Owensboro native and Hollywood-renowned special effects makeup artist Dave Snyder visited the Daviess County Public Library as a featured speaker this week. Snyder’s work transcends Hollywood, but the alien characters he helped create for the 2009 Star Trek film were on display Thursday.
Owensboro mayor Tom Watson presented Snyder with a key to the city before the event.
“It was a great honor, especially since my father also received a key to the city,” Snyder said. “I want to thank the mayor who took time from his busy schedule to visit me personally.”
The event began with Snyder screening the film, followed by a question-and-answer forum with the audience.
Snyder was born and raised in Owensboro, spending his early adult years at Brescia University and in Lexington studying dental laboratory technology before deciding to venture to Los Angeles. Fascinated by movie monsters as a child and motivated to pursue a career in the industry, he left for Hollywood in 1992.
“It’s always good to come home and see friends and family,” he said. “This is a different and unique opportunity I’ve been given, and I love being able to share the ‘behind the scenes’ of the industry.”
Snyder has worked on low-budget features, television projects, and full-scale Hollywood feature productions. Some of his more notable features include The Walking Dead, Star Trek, Dancing with the Stars, Austin Powers, and more.
In 2022, Dave Snyder was awarded an Emmy for outstanding makeup for the miniseries “Pam and Tommy.” The same year, he received three Guild Award nominations, with another win for “Pam and Tommy.”
Snyder was among the last artists to construct Leonard Nimoy’s ears as Spock. He’s also produced makeup designs for Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, Jackie Chan, and many more celebrities.
Snyder aspires to return to Owensboro next year to screen the Star Trek film.
Richard Prince’s subversion of mainstream motifs explored hidden facets in an all-American identity. Turning his lens to an eclectic range of subjects, from cowboys as a homogeneous idealisation of the Wild West, to his photographs of luxury watches and pens, Prince was above all interested in the sociological slant photography imbued on a subject.
Richard Prince, Untitled (Self-portrait), 1980
(Image credit: © Richard Prince Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd Courtesy the artist and Gagosian)
Now, the beginnings of Prince’s career are explored in an exhibition at the Gagosian London’s Grosvenor Hill and Davies Street galleries, marking the beginning of Frieze London 2023, as the art fair celebrates 20 years. Taking the years 1977 – 1987 as a focus, more than 80 photographs unite work from Prince’s productive decade.
The Entertainers series (1982-3) is explored in the Davies Street Gallery; recasting the glamour of fame, Prince strips the subjects back to a grid-like uniformity. In Grosvenor Hill, photographs from different series are united, from his self-portraits to a dissecting of accepted masculinity motifs.
Richard Prince, Untitled (Pens), 1979
(Image credit: © Richard Prince Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd Courtesy the artist and Gagosian)
As a symbol of idealised heroism, cowboys fascinated Prince. In Untitled (Cowboy) (1980–84), the cowboy is almost interchangeable with the landscape. The photographer continues to play with perceptions in his black and white Untitled (Self-Portrait) (1980); photographed in a suit, tie, eye make-up and lipstick, he expresses an alienation also seen in Untitled (Couple) (1977) and Untitled (Man Looking to the Left) (1978), where rephotographed images of models dressed in suits became a symbol of representation themselves. Also recontextualised are his photographed advertisements for luxury goods, once again setting Prince apart, this time from the photographers who took the original images.
Richard Prince, Untitled (Cowboy), 1980-4
(Image credit: © Richard Prince Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd Courtesy the artist and Gagosian)
Images take a sideways look at stock photography, something the subjects of Criminals and Celebrities (1986) try to escape, while Untitled (Fainted) (1980) considers the stills of unconscious women in a questioning of the realist narrative. ‘When you put an already existing image in front of a camera,’ Prince has said, ‘you know what you’re going to get. You’ve taken out the decisive moment.’ In his 1983 essay on cowboys he added: ‘Some people would like to try to change places, just for a day, with maybe someone they admired or even envied, to see what it would be like, to see if it would be what they’d always heard it would be.’
