Young Photographer winner: Slender in the Night by Arnav Deshpande

Like the spiders they are commonly confused with, opiliones too have eight legs – mostly long and thin in contrast to their bodies. They are living fossils, the original ‘Daddy Longlegs’, having remained unchanged for millions of years. On a rainy night, the young photographer spotted this opilione sheltering in a crevice, raindrops glistening on its limbs

Photograph: Arnav Deshpande/2023 Nature inFocus Photography Awards

Bryan Randall owned his own company, Bryan Randall Photography, and majorly focused on children’s portraits and outdoor scenes

Sandra Bullock’s longtime partner, Bryan Randall, died on August 5 at the age of 57 after a battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Bryan’s family confirmed the news to Page Six on Monday, August 7.

“It is with great sadness that we share that on Aug. 5, Bryan Randall passed away peacefully after a three-year battle with ALS,” his family said. “Bryan chose early to keep his journey with ALS private and those of us who cared for him did our best to honor his request.”

“We are immensely grateful to the tireless doctors who navigated the landscape of this illness with us and to the astounding nurses who became our roommates, often sacrificing their own families to be with ours,” it added. The family has asked for “privacy to grieve and to come to terms with the impossibility of saying goodbye to Bryan.”

Who was Bryan Randall?

Bryan, who was originally from Portland, Oregon, and was a professional photographer. He owned his own company, Bryan Randall Photography, and majorly focused on children’s portraits and outdoor scenes.

Bryan had also worked as a model and even did campaigns for Yves Saint Laurent and Hugo Boss. He was seen in pages of high-end fashion magazines like Vogue Paris and Harper’s Bazaar Singapore. He briefly studied acting at Los Angeles drama school Anthony Meindl’s Actor Workshop.

Bryan shared a daughter, Skylar Staten Randall, with his previous partner. It is unclear if he was ever married.

Randall reportedly dated Paris St. John, the daughter of late ‘Young and the Restless’ star Kristoff St. John and retired boxer Mia St. John. “He’s funny, light-hearted, a very free spirit, goofy and playful,” Mia previously told Page Six of Bryan. “He’s amazing with kids.”

How did Sandra Bullock and Beyan Randall meet?

Bryan met Sandra in 2015 while photographing the birthday party of her son. They kept their romance out of the public eye for the most part, but Sandra appeared on ‘Red Table Talk’ in December 2021 and said that she had “found the love of my life” in him. “We share two beautiful children — three children, [Randall’s] older daughter. It’s the best thing ever,” Sandra said. She had adopted son Louis, 13, and daughter Laila, 10.

“He’s the example that I would want my children to have,” Sandra said during the same interview. “I have a partner who’s very Christian and there are two different ways of looking at things. I don’t always agree with him, and he doesn’t always agree with me. But he is an example even when I don’t agree with him.”

“I’m stubborn but sometimes I need to sit back and listen and go, ‘You’re saying it differently but we mean exactly the same thing,’” she added. “It’s hard to co-parent because I just want to do it myself.”

Speaking of marriage, Sandra had said, “I don’t need a paper to be a devoted partner, devoted mother. I don’t need to be told to be ever-present in the hardest of times. I don’t need to be told to weather a storm with a good man.”

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• Topics
• Death
• Sandra Bullock
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The death of legendary photographer Jerry Uelsmann at age 87 in 2022 saddened the photography world as it did fans and enthusiasts in Gainesville.

Now admirers can celebrate his life and work at the University of Florida’s Harn Museum of Art, which is honoring his work with an exhibition of 37 prints titled, “Jerry Uelsmann: A Celebration of His Life and Art.”

Uelsmann was a professor at the University of Florida for 38 years and worked in a traditional wet darkroom, using up to seven enlargers to print multiple negatives. The resulting fantastical landscapes were lauded as innovative and riveting during the late 1960s and 1970s.

The handmade images now seem even more astonishing, as today’s fine-art photographers rely on highly powerful editing software to create similar work. The exhibit, curated by Dr. Carol McCusker, the Harn curator of photography, includes prints from the Harn’s collection and the photographer’s Gainesville Archive.

“Jerry Uelsmann is part of the University of Florida’s institutional history and memory,” McCusker said in a statement on the Harn’s website. “This exhibition is a comprehensive appreciation of the man through his distinct vision, wry humor and prolific creativity.”

Indeed, the exhibition includes a section illustrating his whimsical frame of mind seen through whirly gigs, toys and visual jokes. He also collected the work of other artists, including paintings and folk art that hung in his Gainesville home.

The Harn opened the exhibit in June, and it will run through Feb. 18.

Fran Towk, 71, a University of Florida graduate, has been following Uelsmann’s work for decades and got the opportunity recently to see Uelsmann’s work.

“It’s just so exciting to see what he does with the visual image. His display, laying things on other things, floating things, it’s always exciting to see,” she said.

Jeanine Tatlock, a visitor services coordinator at the Harn Museum of Art, said that attendance at the museum has seen a noticeable increase in since the exhibit was opened.

“I definitely think people did come just to see the exhibit specifically,” Tatlock said. “I think Jerry Uelsmann had a really strong connection to this community.”

Along with the increased attendance at the museum, the Uelsmann exhibit has had a positive impact on the community, according to Errol Nelson, the assistant of the curator of photography at the museum.

“Beyond being an internationally recognized photographer, I think Jerry Uelsmann has a very deep and lasting impact on the community in Gainesville,” said Nelson, who also serves as the curatorial program coordinator.

“Through his process, through his teaching and through his general involvement in the community, I think he’s made a very lasting impression,” he said.

The exhibit includes plenty of astonishing pieces of photography created by Uelsmann, as well as an overview of the creativity he displayed in life. Next to many of the photos is text that explains the lifestyle he lived, which contributed to the special photography he captured.

