SooHoo’s images show special rapport between subject and photographer
“AIn’t”: UHS Student Photography Show featured at Art Center Ukiah, Corner Gallery
The 15th Annual Student Photography Show will be showcased both in the front windows of the Corner Gallery and in the Art Center Ukiah space in the rear of the gallery for the month of May.
“It’s a significant anniversary,” says photography teacher Lech Slocinski. “Ukiah High School students have been consistently creating quality photographs for 15 years. That’s thousands of images presented to the public over the years.”
The work on display will be from Ukiah High School students taking either the introduction to photography class or the dual enrollment Mendocino College Art 140 class.
The title of this show, “AIn’t,” refers to the fact that all the work on display will be actual photography as opposed to Artificial Intelligence generated images. Lech elaborates, “The students have done class assignments on different subjects, and I’ll be selecting the best examples for the show. There is definitely some AI embedded in the Photoshop program that the students are learning to use in class. Photoshop has more and more AI assisted tools to make the work easier and faster… but in these classes we do not create images with AI. We are trying to stick to the traditional art of image making for this show.”
Continuing on the subject of AI, Lech says, “One year I’d like to do a separate class in AI. The AI generated images are not ‘shots’ but ‘creations,’ which pushes us to redefine what art is. We are witnessing the birth of a new art form and we must ask the questions ‘Is it art, or is it a very sophisticated collage? Where does the art start, and who is the artist?’ With the blending of the images in AI you cannot tell what the original art is, like you can in collage where it is obvious that the individual elements were cut out of magazines or photos made by another person. AI makes things complicated because we don’t know who the original creators are. We can’t even assume that they’re human.”
This question about what defines art has been pondered for centuries. Lech points out that in the early stages of photography, French art critic and poet Charles Baudelaire declared that photography was for would-be painters who were too lazy to learn how to paint… the thought was that cameras are mechanical devices that any untalented dabbler could use and therefore photography was art’s greatest enemy. In fact, over the years photography became an art form itself. And its physical foundations keep on changing and evolving. First, with the switch to digital processing…and now it’s AI.
Lech embraces the unanswerable questions about what makes something art. “Now you have to look at the levels of art,” he says. “Let’s say, you want to write a novel, you have a great story (aren’t there only seven basic plots?) but you are not a writer, so you prompt an AI program to take paragraphs from existing novels and blend them together to fit your new narrative. But is it creative or is it plagiarism, or both? That would be easy to spot…”
Lech continues, “What if you use a more sophisticated AI program? What if you write a novel using a collage of sentences from published books? Is that original or not? Is the blending of someone else’s sentences to create a new narrative original art… or is it stealing? Ultimately, the question becomes how “small” the discrete units need to be blended so the outcome is considered to be an original creation. At what level a new art form is born and stands on its own?… I think it’s the skill used to put things together, to reassemble reality, that is the art. You have to have a vision to do it, which comes from a creative place deep inside the individual artist.”
Lech is totally comfortable with the uncertainty over what’s real and what’s not. He says, “I can look at a photo and love it…with no idea whether a person or AI did it… and I wonder if that really matters. There are no answers yet. It’s evolving. I’m not for or against AI… I’m just curious.”
The AIn’t show is generously sponsored by Mendocino County Office of Education.
The First Friday opening reception for AIn’t will be on May 3 from 5-8 p.m. Live music will be provided throughout the evening by Sy Frey. Art Center Ukiah is located in the rear of the Corner Gallery at 201 S. State St.
Petrit Halilaj’s Scratchy Doodles Grapple with Childhood Innocence on The Met Rooftop
“Abetare” (2024). All photos by Eileen Travell, courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, shared with permission
When visiting his hometown of Runik, Kosovo, back in 2010, Petrit Halilaj realized that his elementary school was being demolished. He went to the site—which had miraculously survived the Yugoslav wars that spurred his family to flee to an Albanian refugee camp in 1998—and found a pile of desks, many with doodles and notes scratched into their surfaces.
These etchings have now found their way to New York, where they’re perched atop The Met’s rooftop garden for Abetare, which translates to primer, as in the early education books used for learning basic literacy. Enlarged to proportions that would crush any singular tabletop, the rough drawings are presented as scratchy bronze sculptures depicting a flower, house, and spider á la Louise Bourgeois.