‘Richard Prince: Early Photography’, 5 October – 22 December 2023, Gagosian, 20 Grosvenor Hill and 17–19 Davies Street, London
Richard Prince, Untitled (Fashion), 1983
(Image credit: © Richard Prince Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd Courtesy the artist and Gagosian)
Richard Prince, Untitled (Watches), 1978
(Image credit: © Richard Prince Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd Courtesy the artist and Gagosian)
The Deichtorhallen Hamburg is pleased to announce the appointment of Nadine Isabelle Henrich as the new Curator of the House of Photography, beginning February 1, 2024. The 33-year-old photography expert has previously worked at institutions such as the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, the Fotomuseum Winterthur, and the Museum Folkwang in Essen. Henrich will succeed Ingo Taubhorn, who has significantly shaped the exhibition program at the House of Photography since 2003 and is retiring.
Dirk Luckow, General Director of Deichtorhallen Hamburg, stated, “I’m pleased to welcome Nadine Isabelle Henrich as our new curator. She is an innovative and internationally well-connected photography expert. Her forward-thinking exhibition concepts impressed us immediately. As a connoisseur of both the German and the international art scenes, Nadine Isabelle Henrich will continue the success story of the House of Photography, founded by F.C. Gundlach in 2003.”
Bert Antonius Kaufmann, Managing Director of Deichtorhallen Hamburg, added, “In addition to Nadine Isabelle Henrich’s continued development of the exhibition program at the exhibition space PHOXXI, I look forward to working with her, and Collection Curator Sabine Schnakenberg, to shape the new House of Photography as an open space for the local as well as global photography community.”
Nadine Isabelle Henrich shared her vision, saying, “My program will delve into the politics of photographic visibility. It will focus on artists shaping photographic futures, on the overlooked legacies of photo collectives, and on the dynamics of image ecologies online. Recognizing photography’s entanglements with new technologies and global economies, the exhibitions will gravitate toward essential societal and sociotechnical issues of the present and explore photography’s capacity to translate imagination into alternative presents. As an open space for the local and global photo community, we will increase our impact as a platform for aspiring photographers, beginning at PHOXXI, our temporary exhibition space, and then at the freshly renovated House of Photography. Together with the exceptional Deichtorhallen team, I look forward to hosting encounters with emerging tendencies in photography and its digital remediations.”
Background
Prior to joining the House of Photography at Deichtorhallen, Henrich (*1990) was a Curatorial Fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles (2022/2023) and worked in the curatorial teams of Fotomuseum Winterthur, Museum Folkwang, and Münchner Stadtmuseum (2021-2023), within the framework of the international program Museum Curators of Photography, Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach Foundation. Her recent shows include, among others, Poetics of Search at Fotomuseum Winterthur (2022/2023), Visions of Ukraine at Museum Folkwang, Essen (2022), and Rüzgâr Buşki: Wayward at Galerie Wedding, Berlin (2022). Based in Berlin, she has worked as a Curator and Doctoral Researcher at Daimler Contemporary Berlin (2017–2020), where she curated, among others, the group show Evoking Reality (2018/19), featuring artists such as Mustafah Abdulaziz, Clément Cogitore, Tacita Dean, Alia Farid, Cao Fei, Pieter Hugo, Richard Mosse, Viviane Sassen, Berni Searle, Guy Tillim, Sharif Waked, Maya Zack. Prior to that, Henrich worked as a Research Associate at Heiner Bastian Fine Arts, Berlin/London (2015/16), and early on assisted the team of the German Pavilion at the 55th La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Susanne Gaensheimer (2013). After studies and grants in Florence, Rome, and Frankfurt, Henrich completed her Master’s in Art and Image History at Humboldt University Berlin (2016) and is currently finalizing her Ph.D. research at the Department of Art History at Freie Universität Berlin, supervised by Prof. Peter Geimer.
