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Here comes the sun: Photography in harsh light

By in Photography

Here comes the sun: Photography in harsh light
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With the rapid, and welcome, return of the sun I thought this would be a good time to talk about photography in brighter and sometimes harsher light then we see in the winter.

Many photographers only shoot during the sweet light we often have in the morning and evening when the sun is low on the horizon. Many also limit themselves to only shooting when the sun is at their back. Unfortunately, this results in some missed opportunities, and I hope this column will convince you to explore a wide range of lighting conditions.

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Picking Up Pixels: Rüdiger Schlömer Designs Typefaces for Knitting

By in Art World News

Picking Up Pixels: Rüdiger Schlömer Designs Typefaces for Knitting

All images © Rüdiger Schlömer, shared with permission

Rather than build the letter “A” or “R” through digital layers, Rüdiger Schlömer constructs the alphabet, numbers, and basic symbols stitch by stitch. The Zurich-based designer devised Typeknitting, a project that interlocks two distinctive creative forms into a methodically constructed, tactile hybrid. “Typographic knitting to me is a process of translation between two very different fields, hand knitting structures and type design. This is what makes it so interesting to me,” he shares.

Schlömer first melded the two practices when refashioning soccer scarves. He knitted team colors, phrases, and the occasional mascot into long wearables, a process that taught him to pair the mediums. He learned that “patchwork knitting works better for large-scale pixel designs or modular typography. Mosaic knitting has a lot in common with geometric Kufic calligraphy and works better for small letterforms and repeat patterns.”

From that came his first typeface, Knit Grotesk. Taking cues from the san-serif Futura, the design features squares that evoke a low-resolution pixelation and is made for slip stitches rather than the characteristic “v” of the basic knit stitch. Schlömer adds:

When developing a typeface for knitting, I constantly change in between analog and digital. This is important in order to not get stuck in the logic of either medium. Some details might look great on screen but turn out to be problematic or boring when knitted. It’s a kind of cross-medial prototyping between the screen and knitting needles.

Since publishing his first book Typographic Knitting, Schlömer has leaned into teaching and will lead workshops in May for Zurich’s Craft Week and another in July with the Berlin Letters Festival. He also released a pattern for the blue-and-white striped alphabet blanket above on Ravelry, inspiring several knitters to take on the project. “Knowing how much work this takes, this means a lot to me,” he says.

Next up is designing a typeface accessible to beginners who might be trying their hand at lettering or knitting for the first time. Keep an eye out for that release and news about upcoming workshops on Instagram. You also might enjoy these stitched CMYK studies.

 

five orange and white striped knitted squares with the letter r written in them

a blue and white striped knit with the alphabet

three knitted squares, two are blue and white striped with the letter a and other letters and the other is orange and white with the letter r

strips of white and blue knits with text

a small white and blue knit square that reads type

a blue and white knit square with text

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Picking Up Pixels: Rüdiger Schlömer Designs Typefaces for Knitting appeared first on Colossal.

Iconic Massachusetts Photography Studio Demolished After 160 Yrs

By in Photography

Iconic Massachusetts Photography Studio Demolished After 160 Yrs

Even though North Adams is considered the Poorest City in Massachusetts which you can read about here, there is extensive history behind it.

According to Historic North Adams, The history of 19 and 21 Eagle Street dates back to the 1800’s. The 21 Eagle Street portion was the first to be built as a criminal lockup between 1864 and 1869. In 1869, bought by the Tower Brothers, Horace and Henry Tower due to the building being unfit for a criminal lockup. The two brothers renovated the building including the construction of the 19 Eagle Street Portion in 1870 which was completed in 1872, and started using it as a butcher shop in 1876 (100 years after The Declaration of Independence).

KEEP SCROLLING TO VIEW THE BUILDING’S CURRENT STATE:

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Courtesy of the North Adams Historical Society

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The Tower Brothers ran their successful butcher shop until Henry decided to sell his stake in the business to his brother. By 1901, the company unfortunately went bankrupt, and Horace Tower sold the building over to a woman by the name of Amelia Hodskins. It is unknown what she used the building for during that time period but it is believed the place was used as a residence for either herself or other tenants.

By 1915, she then sold it to Charles Kronick where he opened up a shoe store in the building in 1920. Part of the advertising could still be seen recently. The building went through various shops through the years but it was very well known as ‘Moderne Studios Photography.’

