with love and gratitude

The Burn, Fall 2009

As my time is coming to a close at Ragdale, I am so, so grateful to all the people who make a place like this exist. Friday I stopped by the Barn house to retrieve some items from my room and the dining table was filled with staff. I was initially very surprised because usually it is the residents having a delicious dinner there created by chef Linda. As I left, I marveled at how many people it takes to support this endeavor. And what an endeavor it is! I have been working on several projects. Yesterday was an undistracted 10 hour day of culling thru images. What an incredible luxury. NO DISTRACTIONS! And I got to listen to Paul Simon all day (thanks to Alden's play lists). A deep, deep appreciation to the staff, the board of directors and all who contribute to create such an amazing, magical place.

The Burn, Fall 2009

St. John of the Cross

Again, another entry from Bill Viola's note book writings, Reasons for Knocking on An Empty House. Here is a poem by Spanish poet St. John of the Cross (1542-1591)
He was imprisoned for nine months in 1577 in a cell, unable to stand or see any day light. He wrote many poems while there.

To reach satisfaction in all,
desire its possession in nothing.
To come to the knowledge of all, desire the knowledge of nothing.
To come to possess all, desire the possession of nothing.
To arrive at being all, desire to be nothing.

To come to the pleasure you have not,
you must go by a way in which you enjoy not.
To come to the knowledge you have not,
you must go by a way in which you know not.
To come to the possession you have not,
you must go by a way in which you possess not.
To come to be what you are not,
you must go by a way in which you are not.

When you turn toward something,
you cease to cast yourself upon the all.
For to go from the all to the all,
you must leave yourself in all.
And when you come to the possession of all,
you must possess it without wanting anything.

In this nakedness the spirit finds its rest,
for when it covets nothing,
nothing raises it up,
and nothing weighs it down,
because it is in the center of its humility.

___ St. John of the Cross (1542-1591)

more on the creative process


this is a new piece of public art on Maple Street in Evanston. I don't know who the sculptor is but it is very, very striking.



So I am at a Ragdale artist residency, trying to sink into the creative process. It is not so easy to empty oneself and be open to whatever muses offer themselves up. It is often a struggle (see 2 posts earlier). I feel that one of the purposes of this blog is to offer up any helpful hints that might help cultivate your creative process...

so here it goes.

I have been reading some of Bill Viola's Reasons for Knocking on an Empty House. The writings are taken from his notebooks of the past 25 years. I bought the book a while back and am only just now delving into it.

In 1979 he writes,

"Landscape can exist as a reflection of the inner walls of the mind, or as a projection of the inner state without. Flat open vast space lends itself to a cleaner monitoring of the subjective inner world...Removing all cues, from the outside, the voices of the inner state become louder, clearer."

My studio is situated on the prairie with with lots of light permeating the room.


It feels so vast and expansive. It is a privilege to live in it for 2 weeks, watching the light change throughout the day. Years ago I worked with ice in the depths of the winter and decided to explore it once again. I am most productive when I take myself out of the equation, when I can empty myself and just wait and see what the universe offers up.

For those of you interested in an artist residency, I highly recommend it.
You can learn more about it and obtain the Ragdale application here.

from Mark Strand

I woke up this morning and the first thing I read was this poem by Mark Strand...

The Idea

For us, too, there was a wish to possess
Something beyond the world we knew, beyond ourselves,
Beyond our power to imagine, something nevertheless
In which we might see ourselves; and this desire
Came always in passing, in waning light, and in such cold
That ice on the valley's lakes cracked and rolled,
And blowing snow covered what earth we saw,
And scenes from the past, when they surfaced again,
Looked not as they had, but ghostly and white
Among false curves and hidden erasures;
And never once did we feel we were close
Until the night wind said, "Why do this,
Especially now? Go back to the pace you belong;"
And there appeared, with its windows glowing, small,
In the distance, in the frozen reaches, a cabin;
And we stood before it, amazed as its being there,
And would have gone forward and opened the door,
And stepped into the glow and warmed ourselves there,
But that is was ours by not being ours,
And should remain empty. That was the idea.

