Tonite : Sally Mann speaks at SPE National Conference

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

Seasonal Favorites

There is the peppermint stick ice cream, the pumpkin pie ice cream, the harvest ale, the yams with marshmellows...you know, the seasonal favorites? Only for a limited time?

I shot these images last year, put them in the freezer, and am bringing them out for a month only.

See the Seasonal Favorites HERE.

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.

In LA : A Shot Of Echolilia

In LA on Thursday evening: Watch the sunset, stroll along Montana Avenue. Stop by 728 Alley. Drink in the art and do a shot of ECHOLILIA. In the north alley off Montana Avenue Between 11th and 12th St., Santa Monica, California. Also showing prints by Kerri Parker. Come join us for food, drinks and conversation. Nourishing snacks compliments of holistic dietitian & yoga teacher Beth R. Sobel.

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.

American Photography 25 Party

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Of course I was otherwise occupied trying to photograph someone on that green rug I bought...and was on another coast that evening....and kinda had to do something mundane like make dinner with pancake mix and egg beaters because my wife went to the gym or something....but I was there in spirit!
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Wha?
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The American Photography 25 party, held at the Angel Orensanz Foundation last Thursday. Looks like others were not so easily distracted, huh?
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Thanks to thoughtful folk Moya McAllister and James Worrell who hooked me up with these great snaps of my work from the party. Looks like they lay out pages of the book on the wall...also looks to me like they layed the book out alphabetically.....I never really understood the motivation there....oh, whatever...its kewl in a random kind of way.
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