Air Power Over Hampton Roads air show, Hampton Roads, Virginia #2 by Christopher Sims

Christopher Sims has documented people, mostly young men, engaged with the Virtual Army Experience, a traveling entertainment/recruiting station found at NASCAR events and air shows. According to its website, the Virtual Army Experience provides "participants with a virtual test drive of the United States Army." Its interface is that of a combat video game.

The Virtual Army experience homepage

The body of work Sims has created from these portraits is titled Hearts and Minds, and of it he says,

These portraits remind us of the computer and television screens through which most of us have lived the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the filters of distance and media that create for us our own virtual homeland experience. The army reveals itself to be a keen reader of American adolescent emotions and passions, and employs this understanding through a brilliantly designed and bloodless simulation of the thrill of the fight.

Regardless of your political beliefs, it's impossible to dismiss the degree that video game technology suits contemporary military recruitment needs. The quality of combat simulation must absorb the player to such a degree that the psychological job involved in actual training is already in motion. This phenomenon has also been documented by photographer and video artist Robbie Cooper, in his series Immersion. Using equipment not unlike, as he acknowledges, Errol Morris's one-way mirror/camera known as the Interrotron, Robbie presents the unnerving concentration people reveal when wrapped up in violent video games, and other screen-based fantasia (including porn). See a video sampler of Immersion at the New York Times.

This combination of estrangement from the physical world and intense engagement with the virtual makes the job of message producers—be it the military, advertisers, or pornographers —that much easier. Christopher's portfolio of Hearts and Minds, as well as his significant work from Guantanamo Bay and mock Iraqi and Afghan villages for military training, are available at Ann Stewart Fine Art.

2005 Hot Shot Shawn Records is dad to one of the world's most recognizable kids. His son, Max Records, stars as "Max" in Spike Jonze's film adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are, currently out in theaters all over the world. Lucky dad that Shawn is, he spent four months on set with his son during the filming of the movie, photographing his experience behind the scenes, which he has compiled into a book, Owners of This World.

Of the collection, he notes that the images are "a collection of fears and reassurances, upon letting his son out into a world that is beyond his control" rather than any secret insights into the making of the movie. He invites you to take a look into the temporary and magical world he visited with his son Max.

More info below:
PHOTOGRAPHER: Max Max's father, photographer Shawn Records
WHAT: A book of photographs, Owners of This World
WHEN IT'S AVAILABLE: Now!
WHERE TO GET IT: Available on Publication Studio

PS: We Love You So, the blog for Where The Wild Things Are, compares Shawn Records's aesthetic to Joel Sternfeld and William Eggleston, and I would not disagree. Read an interview with Shawn and sneak a peek of the book here, then get yourself a copy on Publication Studio.

See more of Shawn's work on his website.

Clothesline by Aline Smithson

It was difficult to find an image befittingly momentous for today, the the final day we are accepting entries for Hey, Hot Shot! in 2009. (If you are reading this on Tuesday, October 27, before 11:00 p.m. (EDT) you still have time to enter). The range of submissions this round has been eye-popping, and for those of us who care about the state of photographic practice in this ever-fluxing world, that range is also deeply encouraging. Judging by the cross-section of innovative, accomplished, and totally engaged contenders we've seen, the state of photography is very good indeed.

I was drawn back to an image by Aline Smithson—the Los Angeles-based photographer, educator and mind behind the excellent photography blog Lenscratch. At first look it seems to be a quiet picture. What's more, it's unapologetically nostalgic. As Aline says,

We live in a world full of technical distractions. I see my children gathered around their computers as though it's a summer campfire, faces aglow, as they peer into a world of friends and fantasy, participating in a new forms of entertainment that further remove them from the childhood that I experienced....it's because of this that I have been looking at bookshelves and untouched childhood pursuits with a new eye. With great sadness, I realize that these objects will someday be obsolete, at least in their current incarnations. And like a curator of antiquities, I see them now as beautiful objects to be admired and preserved, if only on film. I can only hope for rain, a heavy rain and maybe a power outage.

Aline's heartfelt admission acknowledges that progress flows in one direction and that the days of children doting on non-electronic toys may be behind us. For some of us (even we who didn't grow up playing with dolls) these paper dresses, hanging on a string as if on a clothesline, recall the intensity of feeling that simple playthings can evoke in children. These objects could once nurture sustained attention, maybe even a childhood form of obsession; they were the analog interface for overwhelming fantasy worlds. Absent of this devotion, the dresses are now simply suspended in time.

We'll continue to blog contenders until the newest Hot Shots are announced on November 30th. Thank you for being part of this round of Hey, Hot Shot! and stay tuned for much more to come!

Pride by Tait Simpson

Tait Simpson's series Hold Tight renders itself as both physical object and collection of images. Apparent and more extended interpretations of the title phrase manifest in his work—a mother in a close embrace with her child on the beach suggests a literal tight hold, while an explosion of rainbow balloons (with a visual likeness to recent Sony BRAVIA commercials) begs to be contained. Whether bound by object, bound by idea, or unbound—the tension created by enclosures that seemingly exist to limit and partition space without apparent reason frustrates the natural desire to reign free.
Rather than creating a narrative from one image to the other, one, as a viewer, engages in a game of search, looking for the artist' interpretation on the theme.

Tait writes of the series,

Hold Tight is a recent collection of images that deal with the desire to tame that which is inherently outside of our control, the contrasting freedom that this control proposes to limit and how these ideas relate to our identity.

The artist's collection of twelve 8.5"x11" images from this series is also for sale, as displayed above, packaged together in an archival box. Limited to an edition of seven, the work can be purchased on the his website where you can also see the rest of the images from the series.