A few updated images from New Orleans

I returned to New Orleans this past December, 2 years having passed since my last trip. I found a few locations I had photographed in 2005...

Much to my surprise, the "Broken Steeple" church in Algiers was still broken with just the facade intact. The steeple was resting on the grass, patiently awaiting its return to glory.

this is the original photograph taken in 2005





This church had been completely demolished.


After driving around I found its new, second location.




Here are the Make it Right homes that have been reconstructed in the Lower Ninth.




There are definately pockets of construction and activity that were not happening on 2007, including the Lower Ninth Village and the Lower Ninth Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development.

Things keep changing. No, it won't ever be the same, but then what is?

Body in Transformation ~ Anne McDonald

Anne McDonald is showing an amazing "body" of work tonight at the Ad Hoc Gallery in Brooklyn. The images are unique prints on roll photo paper and made without using a camera-the bodies are life-sized. I can only imagine the fun she had while creating these works. It is so refreshing to see photographic materials stretched beyond their original intent. This work inspires one to get in there and play!

Body of Light
detail, made by sprinkling powdered bleach onto developed photo paper, 50 x 111 ins.

The Metaphoric Body

detail, Contact print of small objects, 50 x 130 ins.

Disease and Decay, the fragile skin

detail, Made by making a body of glue, and digging down through it with chemistry, 42 x 96 ins.

the transformative power of art ~ lauren e. simonutti

If you ever wondered what it is like to struggle with a mental illness, just take a look at Lauren E. Simonutti's work. She has been featured on LensCulture, Shots Magazine, and will be having her first solo exhibition titled "8 Rooms, 7 Mirrors, 6 Clocks, 2 Minds & 199 Panes of Glass" at the Catherine Edelman Gallery, opening January 8th. The work is stunning, incredibly raw and courageous. Giving full expression to the tormented psyche is a gift to us all as we peer into our collective humanity.

The Devil's Alphabet: V (2007)



Edelman states:

"Mental illness is not something easily understood. Most of us only hear about it through television or the cinema, which tends to sensationalize the condition. Rarely do we meet a person truly afflicted with mental illness who can explain it. In 2006, Lauren E. Simonutti started hearing three distinct voices in her right ear, the ear she lost hearing in years prior. After numerous hospitalizations and mis-diagnoses, Lauren was finally given a name to her illness, rapid cycling, mixed state bipolar with schizoaffective disorder, and given proper medicines which allows her to function with great clarity on a daily basis.

Tomorrow is My Birthday and All My Friends are Here (2006)

Taking pictures since she was twelve, Lauren turned the camera on herself, photographing within the confines of her home, which she has rarely left since 2006. The result of this self-imposed isolation is a haunting, honest body of work about mental illness and a testament to her resilience and need to confront and understand her condition."



As she says in her artist statement:

"Madness strips things down to their core. It takes everything and in exchange offers only more madness, and the occasional ability to see things that are not there....The problem with madness is that you can feel it coming but when you tell people you think you are going crazy they do not believe you. It is too distant a concept. Too melodramatic. You don’t believe it yourself until you have fallen so quickly and so far that your fingernails are the only thing holding you up, balanced with your feet dangling on either side of a narrow fence with your heart and mind directly over center, so that when you do fall it will split you in two. And split equally. So there’s not even a stronger side left to win.....Over three and one half years I have spent alone amidst these 8 rooms, 7 mirrors, 6 clocks, 2 minds and 199 panes of glass. And this is what I saw here. This is what I learned."
— lauren e. simonutti



"As for my working technique: All work is 100% digital free. Any manipulation has been done either in camera (occasionally), or in darkroom (usually).

Let me clarify that I have nothing against digital. I do not desire to disparage, denigrate or disrespect it. I simply prefer to get my hands wet.

Nearly all my images are large format (4x5 or 5x7 inch negatives) contact prints, exposed under a 100 watt bulb, then selectively bleached and toned. I apply the chemistry with brushes.

While I have my preferred techniques, (sepia, selenium and silver bleach are my main palette), there is always the element of chance. Chemistry does not always react the same, water does not always run in the same direction. I have been known to spill things. Each print is different.