Courtesy of the North Adams Historical Society

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The shop was very popular during the 1960s as most schools in the area would have their student’s yearbook pictures taken there. ‘Anne’s Kiddie shop’ also had a spot there and sold a variety of Children’s Goods. In the late 1970s, the 21 Eagle Street Building was used as at a pet store known as ‘Tropical Gardens’ until a fire broke out in 2008 causing heavy damage to the building according to Iberkshires. The building was demolished a few years later and is currently a small park area.

So, where the does 19 Eagle Street building stand?

Photo Credit: Nick Mantello

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According to Iberkshires, on Tuesday, March 05, 2024 at around 11:33 PM, Moderne Studios may be just a memory as the rear of the three-story brick building collapsed and officials deemed it a public hazard that needed an emergency demolition. The full story can be read here.

Ryan Pause

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As I’m writing this on May 3, 2024, this is how the property currently stands as Moderne Studios is now just a memory that will live on forever.

Counties with the highest unemployment in Massachusetts

Stacker compiled a list of the counties with the highest unemployment in Massachusetts using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Counties are ranked by unemployment rate in December 2023.

Gallery Credit: Stacker

Check Out the Richest Counties in Massachusetts

Some are no surprise, but some may shock you.

Gallery Credit: Maddie Levine

The 10 Most Terribly Mispronounced Cities and Towns in Massachusetts

Gallery Credit: Google Maps

6 Themes That Define Nan Goldin’s Photography

By in Photography

6 Themes That Define Nan Goldin’s Photography
nan goldin photography themes

 

Nan Goldin’s sincere and often explicit style of photography is mesmerizing and polarizing, revealing the deeply personal and disclosed facets of the American society of the past decades. During her long and fruitful career, Goldin has shared stories of her own loss and heartbreak, along with many harrowing accounts of illness and addiction. Read on to learn more about the key topics of Nan Goldin’s art.

Who Is Nan Goldin?

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Buzz and Nan at the Afterhours, New York City, by Nan Goldin, 1980. Source: MoMA, New York

Nan Goldin is a famous American photographer mostly known for her snapshot-style photographs grouped into consecutive narratives. Her works tell stories about her friends, often stepping into the territory of political commentary through personal issues. For her, photography was the way to maintain relationships and document the lives that were never accepted by the mainstream. Official American culture never had a place for people like Goldin, so she occupied it on her own terms.

Goldin’s childhood was far from picture-perfect suburbian prosperity. Oppressive parenting style was doubled by restrictive 1950s morals. Goldin’s older sister died by suicide and the future artist left home. At the age of only thirteen, Goldin started selling drugs on a playground and, by her late teens, she became addicted to heroin. She lived with hippies and squatters, forming artistic communes with those rejected by the mainstream normative society. She started to show her work through projected slides accompanied by music and poetry to her friends, most of whom were also her models. Gradually, the immense artistic quality of Goldin’s work leaked to the outside world, making her one of the most sought-after contemporary photographers. Here are 6 themes that dominate her artistic work.

6. Otherness

nan goldin jimmy photo
Jimmy Paulette after the parade, NYC, 1991, by Nan Goldin, 1991. Source: Tate, London

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The concept of the Other is important in art, literature, and politics. Otherness remains in inherent opposition to one’s self and serves as a tool for self-recognition, structuring the world, and, in some cases, finding an external enemy to blame. Nan Goldin’s work, focused on marginalized communities, AIDS patients, drag queens, drug users and homeless bohemians is the epitome of Otherness if regarded from the perspective of a normative member of society.

Documenting Otherness was hardly a new idea, even in Goldin’s time. Photographer Diane Arbus created portraits of drag performers and gender-nonconforming people in the 1960s, yet there was something radically different in her work. In the images of Arbus and her colleagues, Others are presented as curiosities, with photographers desperately trying to find normative language for non-normative subjects. New York drag queens hated Arbus’ works with passion, but they were mostly delighted to see themselves in Nan Goldin’s photographs. The difference was in the author’s relation to their subjects. Goldin was neither a spectator nor a passerby but a part of this community of Others. Instead of imposing Otherness on her subjects, she imposed it on herself, never dissociating from her models through the camera lens.

5. The Boundaries of Gender

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Christmas at The Other Side, Boston, 1972, by Nan Goldin, 1972. Source: Musee Magazine

Exploration of gender is one of Goldin’s favorite topics. It emerges over and over in her work. In her late teens, her friend and fellow photographer David Armstrong introduced her to Boston’s drag queens. She quickly became part of the family, living with them, attending their performances, and documenting their daily lives.

Goldin believes that drag queens are neither men nor women but an entirely different gender. Unlike many other photographers, she refused to let binary standards dictate her treatment of the subject. Her Boston and New York drag queens are ambiguous, different, and hypnotizing in their unusual and non-normative beauty.

