Posted on

New photography at the Portland Art Museum

This coming week at the Portland Art Museum, there are several events that showcase wonderful photography.

Abshiro Aden Mohammed, Women’s Leader, Somali Refugee Camp, Dagahaley, Kenya, 2000, from the series A Camel for the Son. © Fazal Sheikh

Fazal Sheik’s well-regarded special photography exhibition of refugees and the issues facing them — “Common Ground”  — will close with a May 13 seminar, “Human Resilience in Mobility: Politics of the Image and the Global South,” and a public tour on May 20 from 3:00-4:00.

Minor White, Portland, 1939, gelatin silver print, Courtesy of the Fine Arts Program, Public Buildings Service, U.S. General Services Administration. Commissioned through the New Deal art projects, public domain, L42.2.13

Fresh this week is a new rotation of Minor White’s classic early images from Oregon — which were commissioned as part of FDR’s New Deal programs — and made before White rose to Photo God status by helping to found Aperture alongside Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange and others.

A Harley Cowan image from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

Also, this month’s Brown Bag Lecture Talk series is on May 16th from noon to 1 p.m, a presentation of the Portland Art Museum’s Photography Council sponsored by Pro Photo Supply. Portland photographer Harley Cowan will talk about his large-format work documenting nuclear production sites.

“I grew up in Richland, Washington next to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation,” Cowan wrote, and his interest led to six years working in nuclear industry. Now a practicing architect as well as a photographer, Cowan travels to “historically significant but largely unrecorded sites in the Pacific Northwest in order to create photography eligible for the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER).”

“They continue to follow strict guidelines for black & white, large format, film photography. As a contemporary photographer, it is an intriguing starting point.”

Posted on

Portland Photo Month in high gear

Two events on Thursday promise inspiration and libations. First, Photolucida is throwing what they’re calling a “fun-raising” party at Disjecta for their scholarship fund at 6:00:

“Images from fifty of Photolucida’s Critical Mass 2017 finalists and twenty-five Portland photographers will be curated into an exhibition at Disjecta Contemporary Art Center.  Seventy-five people will leave with a print of their choice!

Also – silent auction items from Princeton Architectural Press, One Twelve Publishing, Cobalt Studios, Amy Friend, Cheryle St. Onge, Tamara Staples, Stu Levy, Ray Bidegain and more!”

And at 6:30, ASMP, Camera Bits and Pro Photo Supply are sponsoring a sold-out Print and Pint meet up at the Lucky Lab. Craig Mitchelldyer will be the guest speaker, and he told me he’ll discuss visual storytelling on a tight schedule, something he knows well as a commercial, wedding and sports photographer:

“I love to walk into a room and have just a few minutes to make something look cool — when the room looks garbage — while still telling the persons story.”

Andy Batt told me this edition of Pint and Pint will be the first of a re-booted effort:

“[We’ll be] sharing workprints collected under the broad theme of portraits — work-in-progress to portfolio images… It’s just an opportunity to talk about photography and photographs in a casual setting — as Craig said, make it what you want. Feedback, show-and-tell, etc.”

Posted on

Portland Art Museum events on Jim Lommasson and Minor White

“This is a photo of my mother and father. This photo is very old. Everything about my father remains in my mind and will be with me as long as I live. Everything he has said to me is still with me to this day. My mother is always on my mind and I miss her so so much. People have one life, and a life without parents means nothing.” – Amir Hassan, Lincoln, Nebraska 2017

A couple fascinating photography events are coming up next week at the Portland Art Museum, both of which will involve the documentation of history and its effect on the present day.

On Wednesday, April 18, Jim Lommasson will talk about his emotional still life images and the personal histories of objects brought to America by refugees fleeing wars in Iraq and Syria. His lecture is titled “What We Carried: Fragments from the Cradle of Civilization,.”

“Lommasson photographs these precious items — family snapshots, an archaeology book, heirloom china dishes, the Quran — on a white background, asking their owners to write directly within the open space left in the prints and elaborate upon each object’s significance,” wrote Zemie Barr of the Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts. “The resulting images are as beautiful as they are heartbreaking, providing viewers with only a small glimpse of what each person has lost while serving as a poignant reminder that, as Jim asserts, “we must take responsibility for the aftermath of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as at home.”

The event will be free to the public, in the Fields Ballroom of the Mark building, from noon until 1:00 p.m.

And on April 20, an all-day symposium on Minor White will celebrate the iconic co-founder of Aperture and his formative work in Oregon. Co-organized by the Princeton University Art Museum, the symposium will bring together “curators, art historians, artists, and archivists from around the country for a free, day-long discussion about White’s early photographic work in Oregon, his influences, and his legacy.”

The event will be live-streamed on the museum’s YouTube channel for those unable to attend.

Posted on

Follow the Money — A Photolucida talk on March 15

Money talks: Certified photography appraiser and photo historian Jennifer L. Stoots will share an illustrated presentation that takes a look at the history of the Western art market, the fine art photography market, and where we are today. The event will be Thursday, March 15 at 7:00 at Disjecta — 8371 N. Interstate in Portland.

According to Photolucida, this will be the first in a quarterly event series:

Continue reading “Follow the Money — A Photolucida talk on March 15”

Posted on

Femme Photo Brunch – March 11 in Portland

On Sunday, March 11, ASMP of Oregon will host a brunch-time panel of great local photographers who happen to be female.

The Oregonian’s Beth Nakamura will moderate the discussion with Holly Andres, Gia Goodrich and Leah Nash, and Nakamura talked to me about why she’s excited about the discussion.