For some reason I only listen to music in the darkroom. I find watching clocks tiresome so I time film processing by music — I have a range of songs of the proper length. Film goes in, music goes on (Tom Waits, Bowie, Bauhaus), song ends, film comes out.

I don’t time prints, I print by inspection. My favourite papers have both been discontinued to date, (Azo & Bergger contact printing papers), so at some point I will have to adapt my working technique, as I have virtually no supply. I am curious to see what will happen."

Rousseau on Happiness

"If there is a state where the soul can find a resting-place secure enough to establish itself and concentrate its entire being there, with no need to remember the past or reach into the future, where time is nothing to it, where the present runs on indefinitely but this duration goes unnoticed, with no sign of the passing of time, and no other feeling of deprivation or enjoyment, pleasure or pain, desire or fear than the simple feeling of existence, a feeling that fills our soul entirely, as long as this state lasts, we can call ourselves happy, not with a poor, incomplete and relative happiness such as we find in the pleasures of life, but with a sufficient, complete and perfect happiness which leaves no emptiness to be filled in the soul." - Rousseau


photo from the book Look and Leave : Photographs and Stories from New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward © Jane Fulton Alt

A thought for the New Year from Rilke

On Patience



"I beg you…to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without ever noticing it, live your way into the answer…"
- Rainer Maria Rilke

Original Mind

Our "original mind" includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself. You should not lose your self-sufficient state of mind. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.
Shunryu Suzuki-roshi

David Halliday

I became familiar with David Halliday and his work while in New Orleans this past week while participating with him on a PhotoNola panel discussion. His work speaks volumes about beauty...so elegantly seen and presented. Check out his website.


Frutti di Bosco, 1998
sepia toned silver print
4.5 x 6

Still Life with Cantaloupe & Scissors, 1998
sepia toned silver print
11 x 15

David's work was included in two shows that opened this week at the Arthur Rogers Gallery and the Homespace Gallery. The later exhibit was titled, Revival : Historical Precesses in Contemporary Photography and was curated by Richard McCabe. It included the works of many photography masters, including Sally Mann and Robert Park Harrison.

Ciccada, 1996
sepia toned silver print
11 x 22

I am planning on featuring more work from the New Orleans art scene so stay tuned. It is a happening place with lots of exciting work going on.

Greetings from New Orleans

Here few of the highlights from New Orleans...

I went to the L9 community art center in the lower ninth ward where Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun have their Studio. They lost many of their negatives after the storm but are reclaiming their lives. So great to finally meet them. And their work is awesome.


Mural at the New Orleans American Museum of Art, Culture and History


Second line parade Monday morning at 9:30 am!




Louisiana State Museum where I took a morning yoga class overlooking Jackson Square.


Christmas parade on on Canal Street.


On route from the airport there is a billboard that says be sure to check out the "miracle on Fulton street." I finally made it over to the one block to see this christmas extravaganza. They had a bubble machine blower that simulated snow...I guess that was the miracle.

Stay tuned for more on the New Orleans art scene...

On the Men and Women who Serve ~ Ellen Susan

While on route to New Orleans as I was passing thru airport security, I spotted a young man in fatigues surrounded by his family with his mother clutching Kleenex in her hand. They were all hovered around the young soldier, bidding him a farewell. I looked into his face. He seemed so youthful and innocent. My mind then traveled to a photographer, Ellen Susan, whose work focuses on the young men and women who serve our country and with whom I will be participating in the Six Shooters Panel discussion at PhotoNola.

SPC Brandie Carpenter, Brandie, 2007 , Ambrotype 6"x6"

In Susan's words..

"The Soldier Portraits Project is a work in progress. The project consists of portrait photographs of soldiers of the United States Army, primarily of the 3rd Infantry Division.

SPC Brandilynn Corntassell, 2007, Ambrotype, 6 x 6 in

The photographs are made using the 150 year old collodion wet plate process - the primary photographic method from the 1850s through the 1880s, encompassing the dates of the American Civil War. The men and women photographed for the Soldier Portraits project are members of the U.S. Army based in Southeast Georgia. Most have deployed to Iraq one to three times since 2003.

