Tonite : Sally Mann speaks at SPE National Conference

Will report on this if it does indeed go down...

Predictable And Hackneyed To...

The Old Testament of the industry, Communication Arts Magazine, did an easy breezy interview for no apparent reason a month back that got released to the masses this week online. Here are some of what we spoke about:

Aside from your camera and lighting, what item could you not work without?
My toothbrush is a deal breaker. I carry extras in my glove compartment and my camera bag. I really can’t focus on a photo shoot without having my mouth clean and minty. Brushing your teeth before a shoot is like brushing your brain—it clears everything out.

From where do your best ideas originate?
The good stuff comes when you’re not trying really…when your brain is occupied with something else. That is when the raw idea bubbles to the surface. But then, it all gets polished and solidified when you bounce it off your peers. The collaborative moment is when something goes from predictable and hackneyed to utterly inspired.

How do you overcome a creative block?
Drinking coffee and taking pseudoephedrine. Collaborating on projects with my kids always seems to allow me to see things anew.

What’s one thing you wish you knew when you started your career?
This whole idea of a career in the arts is fascinating, and really only works, because it doesn’t have a map available to guide you. The idea of wandering with a flashlight, in the dark, to find your path is terrifying, but it leads to these things feeling so special when they work out. So of course, I like to say I wish I had a map to guide me in the beginning, but honestly, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

So it's pretty clear I love to talk. About myself. Duh.

Read the interview in all its splendor HERE.

Turn Your Dial To Tumblr

It is dark so early these days. I needed something to get me through the winter.

I wanted a place to collect images I am playing with and I wanted to see them with size and splendor.

When ECHO became this viral entity that was shared among the visually hungry high school / young adult tumblr crowd, it led me to their visually savvy world. The kids are using tumblr as an art gallery, a mood board, a way to toss things out and see them and think about them. Kind of like push pinning your photographs to your wall so you can think about them and keep them or kill them. This is what I need.

Now it's called .Stereoscopy Photographs.

It is located at http://timothyarchibald.tumblr.com/

Why did you call it that?

Follow it and find out. See it grow and evolve HERE.

One Last Letter To The Editor.

And then this came in on Thanksgiving, of all days:

Hello Mr. Archibald,

My name is Jacqueline, I'm 17. Just like your son, I am autistic. I was diagnosed as moderate to severe when I was around three years old. I just wanted to say that I am touched by the National Geographic photograph of your child in the living room, it was truly astonishing. And the curtains was a nice touch.

You have truly crossed a threshold that people have been trying to cross for many years now. This is exactly how we see the world. All of us are caught behind this bubble with white and grey fog. Please, if you can, I would like to speak to you more about it. But I understand if you can't, you are quite a busy man.
Sincerely:
Jacqueline

Read other Letters To The Editor HERE.

Thankgiving Gift

Had a quick trip to LA last month where I got to visit with Jonathan Saunders.
Time passed and life caught up with me.
On the day after Thanksgiving I discovered his gift to me.
On 11.11.11, a date that echoes itself.
Thank you.
See the gift HERE.

Jonathan Saunders by Alison McCreary

These 7 Days, These 7 Nights, In This Order Of Things from Jonathan Saunders on Vimeo.

I was in NYC for a very simple photography story I was sent there to work on. Sitting in a booth at the Howard Johnson's in Times Square, I stand to shake hands with Jonathan Saunders, meeting him for the first time. The evening ends at The Carousel Club, and I then walk back to my hotel when that place closes.  I still have some money left...I'm going to stay out a while, he says as we say goodbye.

Jonathan moves to Texas and I try to interview him for my blog. The results are unpublish-able. Too personal, too complex, nothing that really seemed to fit into some idea I had of getting into his head about the move. Too many thoughts and ideas and I wanted like...the elevator pitch, the sound bite.

Allison McCreary reaches out to Jonathan for Photographers On Photography and really does what I could not: gets into his head and heart and deep into the creative process. I think it took them a year.

A year well spent. Read it all...every last word... HERE.

