the woods/country and I really only had my dogs to play with since my dad was working at the steel mill and my mom was running her dog grooming shop in our house....I could go on.

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Thank you for sticking it out and working through this project - it has brought me joy.

- Chris Crisman, photographer

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We were so transfixed that we forgot the corn was on, boiling for a good half an hour. Steam rising, turning from cobs to mush, just as the book generated a crisp edge of awareness.

The world stopped spinning and our own house fell flat while we fell into the book and images. Nothing edgy here at all, just very eloquent and real.

- Kim Van der veen, Burgeon Group

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Unwrapping Echolilia, I wish I could dismiss my outburst of emotion as the result of PMS.

I started crying the moment I saw Eli's signature. I don't have descriptive words for my reaction seeing this project come to fruition. I wish I did.

Eli will always will be a mystery to you as will your other son, but I feel like you have found a medium where you and Eli can parallel play. Bonding, playing, creating, but side by side rather than face to face. You met some of my family - the kids that I was a nanny for. Their mom always told me that the best conversations and when you learn the most about your kid is when they are in the car in the back seat, heading wherever - separated. Wondering - wandering through their day and what happened.

- Brooke Embry, Tidepool Reps

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Camera phone shot by Lisa Mitchell, Fredericksburg, VA

Super Models

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Big day shooting up on Lucas Valley Ranch road at the wonderful Eichler home of Mark Neely for a feature in Smart Money magazine. We had shot in the home before and it really put everyone at ease: we knew the walls, we knew the props, we knew when a certain room lit up with an early morning light that we just really wanted the shoot to have. So rather than discover it, we were able to design the shoot around it...which really is always such a luxury.
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Suz, Shannon, Meaghan, Academy of Art grad student Brittany McClaren and supermodel Corey Watts gathered in the light and we put it all together.

Scientific American July 2010

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Kind of a case of wonderful serendipity when photo editor Monica Bradley asked me to work on their upcoming feature on infant cognition last month. Did she know I was on the baby channel this year? Maybe promo cards, non stop blogging and all of this facebook action count for something? Ha...or maybe she is just intuitive in all the right ways.

Above is an out-take of a kid I knew would make a curious photograph the moment I saw him...and then our spread, with prop created by Shannon Amos.
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Father's Day

ECHOLILIA / Sometimes I Wonder
Published June 2010 by Echo Press, San Francisco, CA
Hardcover / 11 x 13 inches/ 70 pages / 43 photographs with an interview by Andy Levin of 100 Eyes Magazine.
First Printing: 20 copies signed by the artists $120.00 plus shipping and handling via Paypal

A view into the father / son relationship from the head of the kid and the eyes of the Dad. What better time to get your hands on this project than Father's Day? All copies signed by myself and Eli.

Buy it from HERE or below.

One Last Epic Baby

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This is the last one.

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I'm thinking I may not really need three....

but sometimes you push just to see if it works.

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Portfolio Pages Recycled Into Greeting Cards

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Just before getting this in the mail I figured I'd scan it and share it...

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Gwendolyn Oxenham

Gwendolyn Oxenham at The Lab, Costa Mesa, CA

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Spent a great long day last month in LA shooting Gwendolyn Oxenham, one of four directors of the documentary film Pelada. Gwendolyn taught class that day, engaged with the photo shoot and busted out to a screening of her film ...I think her clothes were still wet...and headed out the next day to get married to her co-director Luke Boughen...never a dull moment. Part autobiography, part documentary...it evolves into a journey of epic proportions...in the smallest way. Learn more about it HERE.

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Sorry I Missed This

Jesse Burke's long term project INTERTIDAL has been something I have wanted to dig into on this blog for a while but have never gotten the chance to. An investigation on the fragility of masculinity that is autobiographical as well as anthropological (whew ...), it has always had all the issues that I think are important but so rare in photography. Burke just put it all together for a big exhibition at Clamp Art that opened last week which I was psyched to hear about. Today I had to laugh in a good way to see this image sent via email to everyone who attended the opening...it works in so many ways I had to share it.

INTERTIDAL runs thru July 9th at Clamp Art in NYC.

Some Stuff On My Desk

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Computer and internet has been down, I've just gotten back from vacation, lots of stuff going on that has kept the blog from rolling with the momentum it has had. Just wanted to share some stuff that has looked cool...k? Uptop we got the Widelux F8 packaging that is just totally luscious. I'd love to have some promo project designed like that...it feels so authentic and so photographic in a timeless sense. Appreciate it? Um...you can BUY my Widelux HERE. Ha!

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Here we got the catalogue from the exhibition my project Sex Machines was included in in Hong Kong. TechnoSexualBodies at Videotage, curated by Isaac Leung. Beautiful catalogue printed on rough stock with great reproduction...always nice to see this stuff done so elegantly.

Then below this invite came in the mail for one of my favorite photographers Joseph Szabo. Szabo taught photography at a high school in the 1970's and certainly wasn't wasting his time...his work is so human and perceptive, it has aged wonderfully. He's got a show at M+B in LA up now.

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I'm headed to LA on Saturday for the commerical photography critique a thon at TBWA Chiat...hope to see some friends at that as well...

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Photograph In My Sister's House

Circus Performer, Altamont Fair, 1983

That picture above is really a photo of a photograph...you can see my reflection in the glass. I spent the week at my sister's home in Indiana with my wife and kids. She hung this photograph in the bathroom for me to see and remember.

In 1983 I was 16 and my sister was 29. My parents went to Europe for a few weeks and she moved in to our house to essentially babysit me, hang out with me, cook food, make sure bad things didn't happen...all of that stuff. I wasn't really interested in going to Europe....what would I do there? I was more interested in getting a driver's license, being 16, being in my hometown and making photographs. Big into Garry Winogrand's work and all his images done at events that looked like county fairs, I somehow convinced my sister to drive me to the local county fair, either drop me off or wait in the car while I photographed these circus people who I had spoken to earlier in the week. They had been kind and curious in the day and had told me to come back at night when the show was on...then I'd get some good shots. Somehow it worked out...they gave me all sorts of access but my photographs were terrible...the only good one was this shot done without looking...holding the camera and flash over my head. The guy and the horse and his skin with the Vivitar flash on it....it pleased me because it looked like Arbus, it looked like Winogrand. I liked how it said "shadows of yesterday" in the backround, but mostly I liked it because it was a surprise to me...I didn't know if I had it or not. That photo at the time felt like a gift.

At some point during this past week she asked to see what I was working on now and I showed her the ECHOLILIA book and asked if she had any insights:

Oh...I'm not really deep, I can't express this stuff. But it looks like you have given birth to this transforming shape shifting creature that you are trying to find a way to relate to.

I thought her response was so right on, I couldn't really add a thing to it.

My Sister's Bathroom, 2010

I Love Commercial Photography

I love commercial photography : Suz, Shannon, Natalie, David and Meaghann all got to gather for a project for pals at Agency.com. Sometimes SF can just be so beautiful....

Signed Book

I was touched in ways I didn't expect when we sold our first copy of ECHOLILIA / Sometimes I wonder. We were excited by the sale and touched that inspiring photographer Chris Crisman got his hands on the copy. Crisman's work at times touches on the secret life of children, as well as other things that carry the wonder. Eli and I weren't really giddy...just kind of happily stoic as we got to write CC a note in the book...


Buy ECHOLILIA / Sometimes I wonder HERE.