“I think the time is right,” she said, “because we’re in the midst of a cultural moment in terms of women using their voices and speaking up about things that are otherwise unseen and unheard, and giving voice to issues that tend to be muted given the dominance of the male experience in a profession that has been, for so long, dominated by a more masculine point of view.”

For Nakamura, Andres, Goodrich and Nash nicely represent different roads into photography careers, with perspectives and strong work all along the spectrum of documentary, editorial, lifestyle, fashion and art.

“We’ll hit a lot of talking points: the ‘me too’ issue, the idea of advocating for yourself, strengthening your voice, things that are important in the career but that can run counter to socialization and sort of gender cues and the training we receive around that.”

Nakamura was careful to explain that all are welcome to the discussion, regardless of gender, and that she hopes everyone will find it valuable.

“I’ve been helped by a lot of wonderful men in my career, that much is true. But I’ve hungered for more female guides through it all… My personal hope is that we will reach younger women who feel perhaps out of step, or uncertain of it all. And we’ll give her stronger footing.”

“I think if you’re a guy and you attend, you’ll come away with a better sense of what it means to be female in this context, the challenges, the advantages, just how it’s all experienced through a, let’s say, a female lens… I’m encouraging men to go so they can gain insight and understanding. I want to strengthen women. But I also want to bridge understanding between and among us. That’s my goal.”

To enliven the conversation, for attendees there will be champagne and a light brunch. The event is Sunday, March 11, from 11:00AM to 2:00PM at Elephants on Corbett, 5221 SW Corbett Ave. in Portland. $35 for ASMP members, $45 for non-members.

Posted on

Portland Photo Night #1 — Feb. 8, 5:00-7:00 at T.C. O’Leary’s

Photography can be such a solitary craft, and that solitude can be necessary to do great work. But I think there’s value in getting together in person with other photographers, bouncing ideas together, commiserating and celebrating. Many cities have a Photo Night, where photographers and friends of photography meet up in a backyard or a bar, show some work, see other folks’ work and maybe have a pint or two. Let’s start doing that here in Oregon.

Our first Portland Photo Night will be Thursday, Feb. 8, at T.C. O’Leary’s Irish pub on NE Alberta, from 5:00-7:00. We won’t have a projector set up to show work at this first event, and will aim to keep it pressure-free and small-scale. Let’s just hang out and build something together. If all goes well, we can grow into other communities throughout Oregon.

The proprietor Tom O’Leary will be brainstorming photo-themed cocktails — so far he’s come up with the Mapplethorpe and the Minor White. Happy hour is from 4:00-6:00, and there will be bagpipers at 7:00. Yes, real-live bagpipers. I’ll see you there!

Posted on

Recap – The State of Photography in Portland

Here’s a great, detailed recap from Photolucida regarding their recent State of Photography in Portland event at Disjecta. Hundreds of us photographers gathered to talk about what’s working and what we can improve from a community standpoint. The panel largely focused on the art photography realm, but there’s plenty to chew on for photographers of all stripes.

Topics included the struggle to build community support for nonprofits and the arts, the city’s supposed inferiority complex, grants and funding, the importance of framing what a “photo community” can be, and Photolucida’s own Portland Photo Month coming up in April.

Pour yourself a cup of coffee and dig in.

Posted on

Pinhole cameras on the Mother Road

The Grand Canyon. Photo by Wes Pope.

Beginning in 1998, Wes Pope has driven Route 66 with an unusual cargo: pinhole cameras he created by filling empty aluminum cans with film.

“There’s so much serendipity,” said Pope, Co-Director of the Multimedia Journalism master’s program in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. “I can plan and plan, but the best images in this project are not things that I planned for.”

Pope has lived and worked all along Route 66, from Chicago to Flagstaff to Santa Fe. His most recent visit to the highway was to Tulsa, Okla., in November to meet with Michael Wallis, who wrote Route 66: The Mother Road, a definitive tome on the iconic highway that stretches from Chicago to Los Angeles. Pope used the book as a guide on his travels, and Wallis also wrote the foreword for Pope’s long-germinating photo project that will be released in book form in March.
Wes Pope. Photo by Thomas Patterson

 

The cameras. Photo by Wes Pope.

Part of the magic of using an analog process like this exists in the letting go. Pinhole cameras require very long exposures, and in an age of digital imagery and its instant gratification, there can be value in something slow and unexpected.

“Each can, you get one shot,” Pope said. “There’s one piece of film in there… The thing about the cans, they make the aesthetic decisions even more than I do. A lens flare appears, seemingly at random.”

A pinhole portrait. Photo by Wes Pope.

Pop 66 is a very personal project for Pope, and a sense of the passage of time is inherent in the images. Pope’s grandfather was born in the Oklahoma panhandle, an Okie who migrated at the beginning of the Dust Bowl.  His grandparents were married in a church in Gray, Okla., and Pope photographed it when it was the last building still standing in that town. Pope also photographed the church after the building had been moved to the Museum of the Plains in Perryton, Tex..

Gray Community Church. Photo by Wes Pope.

“I’m interested in the people and the relics and the wreckage of what used to be there,” Pope said. “The organic nature of the clutter, random tourist stuff made up to make a buck before mass culture. Route 66 is an icon that has lost meaning. Originally it was a collection of mom and pops, people scraping by, people with an amazing spirit. Nothing homogeneous.”

For more information or to purchase the book, visit pop66.us