National Geographic / November 2011

Sarah Leen, Senior Photography Editor at National Geographic approached me about doing a story on the feelings and ideas behind ECHOLILIA earlier last year. I really never thought it would see the light of day...I couldn't envision this kind of curious personal story about my life and my son, all shot in our home, to fit in with the global vision of National Geographic. In April I got a chance to visit Sarah and see everything she was up to at the magazine: great stories with a contemporary sensibility, interesting features by unexpected photographers, humor and irony and all of these curve balls thrown in amidst all that is classically National Geographic. I left there inspired by what photography in the mass media could really be.

So happy to have ECHOLILIA celebrated so elegantly in the pages of the November issue of the magazine. I haven't got my hands on it yet, but saw a sneak peek of the production online last night. You all can see it HERE.

Tidepool's Embrace Essay

After R.M. 1989

Tidepool Reps asked all of their photographers to introspect a bit and try to find something, from way back, that connected their early way of working to what they are up to now. The Tidepool blog has been featuring these over past month, starting with a great essay by photographer Bill Cash.  Mine is out today, and copied here as well. See it all on the Tidepool Blog HERE.

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When I went to college, I somehow convinced my parents to allow me to be an art major. I never liked art classes in high school….I never really liked art at all. I had a long relationship with photography and my camera, but art was kind of a mystery. The art department at Penn State had no interest in commercial concerns…it was all about teaching the students expression, teaching the the history of art, the history of photography, and giving the students an awareness of the depth of their medium. No internships, nothing commercial was ever brought up. It was all about keeping expression pure, and learning how to tap into where that all came from.

At the same time I started working at the school newspaper. That group of people laughed at the art department…they couldn’t understand the esoteric concerns of that little subculture. They were all about communicating, the craft of photojournalism, and all the students had jobs at big papers lined up for their summer vacation. These folks were into the functional form of art…as functional as it ever really could be.

I was giving a talk to a bunch of students last month and they asked me about my education. I told them about the two sides of my backround, and confessed to them that I really didn’t think my formal education in photography amounted to much….I felt I learned more on the job than any where else. One of the students pointed out that the model I explained to them, this idea of having one foot in something esoteric and dada-ist, and the other foot in a world very funtional and logical, seemed to be a model I have followed throughout my career…even to this day! Looking at the patterns of my career, that observation really has held true: personal projects such as “Sex Machines” and “Echolilia” have been nurtured and blossomed with no commercial concerns whatsoever, while my efforts for hammering out a career with commercial photography were being nurtured with a similar amount of dedication and attention…all going on at the same time.

The happy news here is that the dynamic has shifted…the commercial clients don’t laugh at the art personal projects, they actually have started to embrace them.

Tethered, 2011

Why I Love Scot Sothern's Low Life

For a moment or two I was Philip Marlow, Robert Mitchum, but then for a moment or two I was the writer I was always meant to be and this was my story.- Scot Sothern from Low Life

In my mind, Scot Sothern essentially went from nothing to everything in the year 2011. These images from his project Low Life seeped out into the photography blogosphere and people really did not know what to do with them. The photographs were harsh but also intelligent, and the words he wrote displayed a self awareness and honesty that just really couldn't be denied. Of course everyone wanted to see what he looked like...and there he is, at openings, on Facebook, appearing as charming and gentle as one could be.

Photography critic and writer Colin Pantall went from baffled and confused to openly celebrating Sothern's work...after sharing all of his apprehensions in early writings. Myself...I didn't know what to think, but the honesty of Sothern's writing voice drew me in. I couldn't decide if I loved or hated this work, but I knew I wanted to know more and more and more about it...and have more of it.

Sothern knows what makes a great interview...and really no two interviews with him seem redundant. His writing seems to get you into his inner voice, the voice in his head at the time the images were made. His voice in interviews has maturity and some reflection, and he is aware of his audience. In a gesture of brilliance, he finds a way to have his son interview him about the project. More honesty, more gestures that make us question him and get into his head all at the same time. Here his son Austin Wolf-Sothern asks him the question everyone wants to know:

AS: Do you consider the photos exploitative? And if so, is there anything wrong with that?