For the exhibition, Halilaj (previously) paired his initial findings with other scribbles recovered from desks throughout Albania, North Macedonia, and Montenegro, Balkan countries impacted by Serbian hostilities following Yugoslavia’s dissolution. “For me, returning to the region and visiting numerous schools was prompted by a desire to construct my own intimate map, in contrast to historical maps that reflect dominant narratives,” he shares. “We do not exist in isolation. We are shaped by each other’s identities, both positively and negatively.”
On view through October 27, Abetare features smaller works among the freestanding sculptures, including an arrow with Runik written in the center. Halilaj fastened that smaller piece to a concrete wall and pointed it toward the village as a way to tether the distant locations.
While playful and evocative of adolescent impulse, the works are a reminder of how war and conflict warp innocence. The project is also particularly timely as the city contends with helping tens of thousands of school-age migrants and the world witnesses mass atrocities in Palestine and Ukraine. Magnifying childhood transgressions, Abetare highlights what the artist refers to as small “acts of freedom” that defy ideology and systemic oppression.
Find more from Halilaj on Instagram.
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St. Louis’ Citygarden welcomes new sculptures in grand expansion
St. Louis news, weather, and sports.
Photographer Jacek Durski frames urban spaces transformed into places of rest
“My photo series, ‘Relaxation zone’, documents places that look simple but are anything but straightforward. I found all these places in Katowice, a city in Poland with over 300,000 residents.
The Silesian metropolis, of which the city is a part, is inhabited by two million people. Historically, this area was connected with heavy industry, such as copper mining and stone quarrying.
In the middle of this city, spaces have been transformed into resting places with the ‘furniture’ being made from whatever was available, from things that might be considered redundant, and created with a unique sense of aesthetics. At first glance, they look ugly but they are intriguing too. We often wonder how one could even function here. To grasp that, we need to understand the creators’ perspective and put ourselves in their shoes.
Each of these photos tells a story of a specific person or family. It shows their social status, interests and sometimes aspirations. Have a closer look at the details, they tell us much about the economic, political and cultural transformations that have occurred in Poland in recent years.
I captured the first ‘Relaxation zones’ in 2018 as stand-alone works but I kept stumbling upon such places. I looked back at my work and saw a pattern, a connection between those settings – that’s how the idea of creating a series came to be. I kept working on that project and, at this point, it features over 60 locations from Katowice and nearby cities.
There is no point in searching for people in these photos – I have excluded humans on purpose. Firstly, I do not intend to stigmatise anybody. I want to avoid creating awkward situations, caused by somebody misunderstanding what I’m trying to convey. Especially because, at times, the exhibitions are located fairly close to where the photo was taken. Secondly, the artefacts should speak for themselves – I want the viewer to look for them and be inclined to reflect. As for me, the details are by far the most exciting aspect. I sometimes go back to revisit those places – it’s like checking in on an old friend and asking ‘What’s up?’
The name of this series is a reaction to the strange, yet increasingly popular way of describing certain areas, such as ‘Parking zone’, ‘Passenger zone’… and ‘Relaxation zone’. When it is being displayed in galleries, I enjoy observing the guests during the exhibition – at times, I even eavesdrop. When I do, I often hear: “We had a table like this 10 years ago”, or “Look! Your mother has the same sofa”. That’s fascinating – the fact that viewers do not detach, but instead identify themselves with what they see”.
Based in Katowice, Poland, photographer Jacek Durski focuses on long-term projects exploring sociological themes and architecture. He began photography as a teenager and later graduated from the Academy of Photography in Krakow. His works have received numerous commendations and have been displayed at galleries.
A new exhibition at the Kengo Kuma & Associates–designed V&A Museum in Dundee, Scotland, explores how photography has shaped cities
Photo City: How Images Shape the Urban World
Victoria & Albert Museum Dundee
Through October 20
Most of us know the standard tourist factoids of the Eiffel Tower: It was only meant to be temporary, and it was famously unpopular among Parisians at the time. But what you might not know is that it was perhaps one of the first pieces of architecture built primarily for its own image.
The wrought iron icon went up just as a new technology—photography—was on the up and up, too. And with it came postcards. Once completed, tourists could send photos of the vistas bestowed from la Tour Eiffel’s height, or of views of it from the ground to friends and family.
Today, postcards have been replaced by the smartphone, but the impact is essentially the same. We all take the same photo of the same views and send it to our online acquaintances, letting them know where we are.
This phenomenon is explored more deeply in Photo City: How Images Shape the Urban World, now on view at the V&A Dundee.