PFC William Burnett, 2007, Ambrotype 6"x6"

The necessarily long exposures of this process often result in an intensity of gaze, and the grainless, highly detailed surface brings out minute details of each individual. These attributes, combined with the historical military associations made me feel that the process could be a meaningful way to photograph contemporary soldiers to provide a counterpoint to the anonymous representations seen in newspapers and on television. I wanted to produce physically enduring, visually arresting images of people who are being sent repeatedly into a war zone."

SGT Timothy Campbell, 2007, Ambrotype 6"x6"

Jennifer Shaw's Hurricane Story

I am returning to New Orleans for some book signings, panel discussions and to participate in PhotoNOLA 2009 . The New Orleans Photo Alliance (NOPA) did not exist pre Katrina and has grown into a very robust, all volunteer organization. They have had much support and have worked incredibly hard on what will be, I am sure, a fabulous week of photography events.

During my second visit to New Orleans I met with another photographer, Jennifer Shaw. I heard of her trials in dealing with Hurricane Katrina..she was nine months pregnant and...well the rest is told in her book, Hurricane Story.

We left in the dark of night © Jennifer Shaw

"I was nine months pregnant and due in less than a week when Hurricane Katrina blew into the Gulf. In the early hours of August 28, 2005 my husband and I loaded up our small truck with two cats, two dogs, two crates full of negatives, all our important papers and a few changes of clothes. We evacuated to a motel in southern Alabama and tried not to watch the news. Monday, August 29 brought the convergence of two major life changing events; the destruction of New Orleans and the birth of our son. It was two long months and 6000 miles on the road before we were able to return home."

When we arrived at the hospital it was time © Jennifer Shaw

"Hurricane Story is a depiction of our family’s evacuation experience – the birth, the travels and the return. These photographs represent various elements of our ordeal. The project began as a cathartic way to process some of the lingering anger and anxiety over that bittersweet journey. It grew into a narrative series of self-portraits in toys that illustrate my experiences and emotional state during our time in exile."

In spite of it all there's no place like home © Jennifer Shaw

Guthrie Contemporary
Opening: Saturday, Dec 5, 6-9pm
3815 Magazine St.
New Orleans, LA 70115
www.guthriecontemporary.com

After the Storm ~ Final days of Exhibition


I am feeling really sad about the end of my exhibition, After the Storm, that is currently up at the Chicago Cultural Center until December 27th. It has been a great venue, seen by many... a dream come true. The inclusion of text and a continuous video with great New Orleans music has provided more context for the photographs.





There have been several reviews of the show.
New City
Chicago Maroon
The Red Room

The book is now available online and I so appreciate it having been published. However, the exhibit is a more visceral experience, maybe because of the size of the prints, the music and the text.

If you haven't seen the show yet, please make an effort to get down there...you won't be disappointed.

David Maisel

David Maisel has once again pushed the boundaries of photography while exploring memory and excavation. While at a residency at the Getty Research Institute, he states that he began exploring "where the realms of art and scientific research overlap each other. While photographing the Getty Museum’s conservation departments, I became captivated by x-rays of art objects from the museum’s permanent collections. The ghostly images of these x-rays seem to surpass the power of the original objects of art. These spectral renderings seemed like transmissions from the distant past, conveying messages across time."



"History’s Shadow comprises my series of re-photographed x-rays of art objects from antiquity. I have culled these x-rays from museum archives, which utilize them for conservation purposes. Through the x-ray process, the artworks of origin become de-familiarized and de-contextualized, yet acutely alive and renewed."


"I view these x-rays as expressions of the artists and artisans who created the original objects, however many centuries ago; as vestiges and indicators of the societies that produced these works; and as communications from the past, expressing immutable qualities that somehow remain constant over time."



For those of you who are not familiar with David's work, it is well worth your time to visit his website. He has done some amazing work, including his Mining Project and his Library of Dust series



“. . . these canisters hold the cremated remains of patients from an American psychiatric hospital. Oddly reminiscent of bullet casings, the canisters are literal gravesites. Reacting with their ash inhabitants, the canisters are now blooming with secondary minerals, articulating new metallic landscapes.”

— Geoff Manaugh, Contemporary