Rhonda and Chantelle by Graham E. Miller

The series, Suburban Splendour, by contender Graham Miller seeks to capture moments of "quiet desperation." It's a phrase that's tossed around so often in art and literature that it has become hackneyed; only rarely is it executed as well as this. What is so visceral about the work is how real the moments are. The carefully considered lighting and sense of space in the images enforces a kind of isolation that is present throughout the work. Instead of fretting over the conceptual or technical details, the viewer is pulled straight into the narrative of each frame. Who are these "characters," as Miller calls them, and what is it about them that we identify with?

Miller writes:

These characters are troubled, but not irretrievably lost; they carry a dignified endurance and a sense of bruised optimism. These people are survivors. They have a desire, as we all do, to be transported from darkness into light.

To some extent, it's a theme to which we can all relate, and a timeless one too. Miller cites many influences from art and literature such as the films of Paul Thomas Anderson and Ray Lawrence, paintings by Edward Hopper, and the writings of Raymond Carver. Thus it comes as no surprise that the photographs possess the depth of a great story and the cinematic beauty of a film still.

Below is an excerpt of the poem Tomorrow by Raymond Carver, with which the series has been paired.

I remember my mother, God love her,
saying, Don't wish for tomorrow.
You're wishing your life away.
Nevertheless, I wish
for tomorrow. In all its finery.
I want sleep to come and go, smoothly.
Like passing out of the door of one car
into another. And then to wake up!
Find tomorrow in my bedroom.

The resulting images embody the contradictions of our day-to-day lives; they are personal yet universal, composed yet true to life, and simple yet magnetic. The entire Suburban Splendour series, among other work, can be seen at Graham's portfolio.

Backroom by Nicole Hatanaka

Morbidly fascinating taxidermy is central to the work of contender Nicole Hatakana. Nicole's Taxinomia series, shot with a 4x5 field camera, documents the back rooms and archives of natural history museums and nature labs.

Nicole writes,

Underscoring this project is an interest in how specimens become worthy of preservation and study. What gets preserved and what gets thrown away? Which objects are put on a pedestal and which in a drawer? What determines value? More broadly, my practice is an attempt to deconstruct such binaries as ordinary and extraordinary, order and disorder, official and non-official, valuable and insignificant, in order to reframe the ways in which meaning may be constructed and interpreted for both the individual and the collective.

At its core, the Taxinomia series is about history; how what we choose to archive versus what we present in museums shapes the way that we interpret our past. About a week ago there was a fascinating article in New Scientist about a tiny necklace camera that was originally invented to help Alzheimer's patients jog their memory but may soon be sold to consumers as a "lifelogging device." The article suggests that as soon as next year anyone could wear this camera to automatically archive whatever is in front of them every 30 seconds.

However, unlike digital photographs, taxidermied animals take up lots of physical space and require expert preservation. In an age where we have the capacity to record and archive infinite amounts of digital information, the images from Taxinomia are a thought-provoking historiographical documentation of how we grapple with the challenge of preserving the tangible aspects of our history.

Good news! We're extending the deadline for Hey, Hot Shot!'s last round of competition in 2009 to next Tuesday, October 27th at 11:00 p.m. (EDT).

This week has been an exciting one for Jen Bekman Projects, as you may have heard. We've closed a first round of funding which will allow us to offer even more opportunities and exposure to the artists we work with.

This announcement has introduced Hey, Hot Shot! to an entirely new audience, and we've fielded numerous requests about the competition. We want to give everyone some extra time to enter, as this is the last chance to submit work in 2009.

So if you haven't gotten around to applying yet, now's your chance! The opportunities and exposure for Hot Shots, honorable mentions and contenders are better than ever.

The deadline for submissions is now Tuesday, October 27th at 11:00 p.m. (EDT).

Questions? Check out our informative FAQ, follow us on Twitter or find us on Facebook.

Contender Kyle T. Pierce's illustrations of maps drawn over photographs give geographic contextualization to his portraits of place. Both an illustrator and photographer, Kyle's pen and pencil are as strongly guided by the lines and shapes of the objects in the images as they are by his imagination and memory. His series' work together—sometimes with contiguous illustrations meant to connect images—to tell both fantastic and narrative stories of personal adventures. At times, the illustrations take on more abstract concepts, connecting ordinary objects like this car interior to an anatomy of Things that were lost (what I have found).

He writes,

There is an immediacy to drawing by hand that makes the end product feel more "alive." I use primarily pencil, ink, and oil pastel, and draw from life, photographs, and memory. In recent years, my illustrations have incorporated photography, allowing me to merge the real and surreal in an authentic way. The (3) submitted photographs are from 'Montpelier' and were shot during the 4th of July parade in 2006. In 2008/2009, the series was overlaid with fragments of a hand-drawn map of Vermont copied from the 1930 edition of the 'Commercial Atlas of the World'.

Kyle's drawings are often guided by the typographic, with slogans like "Stop searching forever, happiness is just next to you" written in playful cursive over photographs of his children splashing in a pool. The words and photographs both take on new meaning as one views the work—concentrating on the text and image as discrete and unified entities. They recall the optimism and wonder in simple joys conveyed in 20x200 edition-maker Shaun Sundholm's Untitled (Let's Get Lost), where he states, "Let's find some beautiful place to get lost."

Kyle's work also summons photographer and illustrator Jane Tam's series to the fun house, which also integrates both mediums. Her line drawings depict men and woman entangled in everyday activities like strumming the guitar or sitting at the office, though often—unlike Kyle's—laced with flirtatious innuendo.

Many more of Kyle's joyful illustrations, photographs, and illustrated photographs are available on his website. Where photographic memory does not do an experience justice, Kyle is on-hand to add aesthetic accent.