The Kengo Kuma–designed museum is an apt location for the exhibition’s first outing. The sculptural $100 million museum’s cascading concrete is primed for the camera lenses of those who visit. The museum also takes center stage within Sohei Nishino’s Diorama Map, Dundee—a photographic collage of the city specially commissioned for the exhibition. Though Nishino’s photos capture a wide area, the Japanese artist focuses on details and people. “This wasn’t like cities I’d captured previously,” he told AN. “Before the coming I had no prior knowledge of Dundee. I spoke to people every day [over six weeks] to get a deeply personal perspective. It’s a social portrait of the city.”
Besides Nishino’s work, Photo City is a compilation of photographs, films, and imagery from the V&A’s vast archive that thrusts visitors into the history of the camera—and specifically how it coincided with the boom of cities. We are introduced to Nadar, an avid aerial French balloonist hell-bent on using hot air to capture the city from a new perspective. Though the first genuine aerial photograph was in fact taken in Boston, by James Wallace Black in 1860.
But just as the camera was used to document urban expansion and the creation of new cities, it has also been a means to destroy them. Almost immediately this novel technique of surveillance was weaponized by militaries to aid war efforts. A bit later, aerial photography was adopted by planners to plot urban development more formally—and exclusively—based on evidence and perspectives captured from above.
While Google Street View and camera phones have documented much of the Western world today, it was Cairo that was one of the most photographed cities in the 19th century, chiefly due to the cultural, military, and financial interests of Europe.
But while the city of Cairo was the subject back then, its individual inhabitants were not. Street life was difficult to capture due to the long exposure times demanded by early camera technology. Photographs of Cairo on display in Photo City show crowds that remain a blur.
That all changed later as cameras became more adept at capturing movement. Street photography emerged as a means of social commentary, and suddenly the city and the lives of its people came into focus. Some of the best street photographers including Henri Cartier Bresson, Berenice Abbott, and Paul Strand are all on show, brilliantly capturing city life, within which New York, and all its glamour and grit, features heavily.
There’s a distinct architectural focus here, too, with the work of the Smithsons as well Denise Scott Brown and Bob Venturi highlighted as a way of showing how street photography—connecting people to place—has inspired design methodologies.
Surveillance and the notion of city as a stage set is another undercurrent throughout the show. Who is photographing who and why? The digital frontier of capturing cities is the exhibition’s curtain call. As early aerial photographers snapped oblique views of ground below, they omitted the horizon line, causing cities to appear limitless. This, it turns out, is also the view favored by game developers who hint at this limitless-ness in the virtual realm.
Photo City, an exhibition that satisfies a nostalgic thirst for brilliant street photography and surprises with some uncomfortable truths, ends with Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi (1982)—perhaps one of the most iconic pieces of moving picture used to document urban life. Alongside it, Irish artist Alan Butler has recreated it using a hacked version of Grand Theft Auto—the infamous video game which was born right here in Dundee.
Jason Sayer is a writer and lecturer in London.
Cell phone photography workshop slated Friday in Alva
ALVA, Okla. — Nescatunga Arts and Humanities Council member David Poindexter, associate professor of visual arts at Northwestern Oklahoma State University, will lead a workshop about cell phone photography during the Alva’s First Friday Art Walk on Friday, May 3, 2024.
The workshop will be downtown on the first floor of The Runnymede, 402 4th, from 6-8 p.m. The fee is $10 per person. There will be a free display of artwork created by members of the Alva High School art classes led by Greg McClure.
Poindexter plans to review the basics of camera operation and the typical issues for different kinds of photographic subjects and situations. He also will present a few phone app options and discuss what to look for when thinking about the kinds of images one might want to photograph.
Participants can learn how to improve a few photos on their phones during the session and share the types of photo subjects they’d like to take better with their phones.
Membership in the council is open to those wishing to support the arts. Yearly membership dues are $25. Checks may be mailed to P.O. Box 152, Alva, OK 73717, or https://paypal.me/NescatungaArts. Booth registration also may be paid via PayPal.
Calling all women sports photographers – a $50K scholarship is up for grabs from Peak Design and The Roam Collective
The cycling industry can be a tough place to be a woman – with 71% of women considering leaving the industry, including seasoned veterans.
Women in sports photography hardly have it any better, with one study finding that women make up just 37% of the sports photography field.
Peak Design and The Roam Collective are seeking to change this via their recently announced Roam Media Core Scholarship for women in sports photography, videography and writing.
Peak Design is a “carry solutions” brand, creating tote bags, camera bags, phone-to-bike mounts and more while maintaining a 100% employee-owned business structure.