SS: Yes, I do think they are exploitative and yes, there are things wrong with that. However, in spite of all the wrong things about the pictures, I think there is somehow a greater good that comes from them. If someone looks at a picture and goes, Whoa, that's fucked up, then isn't that a good thing? There are many many whores, all over the world and I don't think any of them are having a very good time. I'd like to help out a little more, but you know, life is tough. Maybe that's just my justification for being a lowlife in the first place. I like to think I can be a lowlife and also be an artist and a pacifist, a leftist and a scofflaw, and yet Pollyannaish and idealistic. A fine upstanding citizen. Exploitation, well I guess that's what it takes to say what I want to say.

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A fellow photographer shared a project he was working on with me around the time I found Sothern's work. My friend was photographing prostitutes in Las Vegas: getting the card on the street, calling the number, ordering the prostitute and photographing her in his room. His photographs were polished and stylized, the lighting and the colors all working together for a polished effect of these kind of hard life subjects...it was a great combination of style and content. I told him about Sothern's work, shared a link with him and he reacted viciously: he hated the work and it seemed like he really was repulsed by it. I wondered why he reacted so strongly...and I'll never really know. I do suspect that Sothern's work had this honesty that didn't hide all the lust and attraction he may have felt. There was nothing stylized to hide behind...no hip snappy packaging, everything was raw. I suspected that my friend was having a hard time wrestling with his own attraction/repulsion to his subject and was kind of frightened by Sothern's admittance of everything. The push and pull that Sothern admits to makes me take stock of my own feelings as well.

Why do I love this project? I look at his photographs, read his text, and I simply find it inspiring. Is the idea of this guy facing the struggles of life by running to the comforts of prostitutes inspiring? No, but his honesty totally is. Is the fact that the work was ignored for years, he worked on it in anonymity, and he had the belief in it to find a time when the culture would embrace it inspiring? Absolutely inspiring. Again, Sothern's words from the interview with Austin Wolf-Sothern:

SS: To be honest, I've always loved just about every picture I've taken. Now that I have so many of the images scanned, I like to smoke a little pot and fill the computer screen with my pictures. I'm the same way with my writing. I've always been my biggest fan. How else could I face all the rejections, without knowing they are wrong, I'm right.

                                                                                                                                
Buy Scot Sothern's book Low Life HERE.
Visit Sothern's website HERE.

All photographs copyright Scot Sothern.

Autobiography / Fourth Grade

My son had to write an autobiography for fourth grade. He had weeks to complete it. I sat down to help him get organized and we realized it was due the following day.

Don't worry. I think I know what I want to say.

It couldn't be easier.

I'm just writing about me. I'll just sit down and type it.

Wilson Archibald At Work

Wilson Archibald is my youngest son. He has no blog, he has no book about him, he has no Facebook identity. He was doing his homework one night, I was helping him, and I snapped this photograph with my phone.

The next week we made a cake for his Mom, and he decorated it with the football, baseball and soccer themes, acting simultaneously.

Two Things My Son Wanted To Photograph

Family vacation is over, summer is almost over, school is starting next week.

Just editing some family snapshots and I came across two image my son either photographed himself or he set up for me to photograph. At this point, I really forget who pushed the button on the cameraphone.

" Wooden Gun and A Collection Of Coffee Creamers, 2011 " is the shot above.

"AMPM Snack Packer Hanging By Pushpins On My Wall, 2011 " is the shot below.

Doppelgänger

Doppelgänger: a tangible double of a living person in fiction, folklore, and popular culture that typically represents evil. In the vernacular, the word has come to refer to any double or look-alike of a person, often viewed in melancholy emotions.

The word also is used to describe the sensation of having glimpsed oneself in peripheral vision, in a position where there is no chance that it could have been a reflection. Doppelgängers often are  regarded as harbingers of bad luck. In some traditions, a doppelgänger seen by a person's friends or relatives portends illness or danger, while seeing one's own doppelgänger is an omen of mortality.