Tracks by Katie Koti

Landscapes seduce us. Even the most city-bred of people will succumb to the collective unconscious of beauty we see in nature. Painters and photographers have enticed us for centuries with such imagery, and will surely continue to do so. In contender Katie Koti's series Asunder, the Rhode Island artist visibly connects the landscape to the nature of the human body, furthering the idea of man's connection to the surrounding environment. Bent and nude, her figures—faces sometimes obscured and sometimes fully-bared—are entangled in the structures of their surroundings. The landscape and body become interchangeable, yet discrete entities.

Despite this seemingly natural reciprocation between nature and the body, the series' title, Asunder, suggests a separation more apparent than meets the eye. The nudity of the body is stark, and automatically draws our minds towards ideas on sexuality.

Katie writes,

Our society has attempted to rigidly define gender and sexuality into a binary divide. There is often a sense of disconnect that one can experience as a result of not fitting into these boxes. I hope to challenge these dichotomous roles as well as expose the struggle an individual can go through inside of their skin.

In previous work on gender study, Katie has highlighted this divide through scientifically arranged portraiture. Tightly cropped bodies systematically "undress identity" and remove the restrictive terminology we commonly associate with sexuality. In Asunder, Katie's figures are fixed amongst fields, bales of hay, decaying machinery, and other natural landscapes, their skin and bodies exposed in an external struggle with the place, they should theoretically feel most at ease.

Be sure to check out Katie's website to see additional work from this series as well as the The 50 States Project, where she is a participating artist. Hot ShotsShawn Records, Justin James Reed and 20x200 edition-maker Brian Ulrich are also contributors to the project, capturing portraits, the landscape, and industry across the United States.

Lois at Trindle and Lake, 2008 by Andrew H. Kessler

Contender Andrew Kessler's large format photographs of crossing guards are both formal portraits, and heart-meltingly sentimental. Upon seeing them I found myself recalling days from my own childhood, shuffling along icy sidewalks towards school with the aid of crossing guards to help guide me on my way.

About his work Andrew writes,

[This series] explores the personality, commitment, and dedication of the crossing guards in three towns. Each more interesting than the next, always on time to their post, some with more than 30 years at their posts, serious about this sometimes dangerous (drivers texting, doing their makeup, etc) work of getting children and adults safely across the street and to their destination. Sharing these images with adults evokes memories and immediately the stories start to flow of when they were young about their local crossing guard and the impact they had on their lives.

Bundled up in neon vests and coats, Andrew captures these nostalgic community staples, on foliage-laden sidewalks, in crosswalks, and on street corners. However, Andrew's series is not comprised of casual images of the passerby; they are elegantly executed with the detail and clarity afforded by very-present 4x5 camera. The crossing guards' sense of responsibility and focus is evident, and in the landscapes behind them, one can practically smell the aroma of the changing seasons.

Put on your scarf, mittens and backpack and head over to Andrew's portfolio to check out all of the portraits form his series, Crossing Guards.

p.s. We will continue to feature contenders here on the blog, Flickr and Facebook until we announce the 2009 Second Edition Hot Shots on November 30th. But, your last chance to enter is TOMORROW, October 23rd at 8:00 p.m. (EDT). Apply now!

Bench by Leah Holscher

Austalian-born contender Leah Holscher documents "colour, pattern and lines" in the pursuit of capturing the "beauty of ordinary things." Photographing familiar, even boring, objects and settings can elicit subtle qualities in them that otherwise go largely unnoticed. For me, the photographer who did this most vividly is William Eggleston, whose huge influence endures today. (A quick glance at previous Hot Shot winners supports this contention.)

Leah has traveled throughout Europe, Asia, Central America, the United States, and North Africa in search of "intimate scenes of quiet, unconventional beauty" that reveal "how we affect our surroundings, the natural arrangement of objects, what is kept, what is discarded, and what we leave behind."

See more of Leah's work on her website.

One of our very first Hot Shots from the Spring of 2005, Diane Meyer, has a new show on exhibit at the 18th Street Arts Center in Los Angeles as the fourth installment of the multi-part exhibit, Almost Utopia. Taking its name from the 1982 film Blade Runner, which re-imagines LA in the year 2019, each of the exhibits features work that explores the City of Angels at the intersection of the idealistic future and the current reality.

Diane's series Without A Car In The World is a series of portraits of 100 car-less Los Angelenos. Car-less since 2008, Diane takes her camera, lights and a book to read onto the city bus, setting off to meet others without automobiles. With her images, she calls attention to both the symbolic and functional roles of cars in her sprawling city, where driving is the norm.

Diane writes,

The subjects I am photographing have given up their cars for a variety of reasons ranging from ideological, financial or health-related situations, anxiety after traumatic car accidents, environmental activism, or a simple disinterest in car culture. By bringing together these various voices through the images and text, the project will ultimately address transportation alternatives. It will also provide a voice to a group of individuals often perceived to be disenfranchised in some way for not having an automobile.

The Arts Center will host myriad events in affiliation with Diane's exhibit starting on November 6, including panels about riding bikes, transportation in LA, and a comedy show featuring Kristina Wong that's all about riding the bus. See the full schedule of events on the 18th Street Arts Center website.

Without A Car In The World
18th Street Arts Center
October 17–December 11, 2009
1639 18th St., Santa Monica, CA
310.453.3711

Amazon Relic and Brooklyn Summertime by Joshua G Warren

San Francisco-based contender Joshua Warren photographs "portraits" of fire hydrants in-situ, creating a colorful taxonomy of this sidewalk staple. About his series, Joshua writes:

They are these funny, stubby, phallic warriors, yet they speak to our greatest fears. They are the last line of defense against losing all one's worldly possessions. They are conduits to a vast unseen subterranean aquatic network. They are the dashers of hopes of rock-star parking. They are like Facebook for dogs.