Another exploration of gender boundaries by Goldin had a surprising source. Her book Eden & After focuses on children, mostly exploring their pure emotions and sheer indifference to societal constraints like gender norms, colors, makeup, or fashion. For her, children’s refusal to play by the rules is the absolute and inherent norm that later gets ruined by society.

4. Chosen Family

nan goldin hug photo
The Hug by Nan Goldin, 1980. Source: MoMA, New York

Nan Goldin never takes photographs of strangers or people that she doesn’t like. A portrait by Nan Goldin is a letter of acceptance into the big and diverse Goldin family, which the artist constructed on her own. After leaving her biological family as a teenager, Goldin managed to find a sense of community in the company of other social outcasts around her. Self-proclaimed artists, sex workers, drag performers, and all sorts of bohemian youth gathered together in one big commune, living and working together and attending each other’s makeshift shows. Nan Goldin’s friends often say that she has a unique gift of highlighting others’ personalities, daring people around her to be themselves to the fullest possible extent.

Part of Goldin’s appeal is that her works are full of love and empathy, especially when they feature people who are in physical pain or emotional distress. Despite the sometimes shocking subject matter of her images, Nan Goldin has a strict work ethic. She never publishes photographs without her models’ approval and she never forces them to endure anything they are not comfortable with. Perhaps Goldin’s work ethic came from her deep admiration and personal connection to the subjects.

3. Trauma

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Sisters, Saints, and Sibyls, by Nan Goldin, 2004. Source: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Many of the topics and situations explored by Nan Goldin focus on the aftermath of trauma and the ways of coping with it. Abusive relationships, domestic violence, physical scars, and mental breakdowns are all present in her work, but her photographs never cross the line of putting shock value over empathy. They may be shocking to some—namely, to respectable gallerygoers—but they never lack compassion and love.

One of the most heartbreaking pieces by Goldin is her video titled Sisters, Saints, and Sibyls. The video is a heartbreaking tribute to Goldin’s elder sister Barbara, who was institutionalized for refusing to conform to the gender norms of her time. Barbara died by suicide at the age of eighteen, and this tragedy finally brought the already barely functioning family to a collapse. Goldin’s memory of her sister is scarce, yet she understood and shared her feeling of being trapped in a restrictive and hostile environment. Apart from Barbara’s life and death, the video documents Goldin’s path out of drug addiction and depression in a psychiatric hospital.

2. Activism

goldin beauty bloodshed still
A still from the film All The Beauty and the Bloodshed documenting Goldin’s battle against the Sackler family and the pharmaceutical industry, 2022. Source: Saporta Report

The narratives constructed by Goldin often transgress the limits of the personal towards the political. Over the years, she has covered the AIDS crisis and drug addiction epidemic and raised money to help Ukrainian artists affected by the war. One of the latest battles won by Nan Goldin is her take on the pharmaceutic industry—namely the influential Sackler family.

After her wrist surgery in the mid-2010s, Goldin was prescribed a painkiller OxyContin. The addiction came almost instantly, with Godin taking as many as twenty pills a day instead of the prescribed three. In 2016, the artist ended up in rehab after an overdose. As she found out, OxyContin was a highly addictive opioid created and distributed by Purdue Pharma, a company owned by the Sackler family. The company knew about the highly addictive effect of the medicine yet nonetheless advertised and sold it without warning the patients. Some experts call OxyContin the most addictive substance in the history of the pharmaceutical industry. As a result, since 1999, more than 200,000 people in the USA have died due to overdoses and side effects of OxyContin.

Aside from their pharmaceutical business, the Sackler family is famous for their philanthropic work. The cultural institutions financed by the dynasty include the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim, the National Gallery in London, and Tate Modern. Goldin and her activist organization P.A.I.N (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) staged protests in Sackler-funded institutions. While several institutions agreed to severe financial ties with the clan, drug distribution was hardly affected. Purdue Pharma simply moved the distribution from the American market to developing countries. Goldin’s ongoing battle against the pharmaceutical industry was documented in the 2022 documentary film All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.

1. Nan Goldin and the Passing of Time

goldin cookie casket photo
Cookie at Vittorio’s Casket, New York City, September 16th, by Nan Goldin, 1989. Source: Fotomuseum Winterthur

Over the decades of her career, Nan Goldin lost countless friends. As the artist said, initially she believed taking many pictures of them would help her feel like her friend would never fully leave her. But as many of them passed away from drug-related conditions, AIDS, or other causes, the photographs became a sobering reminder of how much she actually lost.