Anyone who saw the Mr. Anderson short film series created by Thomas Broening immediately identified the main character as Thomas' doppelganger. T.B. sums up the project and speaks frankly about his intentions and the final product in this insightful interview. View it HERE.



Mr Anderson: An Interview with the Film Maker from Thomas Broening on Vimeo.

Leonard Susskind / Scientific American

I've been wrapped up in this family vacation for the past few weeks for so long I forgot I knew how to work for a living...or that I even had a job.
Coming back I realized I had some stuff to share from the world of commerce, so here we go.

Sz and I showed up to the office of Leonard Susskind one spring day in Palo Alto. Polite and courteous with a calm exterior there was a quality that Susskind emitted that she and I both felt. Strong intellect, total focus, centered and humming at full speed...I can't really put my finger on it. It's like the feeling you get when you can feel the electricity flowing thru an appliance: it is silent, it is unstoppable, its not tangible, but you know it is there. And it is very inspiring to be around.

When I left I wondered why I made such a simple portrait of him...I didn't really ask him to do anything. Was I afraid? Was I intimidated? Not either of thoese things, I don't think. But I do think I felt like his presence was so strong, I really only needed to focus the camera.

Summer Snapshot / PDX

Eli and I don't make photographs with any degree of seriousness these days. All the work of ECHOLILIA really started and ended in a bubble, but the kind of learned communication still exists. It is like he learned how to be in front of my camera and I learned how to bring whatever he gives me to life...or at least interpret it.

On a family vacation in Portland and made this image. In person I don't know if Eli would really catch your eye at all. He appears like a messey nine year old wearing a baseball hat like a trillion other kids. But in front of the camera, or my camera...he is just striking. Long hair catches the light and thick lips and curious eyes and it's really like...breathtaking. Or maybe it just is to his Dad? I dunno. The project may be over but images of him will always surface and always be stirring.

So Many Things All At Once: Some Related, Some Not

One day in 2010 I was driving across the Bay Bridge during some day of career turmoil: a shoot had gone bad, the client was angry, I was losing the client and the friendly vibes I previously shared with them...the easy breezy nature of our relationship was fading. People were getting fired. New regimes were taking over and they were no longer enjoying what I had to offer.

At that moment my car's rear view mirror snapped off and fell on the dash. Wow...a moment of clarity. Everything looked clear ahead. No looking back. No chance to linger on the past. Just look out into the wide open space before you...no mirror to distract the view. What did it mean? Maybe nothing? But maybe a sign to just keep moving forward.

I was walking on the sidewalk to Dogpatch Studios in SF for the lecture on Social Networking. I feel a pull of rubber and glue and feel the strange disorientation that occurs when your heel breaks off of your shoe. Uh oh. What does it mean? Is it a sign? Should I go home? Is there just too much going on right now...too many lives being lead? Is this telling me something? Most likely no. I loved the shoes but they were $20 dollars...sometimes things fall apart.

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Heather Elder, Miki Johnson, Josh Bob and Christian Peacock all worked to put together this event. Originally I feared this event would rub me the wrong way. I was afraid the vibe of greed and capitalism would taint the creative medium that this social networking thing has always seemed to me to be. Sitting there listening to Miki introduce the concepts of the event and of her philosophy, you realize that this Social Networking thing isn't very new at all. It is deep and rooted in what makes us human. These ideas and concepts it is based on are universal...and touch on things that are universally satisfying. Miki and Heather were on the same page here and seemed to echo these points in various forms. Me? I just tried to talk about what I knew. Here are some points that stuck in my brain and still resonated in the days following:

Humans have a need to communicate that never goes away.
Everything of value in your life has grown from a conversation...whether that was via a phone or cave writing or a note passed in class.
The hunger for the "story" is a constant over time and nothing is more powerful.
There are as many stories as there are people, and all of our stories are uniquely important.

As I'm taking this all in Brooke Embry of Tidepool sends me a snapshot via text of the ECHOLILIA event she is hosting in LA. Here is a gallery, filled with people, thinking and looking and discussing the images my son and I put together for our project. Here in the gallery it isn't the whole installation, but a short sentence of 7 big and bold images, melancholy and fleshy all at once. I can't be there..neither can he...but someone can, and we can now peek into their experience. Our life can be shared there in LA, shared here in SF, and really you never run out of things to share. A real time real life status update. Please share!