For additional information
Press images: deichtorhallen.de/presse
Contact: Angelika Leu-Barthel, Deichtorhallen Press Office, T +49-(0)40-32 103 250 / =(c=c.charCodeAt(0)+13)?c:c-26);});return false”>presse [at] deichtorhallen.de
Over the last four years, the latest incarnation of the iPhone Pro Max has become my favorite camera companion, while my Canon DSLR has sat patiently on the shelf waiting for me to rekindle our long-term relationship. A newly acquired iPhone 15 Pro Max has just hammered another nail into the coffin of my Canon DSLR. Here’s why.
When shooting with my DSLR I needed to cart around a kit bag full of lenses, so I could whip out a telephoto to capture candid street photography pictures. I’d then have to swap to a wide-angle lens to fit architectural landmarks into the frame. The iPhone 15 Pro Max packs 7 cameras into its palm-sized frame, with focal lengths ranging from an ultra-wide 13mm to a periscopic zoom-enabled 120mm lens. It’s this new 5x optical zoom that makes me the most excited about the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
• What is a periscope lens on a phone – and do you need one?
The 15 Pro Max is only 8.25mm deep, but it bounces light off multiple mirrors to get the lens far enough away from the sensor to achieve a focal length of 120mm (hence the term periscopic). I find that this extra reach over iPhone 14 Pro Max’s 77mm zoom enables me to remain a ‘fly on the wall’ while I capture candid close-ups of people from a distance.
This freedom to remain less conspicuous than I was with a DSLR and a long lens motivates me to snap far more street photography-style images than I’d normally do. I feel like I’ve developed a superpower!
What is even more exciting is the fact that I can use the 5x (120mm) zoom camera while shooting in the Camera app’s Portrait mode. This enables me to add a DSLR-style background bokeh that makes distant people stand out sharply against blurred backgrounds. This combination of software-added bokeh to a powerful zoom enables me to mimic a classic DSLR telephoto look more effectively than I could using previous iPhone models.
When shooting telephoto images with my DSLR I’d set the camera to shutter priority, and choose a shutter speed fast enough to freeze the subject and avoid the shake-induced motion blur that zoom lenses are prone to. This could lead to a sharp but under-exposed shot that I’d need to brighten up in post.
The iPhone 15 Pro Max captures pin-sharp and well-exposed telephoto shots instantly, due to advances in its sensor-shift image stabilization. As well as moving the sensor horizontally (x) and vertically (y) to counteract camera shake, the 15 Pro Max also vibrates the sensor along the depth (z) axis. This physical three-dimensional movement ensures a telephoto shot that’s free from shake-induced blur.
As a result, every telephoto shot is sharp, well exposed, and ready to share there and then – which is great if you want to satisfy your social media feed’s need for ‘as it happens’ photo content.
Having enjoyed a day shooting street photography I was keen to see how the 15 Pro Max got on with a professional model. I met Eli at London’s Barbican Centre, which has a great range of Brutalist architecture backdrops.
Normally I shoot in Apple’s ProRAW format so I can have full control over colors and tones in the editing stage. Thanks to the main 24mm camera’s wide f/1.78 aperture, I can get a strong and natural bokeh while shooting RAW portraits.
However, thanks to iOS 17, if you shoot a JPEG of a person then a depth map is generated as well (even if you haven’t shot in Portrait mode). This gives you the freedom to add an adjustable bokeh to a wider range of JPEG-format shots in Apple’s Photos app.
This depth map isn’t available if you shoot in RAW, so I found myself shooting far more JPEGs than I’d usually do. As an iOS 17 bonus, you can now change the focal point of a JPEG as well as the blur amount in Apple Photos, which gives photographers even more control in the post-production stage.
Model Eli hadn’t done a shoot with an iPhone before, but as a professional she gave it her all. Over the two-hour shoot, I enjoyed switching from capturing close-ups to wide-angle portraits with a few taps on the iPhone’s display.
I was also able to enthuse Eli by showing her the results of a shot immediately on the iPhone’s vibrant HDR display. By shooting with a low-profile iPhone at the Barbican we weren’t interrupted by security personnel (which can happen if you’re in possession of a ‘big camera’, as policemen like to call it!).