Goldin’s work documents fleeting moments and the passage of time. Most of her subjects appear in her works over and over again. Some turned from unresting partygoers to happy parents, some lost their ethereal androgynous beauty to addiction. Others simply did not survive the decades of their youth. In her work, Goldin is equally a narrator and an actor, never excluding herself from the picture but letting her characters tell their stories.

A huge photography fair is coming to London this month

By in Photography

A huge photography fair is coming to London this month

Photo London, the major photography fair, is returning to Somerset House this month, and bringing with it dozens of exhibitors, talks and events.

Spread out across Somerset House’s warren of rooms and its vast central courtyard you’ll find booths by 100 galleries from 44 cities, all specialising in photography. A handful of galleries will be doing solo presentations of artists like ultra-influential David Bailey, super atmospheric Michael Kenna and pioneering street photographer Helen Levitt.

Every year, one photographer is picked out and celebrated as ‘Master of Photography’ with their own dedicated exhibition, and this year it’s the turn of florid floral French artist Valérie Belin. That show is part of the fair’s public programme, which also includes a display dedicated to early French calotype photography from the 1860s. Alongside all of that, there’s a talks programme too, with appearances by artists like Joy Gregory and Omar Victor Diop, signings by people like Martin Parr and workshops run by Nikon. 

Since it’s a fair, most of the work is for sale, but probably not at prices us mere mortals can even dream of affording. Fortunately, the publishers section will have books for sale from places like Hoxton Mini Press at much more attainable prices.

Photo London is at Somerset House May 16-19. £35. More details here https://photolondon.org/.

Want more photography? Here are the best photography shows in London right now. 

Stay in the loop: sign up to our free Time Out London newsletter for the best of the city, straight to your inbox

New photography studio opens on Jaffrey Main Street

By in Photography

New photography studio opens on Jaffrey Main Street

Monadnock Ledger-Transcript – New photography studio opens on Jaffrey Main Street

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Photographer Kassia Oaks recently opened a new photography studio on Main Street, at the corner of Blake Street. STAFF PHOTO BY ASHLEY SAARI—

Kassia Oaks, accompanied by her parents, cuts the ribbon on Corner Oak Studio on the corner of Blake and Main streets during the studio’s opening on April 27.

Kassia Oaks, accompanied by her parents, cuts the ribbon on Corner Oak Studio on the corner of Blake and Main streets during the studio’s opening on April 27. STAFF PHOTO BY ASHLEY SAARI


Kassia Oaks uses her camera to capture major milestones in her clients’ lives – sometimes following them through multiple major life events – and she said her goal is to always capture people’s “authentic energy.”

Oaks opened her first solo studio, Corner Oak Studio, on Main Street in Jaffrey April 27, an extension of her existing professional photography business. Oaks said while she has worked out of studios before, they have always been shared workspaces. After moving to Jaffrey last summer, she said she’s focusing on putting down roots, including a permanent studio.

Oaks grew up in central Massachusetts, and has lived in various places around New England before settling in the Monadnock region. She has been working professionally as a photographer for six years, and made it her full-time career three years ago, but said it’s an art that has always fascinated her.

“I’ve always loved art class since childhood. I think it was sixth grade, we were given all of these art books, and had to sift through them to find a medium to use as inspiration for a project. I remember going through a portrait and nature photography book, and I just thought it was the most ‘real’ version of art,” Oaks said.

Oaks said at the time, she dreamed of becoming a photographer, though in the way many middle- and high-schoolers do, she had several options she was considering, including graphic or web design. She graduated from Cape Cod Community College with an associate’s degree in liberal arts.

Oaks said she has taken some photography classes, but learned her trade mostly through apprenticeships under other photographers and self-teaching. She said one of her favorite pastimes when she was young was visiting nurseries and greenhouses with her father, and photographing the plants.

“I say I’m a nature nerd first, photographer second,” Oaks joked.

She said the creativity of the career is what appeals to her the most.

“I love the fluidity of the creativity of it, and now that it’s my career I love being able to capture people’s authentic energy,” she said.

Oaks mostly professionally photographs engagement and wedding photos, and families, and said it is that idea of “authentic energy,” rather than consciously trying for the best photo, that leads to the most-natural shots.

“That’s why I love doing wedding photography specifically. I tell my couples that on the day, the most important thing is to be present with your partner, and the good photos come from that,” she said.

Some of those couples will later return for maternity or family portraits.

“That’s one of the most-beautiful parts of this career – to grow with the client and be able to document these big milestones,” Oaks said.

Ashley Saari can be reached at 603-924-7172, Ext. 244, or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on X @AshleySaariMLT.

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