With an idea as charmingly simple as this, there is definitely strength in numbers; Josh has already captured forty-two fire hydrants in his series. The obsessive aspiration for completeness of such playful work reminds me of one of my favorite artists, Daniel Eatock, who photographs abandoned car batteries.

Car Batteries by Daniel Eatock

Joshua's statement about his fire hydrants works beautifully in the case of Eatock's work as well:

Despite their being mass produced, each one is unique... Because of their ubiquity, however, they are the kind of thing that you almost don't see at all... until you start really looking. At any rate, I find them really beautiful, hilarious and compelling.

Perhaps taking cue from Bernd & Hilla Becher's catalogical portraits of large-scale industrial structures, Josh brings his camera to the more equanimous street-level capturing an object familiar to all of us. His work is a light-hearted and unpretentious reminder to reconsider the way we see everyday objects without somber or pedagogical overtones. Head over to Josh's portfolio and take a look at all the rusty, silly, patriotic, and colorful fire hydrants that you've probably missed.

Antler Speaker by Adam Caillier

At first glance the ambiguous thing at the center of Adam Caillier's Antler Speaker could be a sculpture, perhaps a shambling Joseph Beuys installation. Closer scrutiny reveals the kind of haphazard assemblage you make when moving apartments—if "you" are a college student and most of your gear is still at your parents' house (except the antler, you have to take the antler).

Or perhaps it is somewhere in between: a pile of arbitrary, decontextualized stuff that takes on a totemic power in bizarre combination. Adam seems to suggest as much when he says his work aims to "describe the traces of the everyday, the contained energy of the objects that make it, and my nascent awareness." An MFA candidate at Minneapolis College of Art & Design (MCAD), Adam intimates that his consciousness as a photographer may not be much better informed about the nature of this energy than we viewers. His family history ("My father is a mortician/construction worker, my mother is a teacher, and my sister does hairdos in New Hampshire.") seems to ground him in things as facts, however prosaic or absurd.

Our awareness is left to contend with "what is there," visible but not totally knowable. The rest of his oeuvre explores these same ineffable qualities.

Lovely You In The Lovely Field by Erin L. Shafkind

A vacant stare in an abandoned wilderness with a funny hat. These are the simple elements that make up the amusingly beautiful photography of Erin L. Shafkind. Her subjects gaze directly, and indifferently, into the camera, unaware of the discomfort they create for the viewer. Comparably, this contrived ineptitude has become a staple in the world of independent film-making (along with quirky personalities, melancholia, and bangs). The fact that Erin captures these images with an analog film camera augments their connection to the forced awkwardness found throughout the scripts of indie films.

Erin, who works as a teacher in Seattle and is a self-proclaimed big fan of puffy clouds, champions the anti-aesthetic. In a separate black and white series, she focuses on the randomness of objects, people included, in their surrounding community. Everything is quiet, simple and charming. Women play the accordion among cows, furniture is strewn about a field, and men hula-hoop in suits. It's all a display, simultaneously symbolic and meaningless.

Erin hopes all her photos engage our notions of narrative around a framework of fashion photography. Her models coyly tease our perception of reality—Are they real? Are they human? Are they beautiful? But unlike fashion photography, her images exude a plainness. And the titles, like Bath Tub Beauty and Your Horns Take My Breath Away vaguely reference trashy romance novels, giving away her whimsically silly nature and letting viewers in on the joke. It's just her friends in strange headgear.

Untitled, 2009 by Janelle E. Jones

The midnight black crows that create domestic catastrophe in contender Janelle Jones' images seem to have no regard for keeping a clean house. They rip apart the contents of the pantry, shred roll after roll of toilet paper, pull apart feathered pillows, and in their anthropomorphic state, embody a house as though misbehaving children.

Jones creates her cacophonies with intention, with the birds devilishly still lingering at the scenes of their crime. Unlike other photographers who either explore the invitation of the wild beast into the unadulterated home as in Amy Stein's Domesticated or glorify the animal-as-human as in Jill Greenberg's large-scale posed Monkey Portraits, Jones portrays the birds as the obviously guilty, but shameless invaders who seem completely unaware they are treading unusual territory.

She writes of her work,

Humor, in its various forms and degrees, also plays an important role in my thought and creative processes. My work often suggests an air of irony and absurdity, and pushes the viewer to question first the truthfulness and then the apparent meaning of the image. By pushing situations to the point of absurdity, I am able to reduce overwhelming ideas to physical situations that are visible and understandable.

The crow, known to be both an intelligent and ominous avian, is the star of the Aesop's fable, The Crow and the Pitcher wherein the bird finds a pitcher full of water, but cannot drink it because its beak is too short. Rather than giving up, the crow drops pebbles into the pitcher one by one, until the water level is high enough for it to drink the water. Whether Jones views her carefully articulated gaggle of mess-making crows as intelligent, plotting creatures, or as a foreboding presence, she captures them with her tongue-in-cheek.

See more from this series and others on Janelle's website.

Untitled, 2009 by Rebecca S. Horne

I had the chance to meet Rebecca Horne at a portfolio review event a few years ago and was immediately taken with her work, wherein pitchers of water mysteriously empty themselves, a cup of coffee reflects a heavenly vault and paper bags express their previously unseen tragicomic selves. Her visual vocabulary is of the humble and domestic, but her rigorous compositions create a powerful allusive quality. The everyday materials and objects which comprise the subjects of her work are "evocative of raw, organic relationships," as she says, and lately she has begun to include herself in the photos (however obliquely, as above). Painstakingly assembled, the world she crafts is of a slightly surreal domesticity that feels entirely fresh.

Rebecca is also the Photo Editor of Discover Magazine, and has the enviable task of making the latest astrophysical visualizations somehow assort with product shots of clunky-looking scientific gadgets. She uses her blog to muse on her own work (read about her process with the above photograph here), other photographers she admires, and the challenges of forging a distinctive visual style for a consumer science magazine (including this recent favorite, "Why Is Black Hole Art So Shiny?"). Rebecca is a true thinker and photographer whose work lies in the space where personal symbolism and quantum physics intersect.