All in all, I’ve loved my first week using the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s cameras and, in 3 separate shoots, I’ve notched up 56,000 steps, capturing a wider range of subjects than I’d normally do. The iPhone 15 Pro Max and I may be in our ‘honeymoon period’ but I am sure we’ll be exploring new photo opportunities together for a long time to come. (Just don’t tell my DSLR.)
The best camera phones come in all shapes and sizes, from the best iPhones for photography to the best Android phones – featuring the best Samsung phones to the best Oppo phones.
Monday is Indigenous People’s Day. It’s a day of celebration of America’s first inhabitants and an acknowledgment of the history of displacement and violence.
Susan Mullins Kwaronhia:wi is a Mohawk from the Kahnawake reserve in Canada.
She’s a folk artist who works with students to instill Native American traditions and values that she says she’s lucky to inherit from her ancestors, pass it down and preserve its significance in American history. She tells those stories through art, music and dance.
Mullins Kwaronhia:wi is the arts community representative on the Kentucky Native American Heritage Commission board. She is also a Kentucky Colonel.
Mullins says, for her, it’s a day of healing and moving forward.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You’re a storyteller and Indigenous People’s day tells a more positive and more accurate tale of Native Americans. You’re now seeing more proclamations across the country, including President Biden’s. What comes up for you when you see these institutional shifts?
You know, as a people, we weren’t recognized in this country, we weren’t granted citizenships, or were even allowed to vote. Even though we were here. In 1924, Congress didn’t enact the Indian Citizenship Act law, stating that we had to be in the United States to be recognized. Born in the United States, obviously, we were born here. Even after this act passed, states still barred us from voting.
The government, and the people, the white people considered us members of an alien, uncivilized and unethical race. So with all of our trials and tribulations, we were accepted in around 1957, with just a few states still not allowing us. It was funny because we were the first people in this country, and the last to be recognized as citizens having a day representing Native Americans in this country we occupied when the Europeans arrived. Remember, we were here and still are, and I’m not complaining, I’m not angry. This is history. I love this country, and I will do everything I can to support it. The past is the past, but we can learn from it.
Music is such a vital part of your work in educating and passing down those traditions. You teach kids how to sing “Amazing Grace” in Seneca, also the song sung along the Trail of Tears you said. Tell me more about that.
My story was that I heard and like I say, I can’t say that it’s what really happened. But this is the story, I told that the ship that was carrying the slaves in the United States, the captain fell down and broke his legs. And the slaves brought him to his quarters. And everyday they would come and take care of him and feed him and clean him. They would be singing this song in their language. Well, the melody, he didn’t understand what it was.
So he called an interpreter. And when the interpreter told him what the song was, when he got to the Americas, he set all those slaves free. So consequently, they mingled with the native tribes. Some of them went further, some of them started their own communities, but a lot of them stayed with the natives, and taught them that song too. Because that was they weren’t hardship on the ship. And you know, because they were all chained up together with no place to go.,
So then it was told that this song also was sung on the Trail of Tears.
And you tell the story before you teach them the song. How have people reacted to that?
So when we sing that song, the first verse is always in a very nice, smooth way. But the second verse comes in because people started dying. And so that verse kind of gets you more emotional about it, and I feel bad because I do put that in there. When I’m singing, I almost sound like I’m crying at that verse. I saw one guy cry, you know, and I felt bad, but I just wanted to let them realize, what it was and what it was about.
How have you seen Kentucky evolve when it comes to acknowledging its Native American history?
When we started coming, they thought even up until that time, that there were no natives ever living here. They only came here to hunt because this was sacred land. They said, Oh, no, they just brought their dead here to bury them in the sacred land.
So you mean, our Mohawk people, the Iroquois people that lived in New York State and up in Canada, when somebody died, we pull them all the way down while they were rotting by horseback, which probably took about three or four weeks or five weeks or even a month to get here and then bury them here? No, we were here. And it has been proven now and as as the years went by, since I was here, it’s being more accepted.