I take in this moment and swallow it, cherish it. It is not epic and it's not mundane either. But it'll never really happen just like this again.

Top: APA Social Getworking Panel, Miki Johnson, Josh Bobb, Heather Elder and TA.
Bottom: Hazelle Withers at the ECHOLILIA show, 728 Alley in Santa Monica.

The Social Network / Thursday, July 21st at Dogpatch

Heather Elder, Miki Johnson and I are featured in Thursday's APA event unfortunately titled "Social Getworking". The name implies that this blogging, Facebooking, Twittering thing is not just fun...but is a serious tool used to leverage your business, stand out in the market place and somehow "get working"? Is it or is it not? Oh...it is different things for different people and that is really what I'm trying to figure out how to express as I'm preparing for my part of the talk.

Friday afternoon I posted a call out to FB essentially wondering what people were interested in hearing about. Generating buzz, creating an identity, getting followers, finding topics, separting personal stuff from business stuff...all of these thoughts came to the surface and all of these things made me realize just how I am so not the one to handle this lecture....I really have the answers to none of these things. But I better make something up quick.

But...it has helped me answer a few things by pushing me. Like the obvious question...what is your blog about? For me it is about the mix of things that make up my life: the creative path, parenthood, commercial photography, and the work of other great photographers I discover.

Why do people tune in? They most likely like the other photographers I celebrate and they are on a creative path themselves.

What price do they pay? Oh...well they have to endure me promoting my commercial work and art work and my various forms of self celebration.

What is the end goal? Build a community, get hired more, and share my creative path.

Is it working? I think so.

But more work to be done so I do not blow it at this event. More to come, I'll share it all here...as well as these two shots of my kids. Cuz with this social networking world, I'm nothing notable without those kids.

Buy tickets / more info on the event HERE.

The Wear Twins / UCLA

 

Working for a living in the most wonderful way.

The great team of photographer Paul Bennett, art directors Charlie Hess, Alicia Patel and Mallory Guillemette. We all got together with The Wear Twins in the splendor of Royce Hall at UCLA.

More on this to come...

Shannon Amos Q & A on P.O.P.

Allison McCreery has a great interview with stylist Shannon Amos on her blog Photographers On Photography. It just hit on Monday and has been quoted and referenced on blogs throughout the week. It is no secret that there really wouldn't be a commercial career to T.A. if it wasn't for the hand and eye of Amos. I pulled a great quote here, but read the whole thing HERE.

I wish someone would have come to career day and talked about being a stylist. That would have been an Ah-Ha moment. It also would have made my parents understand a little better why I was compelled to redecorate and paint my bedroom on a weekly basis.

I am completely visually driven and have been since I was a kid. I would find a way to skip math class and go sit all day in the art room. Otherwise I was always reading design, fashion and art books in the library. Luckily, I went to a very liberal high school and actually felt a great deal of encouragement.

I finally put all of these interests together and started working at our local theaters doing wardrobe and building sets. And let me just say there is nothing that will teach a stylist to work on a budget like live theater. After high school I moved to San Francisco and got a job at the New Lab developing film. I had no idea when I took that job how greatly it would effect the rest of my life. Suddenly I was spending eight hours a day viewing the work of the photography world greats. It was a usual Saturday afternoon to sit around with Jim Marshall while he waited for his film and hear all the stories behind the legendary photographs that he had taken.

In the process of proofing film I started developing an eye for what works and what does not in a frame. How color and texture are effected by lighting. And how much is needed or not to tell the story or sell the product. There was also a lot to be learned from what photographers were leaving on the cutting room floors.

Subscribe and tune into Photographers On Photography HERE.

I Love Photographers

Went to The Looking Glass in Berkeley for some Moab Entrada and came across this snapshot in the bathroom/film changing room. I took a picture of it, all props and apologies to the original photographer, to the subject and to the tatoo artist...it was just so special I had to share.