You can see Rebecca's portfolio here.

Untitled, From the series "The Cybernetic Tourist" by Elizabeth Obert

Contender Liz Obert's series, The Cybernetic Tourist, is a wonderful exercise in meta-photography: pictures of tourists taking pictures. Liz writes,

We use devices such as cell phones and cameras to connect to the world, but by doing so we become disconnected and removed from our immediate surroundings. I find this behavior particularly ironic in settings where people go to escape their usual hectic lives, but are unable to fully disengage. . . .This body of work is about observing and documenting people interacting in these spaces who are more concerned with the framing of the moment rather than the experience itself.

Her series is so interesting to me because, as a photographer myself, I often have trouble reconciling my desire to be on both sides of the camera at the same time. Back in August there was a great article by New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman titled At Louvre, Many Stop to Snap but Few Stay to Focus. Kimmelman writes,

Cameras replaced sketching by the last century; convenience trumped engagement, the viewfinder afforded emotional distance and many people no longer felt the same urgency to look. It became possible to imagine that because a reproduction of an image was safely squirreled away in a camera or cell phone, or because it was eternally available on the Web, dawdling before an original was a waste of time, especially with so much ground to cover.

Kimmelman and Obert both suggest that in our frenzy to see as many attractions as possible, we're losing out on the subtleties of the experience. All this talk, it turns out, is quite timely because tomorrow, October 17th, is Slow Art day at the Smithsonian Museum. According to the Smithsonian, the average person pauses "less than 8 seconds to take in a work of art." (5 seconds of which might be spent snapping a picture.) Tomorrow, the museum will celebrate art the slow way by encouraging visitors to reflect at length upon a few pieces of art and then participate in a group discussion at lunchtime!

Whether or not you can make it to the Smithsonian tomorrow, I urge you to stop by Liz's website, the Jen Bekman Gallery, or another favorite gallery or museum to take in some art, slowly.

I'd like to conclude with a quote from Ms. Bekman herself, a strong advocate of all things slow:

If we really take the time to savor what we consume, we're more inclined to be discerning about what exactly the input is. Conversely, if the makers of what we consume know that we're paying attention, they're more likely to give us the good stuff. Oh yes, my theory is riddled with flaws, I realize as I type this, but allow me some idealism, won't you please? Work with me people!

We are thrilled to announce the addition of The New Yorker picture editor Whitney Johnson to our panel! Whitney's joined us just in time to review all the contenders in the Hey, Hot Shot! 2009 Second Edition competition. This preeminent group of arts professionals just got better—and you want this group to see your work! (hint hint!)

Of Whitney joining the review team, Hey, Hot Shot! founder Jen Bekman says,

I'm delighted that the talented Ms. Johnson is joining the team. Whitney and I got to know each other as reviewers at various top-tier photography events across the country. Plus, she works at my favorite magazine. When she came to Hosang Park's opening a few weeks ago, I suggested to her—as I always do with people whom I enjoy and admire—that she be a panelist. She said, All you have to do is ask—and I did!

As the newest member of team Hey, Hot Shot!, Whitney will help review and select the Second Edition Hot Shots of 2009. Here's a touch more about her:

Whitney Johnson is the picture editor at The New Yorker where she is responsible for producing shoots and researching visual material for political, cultural, and social stories. Prior to joining the magazine, Whitney worked at the Open Society Institute & Soros Foundations Network for over five years, where she worked closely with photographers, commissioning work for publications and coordinating a documentary photography exhibition and international grant competition. She holds a BA from Barnard College, and is pursuing a MA in American Studies, with a focus on photography and social change, at Columbia University.

Welcome Whitney! We can't wait for your exacting eye to help sift through all these talented contenders as we seek out the newest Hot Shots!

Common Composite: Clocks by Ted Ollier

There's something compelling about composite photography, like that created by contender Ted Ollier. Tens, hundreds, or even thousands of overlaid images allow us to see trends and patterns that are invisible to the naked eye, or, as in the photograph above, an object in multiple states of existence.

Ted writes,

In a sea of undifferentiated grey, nothing sparks an interest. Add a speck, a dot, a mark--and something emerges from the gloom. Something draws the attention and the eye. Something engages the mind. The world is, and we are designed to analyze it in ways that baffle the most advanced digital computational systems we can devise. Blur it, average it, dice it, compress it, and the mind still gleans some sort of information from the inputs it is provided.

Ted's work reminded me of some of my favorite composite images from across the web, which can have the effect of diluting the individual object, while simultaneously evoking a a sense of awe in the surreal quality that the multiples creates. Jason Salavon takes Playboy centerfolds and layers them to show "the evolution of this form of portraiture" through the decades.

Every Playboy Centerfold, The Decades (normalized), 2002 by Jason Salavon

Penelope Umbrico's 20x200 edition, 87 Suns From Fllickr - 29 Visible, culls nearly a hundred sunset photographs found on Flickr into a single, celestial image:

87 Suns From Flickr - 29 Visible by Penelope Umbrico

Ho-Yeol Ryu visualizes the trajectories of an entire day's worth of flights at the airport resulting in this image below:

Busy Airport by Ho-Yeol Ryu

Most recently, a new project by Joshua T. Nimoy made the rounds, declaring that the average color of more the 26,000 pieces of art in the collection of the MoMA produced this shade of brownish gray:

In addition to his composite photography, Ted, a self-proclaimed "armchair philosopher" has many other conceptual projects on his website in a diverse range of media like printmaking, sculpture, installation and sound. Browsing through, I began to wonder what a composite of all his experiments, or a composite of all the composites, would tell us about the works as a whole.