The Roam Collective is a nonprofit organization that aims to elevate representation in mountain biking by supporting inclusive programming and partnerships, such as the Roam Fest, a femme mountain biking festival for women, genderqueer femme folks and non-traditional riders held each year in September in Fruita, Colorado.
The pair have partnered up to support the scholarship for up-and-coming femme photographers and videographers, which offers $50,000 in monetary support along with facilitating industry connections, assisting with portfolio buildings and revealing the ‘unwritten rules’ of the sports content industry that often take years to learn and discover.
(Image credit: The Roam Collective)
“We are stoked to be launching the long-awaited Roam Media Core Scholarship. Particularly exciting is the opportunity this program will provide for networking, mentorship, and collaboration, both amongst the creatives, as well as with our brand partners,” shares Sami Ryan, Director of Partnerships of Roam Events. “By bringing together femme creatives through this scholarship program, the intention is to build an ongoing supportive community where they can learn from each other, share experiences, and build valuable connections that can benefit them throughout their careers.”
Those who already possess strong technical skill sets and are looking to break into the larger sports creative industry are encouraged to apply.
The scholarship will be extended to five femme creatives, with multiple of those spots reserved for BIPOC photographers, videographers and writers.
The up-and-coming creatives will be paired with professional mentors in the industry who will provide virtual workshops and in-person sessions at the 2024 Roam Fest.
Mentors include industry veterans such as Anne Keller, Emily Sierra, Heather Young, Leslie Kehmeier and Robin O’Neill.
Applicants to the scholarship must live in the U.S. and be able to travel to and from the 2024 Roam Fest in Fruita, Colorado on September 20-22. Scholarship applications are now open through May 15, 2024, with finalist interviews taking place May 20-24 and winners notified and announced on May 28. Those interested can apply here.
Fashion and Portrait Photographer Marc Hom’s New Exhibition Moves Outdoors—in a Big Way
Marc Hom’s retrospective exhibition at Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown includes a trove of masterfully achieved portraits featuring Anne Hathaway, Miley Cyrus, Angelina Jolie, Taylor Swift, and many others
An outdoor portion of the exhibition features 28 eleven-foot-high studio portraits mounted on frames that rotate in the wind—overlooking Otsego Lake
Cooperstown, NY — Danish photographer Marc Hom is recognized for his iconic portraits of some of the most recognized faces in the world. Over his decades-long career, he has artistically captured the likeness of Hollywood and cultural elites such as Anne Hathaway, Miley Cyrus, Angelina Jolie, Taylor Swift, King Frederik X of Denmark, and a seemingly endless list of notable names.
Marc Hom: Re-Framed is a summation of Hom’s work to date and a portrait of the artist’s restless mind. On view from May 25–September 2, 2024 at Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, the new exhibition offers visitors two components. The first resembles a traditional gallery retrospective. The second brings Hom’s work into a wilder space—the outdoors. Here his polished studio portraits are printed eleven feet high and mounted on Masonite frames that catch the weather, swiveling in the wind.
“From the moment I saw Marc Hom’s beautiful photographic work and became aware that he lived close by the museum, I wanted to showcase his photographs in our galleries,” said Dr. Paul S. D’Ambrosio, Fenimore Art Museum president and CEO. “Marc’s exhibition moves photography into new realms, coaxing us to follow along and giving us more freedom to explore the stunning images in our own ways. Fenimore is proud to share this groundbreaking new venture.”
Hom saw the exhibition as a chance to push against the conventions of a traditional gallery retrospective. For years, he had been fascinated by sculpture gardens—most of all Storm King, the 500-acre outdoor museum of landscaped fields in New York’s Hudson Valley. There, he thought, was art that did not merely rest against the wall waiting for passing admiration; the pieces almost grab you as you walk among them. While experiencing the outdoor portion of Hom’s exhibition, visitors will make their way through 28 images of ageless elegance—Anne Hathaway, Johnny Depp, Sofia Coppola, Cher—larger than life and perched in formation overlooking the pristine waters of Otsego Lake and its environs.
“I always loved the idea of being able to see art in all different kinds of situations,” said Marc Hom. “It’s one thing in the spring. It’s a different thing in the snow. It’s different in the rain, in the summer, in shadow, and in sun. So why don’t we try to combine the controlled environment of a so-called ordinary exhibition with the big open fields—a world completely uncontrolled?”