Christine Yancy, a museum visitor who stumbled upon the exhibition, said she was astonished by Uelsmann’s work. “I like things that spark my imagination… it’s very thought-provoking,” Yancy said.

This is a common opinion among many fans of Uelsmann, as well as people who became fans after hearing of the exhibit.

George Baxter, another museumgoer, is a fan of photography but had not seen Uelsmann’s work until he visited the Harn Museum of Art. After hearing about the exhibit, he came to view it.

“To me, where a museum is successful, is when people leave and their lives have been impacted, that they just don’t come and go,” Baxter said. “But you can’t look at his photographs without thinking and seeing a depth that normally wouldn’t be there.”

Baxter’s wife of 60 years, Debbie Baxter, was equally as impressed with Uelsmann’s work.

“He’s wonderful,” said Debbie Baxter. “Not only is there a spiritual element to his photography, but he also has humor.”

Uelsmann’s impact on the international scale of photography was solidified decades ago. And now, the Uelsmann exhibit has reminded Gainesville residents of the treasurers left by their late neighbor.

“His career and innovative, creative process will continue to inspire and enrich the lives of generations of university students through the Harn’s permanent collection of his work,” Dr. Lee Anne Chesterfield, art director of the Harn, said in a statement on the museum’s website.

The Fahey/Klein Gallery presents Muses & Self: Photographs by Allen Ginsberg. This exhibition of Ginsberg’s personal photographs balances our understanding of the public, outspoken poet and most prominent figure of the Beat Generation. At his core, Allen Ginsberg was a witness and chronicler of the world; his profound admiration for the beauty of the vernacular, intense observation, and celebration of the present moment guided his photography and poetry. The photographs included in this exhibition are joyful, often tender, sometimes profound while at other times humorous – and capture Ginsberg’s numerous meaningful relationships.

“The poignancy of a photograph comes from looking back to a fleeting moment in a floating world.” – Allen Ginsberg

Ginsberg had two distinct photographic periods, from the early 1950s into the 1960s and then the 1980s until his death in 1997. Ginsberg initially picked up a used Kodak Retina camera to take snapshots of the playful nature of his now-famous friends, including writers Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and Neal Cassady. Ginsberg lost this beloved camera, and his photographic tendencies went dormant. Until twenty years later, when his rediscovered negatives and prints ignited his second dalliance with photography. With encouragement from photographers Robert Frank and Bernice Abbott, Ginsberg invested in better photographic equipment and made new portraits of longtime friends and new acquaintances – including Francesco Clemente, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Toni Morrison, and Patti Smith. These subtle portraits are filled with complex realizations about his life that are echoed in the meticulous handwritten captions often incorporated beneath the images.

In conjunction with the exhibition of photographs taken by Allen Ginsberg, the Fahey/Klein Gallery will host a preview of A Picture of My Mind: Poems Written by Allen Ginsberg’s Photographs, a   collection of ekphrastic poems generated by an AI-powered version of Ginsberg’s own text corpus in response to specific photographs. Developed in collaboration with poetry collective theVERSEverse, recognized as leaders in the contemporary linguistic avant-garde, and theVERSEverse member Ross Goodwin, a pioneering code poet whose “word.camera” (2018) turns digital image data into text, A Picture of My Mind enacts a dialogue between Ginsberg’s portraiture and poetry, and is supported by the Allen Ginsberg Estate and the Tezos Foundation.

“My poetry has always been a picture of my mind moving.” – Allen Ginsberg, Illuminated Poems

In his creative works, Allen Ginsberg was known to blend text and image metaphorically – as well as literally, by handwriting captions on his photographs. In celebration of Ginsberg’s avowedly experimental impulses, this collaboration utilizes an AI-powered camera to “read” a selection of Ginsberg photographs on view during the exhibition, translating his iconic vision of American counterculture into poetic responses influenced simultaneously by Ginsberg’s own canon, his undeniable presence woven inextricably into the written record of the internet, and parsed by AI. The resulting poems illuminate their companion photographs, transcending obvious interpretations of this towering literary figure to gaze more deeply into his watchful eye, and reveal the subtler echoes of his enduring voice. Just as Ginsberg innovated with automated writing techniques and popular technologies, this collection of AI generated poems taps the contemporary linguistic avant-garde to engage ritualistically, intuitively, and meaningfully with Ginsberg’s visual and poetic vernaculars.

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) was born in Newark, New Jersey, and emerged as a prominent voice in the countercultural movement of the 1950s and 1960s. His most famous work, “Howl,” a powerful and controversial poem that challenged societal conventions and explored themes of sexuality, spirituality, and political dissent, became a touchstone for a generation seeking liberation and authenticity.

Ginsberg’s relentless pursuit of personal and artistic freedom made him an iconic figure, and his activism and advocacy for social justice, including his involvement in anti-war and gay rights movements, further solidified his place in American literary and cultural history. Through his groundbreaking poetry and fearless exploration of taboo subjects, Ginsberg remains an enduring symbol of artistic rebellion and the search for individual and collective enlightenment.

About theVERSEverse:

Founded in late 2021 by the writers Ana Maria Caballero, Kalen Iwamoto and Sasha Stiles, theVERSEverse is a hybrid literary gallery and collective where poem = work of art. Poems and projects curated by theVERSEverse have traveled around the world as well as in the metaverse, garnering international acclaim and the support of visionary cultural figures and art institutions. Learn more at theVERSEverse.com.

Muses & Self : Photographs by Allen Ginsberg
August 10, 2023 through September 23, 2023
Exhibition Reception: Thursday, August 10th
Fahey/Klein Gallery
148 N La Brea Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
www.faheykleingallery.com

with a special preview of A Picture of My Mind : Poems Written by Allen Ginsberg’s Photographs