Contender Jeff Seltzer caught my eye with his new series because it conveys my exact feelings on this blustery fall day. It's slightly eerie, melancholy and desolate, though the presence of chairs and empty bike racks, in some of the images, leave a sense of nostalgia and longing for the warmer months and good times we just left behind.

Jeff intends the series to reveal socialized structured space and how it imposes societal norms upon its inhabitants—an idea that has become of interest to me as a recent immigrant to New York City, exploring the nooks and crannies of its underbelly. There are grand buildings and streets intended to be viewed, to have us take something away and leave us with the feeling of awe. We create our own spaces of comfort to feel familiar and confident, but much of this is based on the aesthetics that have already been laid out before us. In photographing an educational building, Jeff is revealing the constructed experiences that channeled most of us through our childhood and created our perception of the use of space.

Jeff describes his series:

The series of images taken at Los Angeles Valley College (L.A.V.C) is a study of contradictions between the perceived benefits of formal and structured educational environments, and the reality of order as a potential repressive tool. The images, which in each case represent a pre-set state of conditions determined by the institution, seek to show an inherent rejection of these state affairs by the photographer, by portraying either their distinct abandonment, state of repair, or isolation.

His work reminds me of the work of performance artist Alex Villar that was part of The Interventionists at Mass MoCa in 2004. The series, titled Other Spaces, documented Villar intervening and reclaiming spaces in New York City that normally go unnoticed. This included the tiny crevice between two buildings, an empty concrete alley behind a gate that normally went un-tread, and the space underneath a stoop. All of his actions, as well as Jeff's, inspire viewers to look at what is not in front of us, to step off the beaten path and take in the forgotten and unused.

Jeff Seltzer is based in Los Angeles and was educated at San Diego State University, receiving a BA and an MA in Rhetorical Theory.

Refinery Triptych (panel 1) by Massimo Cristaldi.

The work of Massimo Cristaldi is concerned with the ineffable qualities of the visible world. Here, nature and industry make an unlikely pair, yet they make a conceptual reciprocation. The flock of starlings in this photograph are drawn to the refinery's thermal flows; en masse they create a kind of super-organism that almost emulates the scale of the artificial complex. And, they create an amazing visual tension as well.

Having written about his body of work Simulacra elsewhere, I continue to be drawn to the ideas behind his photographs, which in his words represent "possible and strange harmonies." He adds, "I dedicate a particular interest to boundary lands in unstable balance between progress and leftover traces of a time gone."

Based in Catania and Rome, Massimo has received awards from the Prix de Photographie de Paris and International Photography Awards this year alone. Much more can be seen at his website, which The New York Times recently called out as a must-see portfolio site.

We're excited to announced that Joe Holmes, JBP artist, Hot Shot and now seven-time edition-maker on 20x200 will be collaborating with the clothing line Rag & Bone in an installation at their new flagship store at 119 Mercer Street in Soho.

The new store officially opens next Monday, October 19th (though you might have seen their doors open during their ongoing soft launch) and will kick-off with a big fashion-and-photo-filled party that evening. Six 30" x 40" prints from Joe's Workspace series will be on display in the store for a run of at least six weeks. Make sure to stop by Rag & Bone starting next Tuesday, to see Joe's work as you browse for some new fall fashions.

Beale Street by Thomas Griscom

Tom Griscom has been collaborating with the San Francisco State University Labor Archives and Research Center to document important sites of labor revolt and unionization in the Bay Area. Beale Street depicts an area bridging the Financial District and Multimedia Gulch whose traces of labor struggle are today largely eradicated. Though many brick warehouse spaces remain, it is hard to imagine this neighborhood of corporate centers and oyster bars was once the site of the violent climax to the months-long West Coast Longshoremen's Strike 75 years ago, popularly known as "Bloody Thursday."

But this stirring historical reflection is only one motivation behind this body of work. Tom says,

By no means is this project a political statement as much as it is about me trying to understand the allure of the West Coast for so many people, myself included. It has always had the promise of a better life, both the quality of and financially. Choosing these structures has been a look at what remains, what has been reappropriated, and what is gone completely. What started as a small collaborative project for [the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' triennial] Bay Area Now last summer, then turned into a 50 page thesis and show, and now I am expanding it further to parallel the downturn California is facing

With this in mind, these panoramic portraits are especially poignant in that the format is ostensibly suited for the romantic sweep of California's vistas, only to document a restless and sometimes bitter history.

More of Tom's labor sites and other portfolios can be found on his website.

Perhaps the most famously photographed set of twins in the art world are Cathleen Mulcahy and Colleen Yorke, also known as The Wade sisters or the Diane Arbus twins. Arbus photographed the sisters in matching dark green dresses, after discovering them—and their startling eyes—at a local party for twins and triplets in 1967.

The photograph of the Wade sisters was discovered among many photographs of "freaks" and "outsiders" in Arbus' collection after she committed suicide in 1971. They suggest that Arbus compartmentalized twins among the bizarre and tragic forms of humanity that existed in her vision of the world—a world that was both a point of fixation and an entity that engulfed her psyche.

Contender Andrew A. Henderson has also sought out twins in his project, Seeing Double, but only twins in the village of Kodinji in the southern state of Kerala in India. The village is comprised of 2,000 families, but contains 250 sets of twins, a phenomena that has occurred without apparent explanation. Henderson notes, "while most twinning occurs in the West because of the widespread use of fertility drugs, doctors cannot attribute a reason to why it occurs in Kodinji, especially given that India has one of the lowest twinning rates in the world."