Marc Hom: Re-Framed is organized by Fenimore Art Museum. The exhibition is sponsored in part by Nellie and Robert Gipson and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas O. Putnam.
As a companion to the exhibition, Hom’s new book, “Re-Framed,” features the entire selection of portraiture on display and also details the development of the exhibition. The 160-page hard-cover is available exclusively at Fenimore Art Museum’s retail shop and on the museum’s website.
Visit FenimoreArt.org for more information.
Related Programming
For information on upcoming tours and programs, visit FenimoreArt.org.
About Fenimore Art Museum
Fenimore Art Museum, located on the shores of Otsego Lake—James Fenimore Cooper’s “Glimmerglass”—in historic Cooperstown, New York, offers visitors the opportunity to experience a wide variety of world-class art in an idyllic, small-town setting. The museum features a wide-ranging collection of American art including folk art; important American 18th- and 19th-century landscape, genre, and portrait paintings; more than 125,000 historic photographs representing the technical developments made in photography and providing extensive visual documentation of the region’s unique history; and the renowned Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art comprised of nearly 900 art objects representative of a broad geographic range of North American Indian cultures, from the Northwest Coast, Eastern Woodlands, Plains, Southwest, Great Lakes, and Prairie regions. Visit FenimoreArt.org.
Additional Summer Exhibitions
Bob Dylan Remastered: Drawings from the Road
May 25 – September 15, 2024
Banksy: The Haight Street Rat
May 18 – September 8, 2024
American Masterworks
through December 29, 2024
As They Saw It: Women Artists Then & Now
through September 2, 2024
Museum Hours
Open April 2–December 29, 2024. Summer hours begin May 25: open daily 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Museum admission is free for visitors 19 and under. Find more information at FenimoreArt.org.
About Marc Hom
Marc Hom, a Copenhagener, was born in 1967, a child of the postwar explosion of Scandinavian creativity and style. His father, Jesper, was an accomplished photographer as well. Hom moved from Copenhagen to New York in 1989 after completing his photographic degree at the Danish Art Academy. Working freelance for over a year with some of the most established photographers there, he then spent the next six month in Vienna, commissioned to do a book of images for the Vienna Ballet. Finalizing the project, Hom returned to New York and began working with the late Liz Tilberis and Fabian Baron of Harper’s Bazaar, which introduced him to the world of fashion photography, a major turning point in his career.
Marc Hom is now recognized as one of the most iconic portrait photographers in the world. He is renowned for photographing some of the most talented, influential, and innovative individuals of our time. Celebrity portraits include Cher, Aretha Franklin, Alexander McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Vanessa Redgrave, Glen Close, Christopher Walken, Samuel L. Jackson and many more. He is a regular contributor to Esquire, Entertainment Weekly and Town & Country. Marc has photographed multiple fashion campaigns for Gucci, Patek Philippe and Boss while some of his entertainment clients include Netflix, Showtime, and Amazon.
He is currently based in New York City.
Images Link: (use link to find caption for attached image)
Interviews:
Marc Hom is available for interviews. Please contact to schedule.
Media contact:
Todd Kenyon
Director of Marketing and Communications
(607) 547-1472
Instagram: @Fenimoreartmuseum
Twitter: @fenimoreart
Facebook: Fenimore Art Museum
#FenimoreArtMuseum
Watch: Kate Winslet plays photographer Lee Miller in ‘Lee’
May 1 (UPI) — Roadside Attractions is giving a glimpse of the new film Lee.
The studio shared a trailer for the movie Wednesday featuring Kate Winslet as model-turned-photographer and World War II war correspondent Lee Miller.
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Lee is based on the biography The Lives of Lee Miller by Antony Penrose. The film “portrays a pivotal decade” in the life of Miller, whose “singular talent and unbridled tenacity resulted in some of the 20th century’s most indelible images of war.”
“Miller had a profound understanding and empathy for women and the voiceless victims of war. Her images display both the fragility and ferocity of the human experience,” an official synopsis reads. “Above all, the film shows how Miller lived her life at full throttle in pursuit of the truth, for which she paid a huge personal price, forcing her to confront a traumatic and deeply buried secret from her childhood.”
Josh O’Connor, Andrea Riseborough, Andy Samberg, Alexander Skarsgård and Marion Cotillard also star.
Lee is written by Liz Hannah, Marion Hume and John Collee, and marks the feature directorial debut of Ellen Kuras.
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The film opens in theaters Sept. 27.
Winslet most recently starred in the HBO miniseries The Regime.