There is in Indigenous People’s Day celebration Saturday from 1:00-5:00 p.m at Bellarmine University’s Cralle Theatre.
The Photography Club of Davis will present a free photography program by professional photographer David J. Grenier, on Tuesday, Oct. 10, at 7:10 p.m. in the Blanchard Room of the Stephens Branch Library, 815 E. 14th St. in Davis. The show is called “Around My World in 45 Minutes.”
“The challenge of [photography] is to make my digital image reflect the beauty, color and light that I see in the field. I am dedicated to the acquisition of whatever technical proficiency will close the gap between the world my artist’s eye perceives and that which my images present,” Grenier said. “At this stage of my life, I live to create, and I create to live.”
One of the redesigned website’s new features is a gallery where we will present the creative work of Valley artisans.
Living Snoqualmie is tagged in or sent many local residents’ creations, but we never quite knew what to do with them. The new gallery will allow us to showcase the beautiful art we receive regularly.
You may remember our first artist, Travis Wetherbee, from his suspenseful two-part story about chasing the Aurora Borealis on Rattlesnake Ridge in 2021. Wetherbee, a well-liked regular of festivals and concerts, seemed like the obvious first choice for this new feature.
Wetherbee, a Snoqualmie Valley lifer, grew up in Fall City before moving to Duvall in 2009. He and his wife Alicia were neighbors who got together in 1998 and married in 2002 after Alicia graduated from CWU. The couple has two children, Deacon, six and Laila, 11.
In 2018, when Deacon was one, Travis started taking cloud and landscape photos. Weatherbee’s first camera was an old point-and-shoot. The Wetherbees bought it right after they got married. One of his favorite things to do when he was a kid was to look through old photo albums. Says Travis, “We would have nights where that would be our entertainment, looking through photo albums at pictures of family.”
Travis eventually joined the Photography Enthusiasts of Duvall Facebook group. There, he met local photographer Rick Schump, who took him out for a hike and taught him how to use his camera and compose a good shot.
In 2020, Wetherbee was already an email marketer and volunteer umpire from 2006 to 2013 before he became a full-paid umpire when he decided to take a crack at making photography a career. He started sharing his photos with the photography group, eventually became a moderator and started Last Lite Photography.
Soon after, a friend of a friend was selling some camera equipment he bought to resell, but after trying the more sophisticated equipment, he decided to keep it. The equipment came with two lenses; after buying more, he learned and got even better at taking photos.
He befriended Morgan Henley, another local photographer/videographer who owns a production company specializing in producing music events and started photographing Seattle area music festivals and events. Wetherbee photographed 155 music events in 2022. His Facebook page is growing by leaps and bounds, currently at 7.3k followers.
In addition to the work he does with music and festivals, Wetherbee does senior portraits, trying to capture who the student really is in a photo (we’ve come a long way since the wicker chair at Yuen Lui).
At first, he didn’t consider photography a business but more a fulfilling hobby. However, his goal in the next two years is to fully transition to photography, start a media company, work with artists and agencies and buy his own venue.
Travis credits his wife Alicia and says she enables his ventures by doing everything at home. Between his day job and photography, he can be gone from early morning until late at night. He says he couldn’t do it without her.
Travis Wetherbee’s journey from a simple point-and-shoot camera to capturing the pulse of music festivals, the Valley’s beauty and crafting senior portraits with a touch of soul is genuinely inspiring. The Snoqualmie Valley is blessed to have such a gifted artist amidst its ranks, capturing its beauty and the life that pulses within. Travis’s dedication, both as a photographer and as a community member, showcases the essence of what makes this valley unique.
For those eager to explore the depth and breadth of Wetherbee’s captivating work, his stunning collections can be viewed and appreciated at Last Lite Photography on Picfair, Fine Art America and Last Lite Photography on Zenfolio. Dive into these galleries to get a glimpse of the world through Travis’s lens and, perhaps, find a piece that speaks to you.
-Featured image photo credit goes to Guinevere Roper
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