Henderson's work is a catalog of double-dom, and the pairs of his brothers, sisters and sister-brother combinations stand side-by-side shot head-on, unsmiling, in an ambiguously located forest. Some pairs are dressed alike, some not, some sets identical and others fraternal and disparate enough in appearance that their twin-ship is only knowable through Henderson's documentation. Henderson neither celebrates nor condemns the individual sets of twins—and rather, only suggests that their existence is a difference to anthropologically acknowledge. His stage-lit forest backdrop avoids making commentary about the rest of the village of Kodinji—whether it is poor or industrial, conservative or liberal, or if the twins are welcome or outcast in their own community.

Henderson has also photographed other hierarchical and classifying elements of Indian society including a series about individuals who suffer leprosy titled The Untouchables and another, Dreaming for Fiza about the struggle of transsexuals. Images from both series are available on his website.

Image from Clint Baclawski's Hype/White series

Brooklyn design center 3rd Ward is hosting an exhibition of The Best Emerging Photographers on October 16th from 7-10 p.m.. One of the esteemed twenty-six photographers selected happens to be Spring 2007 Hot Shot, Clint Baclawski. Clint's photographs, typically of trade fairs and commercial exhibitions, are mounted in large lightboxes. Their solid presence and mechanical glow activate the space around them in a way most conventionally framed prints cannot, and wryly comment on the subject matter of the photographs themselves.

2009 Fall Group Show // The Best Emerging Photographers
3rd Ward | 195 Morgan Ave | Brooklyn, New York

View more of Clint's work on his website.

On Tuesday, October 20th, the gallery will host the Official Release Party for City Walks Architecture: New York by Alissa Walker, published by Chronicle Books.

Join us at 6 Spring Street for drinks and to view Hosang Park's exhibition, A Square. Once a group has gathered, Alissa will lead a walk through the ever-changing Lower East Side with special stops at the New Museum, the Storefront for Art & Architecture and more. The evening winds up back at the gallery for a tasting of four New York-inspired flavors of gelato from il laboratorio del gelato. You will be able to purchase a copy of the book, on-site, that evening, and Alissa will be in-house for signing.

Order of Events:
6 p.m. -- Meet at Jen Bekman Gallery, 6 Spring Street
7-8:30 p.m. -- Walk through the LES
8:30 p.m. -- Gelato reception at Jen Bekman Gallery

From October 18–24th, Alissa will be leading a Week of Walks, taking six different urban adventures based on the twenty-five available in the book. Check out Alissa's blog,Gelatobaby, for a full list of the walks which include Greenwich Village, the Empire State Building, Central Park and the World Trade Center Site.

Whether you are a visitor or a New Yorker yourself, Alissa's walks point out idiosyncratic historical knowledge within the city's many neighborhoods and highlight buildings, parks and monuments that may have gone unnoticed before. All walks are free and open to the public; you can simply show up at the schedule time ready to stroll. All tours include a complimentary serving of gelato or ice cream, plus all attendees will receive a coupon good for a discount on City Walks Architecture: New York.

Lola Series 2 by Joshua Schwalbach-Scott

This image from the Lola series by contender, Joshua Schwalbach-Scott, is the type of stylized photographic eye-candy that might be more at home on a billboard or your TV screen than on the walls of a gallery. Upon seeing the images I became instantly nostalgic for the viral Sony Bravia ads featuring bouncy balls and paint cannons.

Outside the context of logos, headlines, and lifestyle-branding, the Lola series (actually outtakes from a commercial perfume shoot) evoke an abstract kind of whimsy. These images, Joshua writes, are:

. . . artistic interpretations out of items in our overly commercialized society, which is an overall theme throughout my work.

To me, this recontextualization of commercial photography is akin to the appropriation work of Richard Prince, whose infamous rephotographs of the unbranded elements of magazine ads created a bold new category of fine art.

Untitled (Cowboy), 1989, by Richard Prince

Lola Series 1 by Joshua Schwalbach-Scott

However, Joshua's work isn't limited to literal explosions of color. Other portfolios up on his site such as Snapshots and Hong Kong show his engagement with street and travel photography. The diverse subject matter allows us to see several sides of a single artist whose experimentation and crossover between personal and commercial work makes him an exciting photographer to watch.

129 6th Ave W, Dickinson, ND, 2009 by David Ebeltoft

Even in this digital age, the physical qualities of the work are still critical considerations for photographers. What kind of film (for those who still use it, and there are many), the type of print, the quality of print stock, and not least, the matte and frame are all material choices which affect how the photograph is displayed and perceived.

It helps to see the work in person, of course; I saw the importance of these qualities at the 2007 solo exhibition of Helen Van Meene's work at Yancey Richardson Gallery. Van Meene used framing to her advantage by encasing her beatific portraits of children in thin, dark walnut frames to give the images a votive-like quality. The portraits were not only beautiful and eerie, but the slight frames reflected the delicate character of these children.

Contender David Ebeltoft brings this approach to light in his new body of work, Residential. He writes about the project,

My current series, Residential, was built on the idea of how a home's external appearance and formal composition can be extensions of the individual, their family, and community. The framework of each dwelling became a symbol, a scene from an ordinary existence that helped shape my idea of how a home, both aesthetically and conceptually, should look. The split-toned, gelatin silver prints are 'housed' in a white-stained 1/2in Baltic-birch matte and ebony-stained 2x4 walnut frame.

David Ebeltoft completed his BFA in Photography and Museum Studies at the College of Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2002. David received the Grand Prize at the 2008 National Small Works Exhibition at the Arkell Museum and was most recently awarded the 2009 AATTA Arts Fellowship at Dickinson State University.

Former Prison Guard Barracks, Vorkuta, Komi Republic, Russia by Donald Weber

In addition to being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007 and two Canada Council visual arts project grants in 2008, Donald Weber, a 2008 Second Edition Hot Shot and 20x200 edition-maker, has won the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography, an $8000 reward for being an "outstanding visual artist working in photography."

It's likely that this will go towards supporting Donald's ambitious current project, a book about life in Russia, about which he writes, "It's about the curse of power, and the wounds it inflicts on those who don't have it. It's the 18th century with jets flying overhead."

While you wait for Donald to complete his work abroad, you can hop the ferry to Staten Island to catch a glimpse of his photographs from Russia, which are running through December in an exhibition at the historical Alice Austen House Museum. If you can't make it out in time, be sure to check out the Stories section of Donald's website, which features large, journalistic series from Russia.

Donald Weber: Russian Archive
September 26th -December 31st, 2009

Alice Austen House Museum
2 Hylan Blvd.
Staten Island, NY
(map)

Photographs with magical light always capture my heart. This obsession with luminous qualities began with the intensive lighting in the work of Philip Lorca DiCorcia, was solidified by the 2006 exhibition Twilight: Photography in the Magic Hour at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and extends to the unearthly glows found in the photographs of 2009 Hot Shot Mike Sinclair. The misty haze found in Contender Sarina N. Finkelstein's work just reinforces my swooning. Golden sunshine is just, well, sunny, and instantly implies the endless summer of the West Coast. It is surprising, then, to see this light fall on sobering and increasingly all-too-familiar subject matter (as we've also observed in the entries from other Hey, Hot Shot! Contenders this year): the effects of the recession.

Sarina documents the surprising resurgence of gold miners in the mountains of Northern California and their struggles. Says Sarina of the project,

This body of work focuses on five California gold prospecting communities. The miners here--victims of recent layoffs, veterans, ex-convicts, and freelancers in between gigs--are dependent on the income from their claims to feed their families. Selling an ounce of gold at $1000/oz provides them with hope for survival. The New '49ers arrive in Winnebagos and pickups, having sold their homes and farms for subsistence. They create the same semi-permanent Hoovervilles along the edge of the river canyon as their predecessors.

This image strikes me because it documents a pregnant moment: a young man casually strolling down a riverside, a family in the far distance. At first glance it seems idyllic. However, the context casts the image in a darker light; this is a place of hardship, where people take on unknown odds in unlikely ways to survive in the worst economic climate in generations. But it is also full of promise; accidental but tight-knit communities emerge as they face the same hardships and an uncertain future together.

Sarina Finkelstein received her BFA in Photography and Art History from Washington University in Saint Louis, and then completed her MFA in Photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She has been a guest speaker for the Professional Women Photographers (PWP) and a featured photographer in PWP Magazine, as well as a speaker and award recipient at the 2004 Society for Photographic Education National Conference.

A Square, the NYC debut show by 2008 Second Edition Hot Shot and Ne Plus Ultra Hosang Park, is up at the gallery through Saturday, November 7th. If you haven't yet stopped by, we strongly encourage you to! Seeing these prints in person is nothing at all like seeing them online.

For those of you are sadly far, far away from the gallery, luckily our own Joe Holmes stopped by to take installation shots of the exhibit.

Jen Bekman Gallery
6 Spring Street
New York City 10012
On view: Sept 25 - Nov 7, 2009

Read the press release and see the full set of installation shots here.

Hosang also has two edition available on 20x200, Uman and Howon; Howon is part of the current exhibit (pictured in top photo, furthest to the right).

Untitled (Aren't They Beautiful?) by Kara Suhey

"Aren't they beautiful?" asks contender Kara Suhey in a series of photographs that documents her own candy red fingernails. The work, in both appearance and thought, resembles the spontaneity of images made on a camera phone and questions her intent to create photography-as-art. The series appears to be a recreational afterthought, but Kara's naivety is sweetly feminine with a touch of nonchalant narcissism. She knows what she's doing.

The precise stupidity of the statement [Aren't They Beautiful?] leads one to ask whether or not I might be serious. It's this hazy area of childlike wonderment in which these photographs dwell. In the gravity and simplicity of the present moment, my own red and shining fingernails are radiantly beautiful.

This kind of self-aware work acknowledges the action of artists to create and show, while mocking the formality of this action itself. Everything is delivered with a sly wink. Though the photos clearly examine the concept of beauty, they cheekily poke fun at feminist ideologies as well; direct embodiment of our generation's post-feminist wit and irreverence.

But truly, it's all about having fun while making and sharing art. Kara and her longtime friend, Mina Karimi, have also been collaborating on a series of performance projects under the idea that Everything Will Be Okay. Part public art and part motivational speaker, their goal is to surprise everyday people by bringing a bit of unexpected joy to their lives. This includes organizing a NYC reenactment of the unforgettable parade scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off and a two-month Dance Everyday tour.

This project idea came to us as a tangible extension of our longtime ideal that you should follow your bliss and do what you truly feel like doing. This means taking an active role in your own enjoyment and cultivating a creative mind, playful spirit, and performing the work you genuinely would like to do.

Kara's projects are quite inspiring for all struggling artists out there, reminding you that the power of one person (or two!) can greatly influence the collective experience.

x2EXP60 by Damian VanCamp

Edward Weston once quipped that "consulting the rules of composition before taking a photograph is like consulting the laws of gravity before going for a walk." Hot Shot Contender Damian VanCamp's work seems to take this advice to heart in his series Watching The World. VanCamp sidesteps compositional convention by exposing his roll once, leaving it for a while (in the process forgetting what he had first shot), and re-exposing the film. The resultant images are generated by creative chance, revealing distorted overlays of textures and unexpected intersections of light and shadow.

According to VanCamp Watching The World is best understood next to Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai's poem, "The Resurrection of the Dead," part of which reads:

We will not take anything with us.
Even plundering kings, they all left something here.
Lovers and conquerors, happy and sad,
they all left something here, a sign, a house,
like a man who seeks to return to a beloved place
and purposely forgets a book, a basket, a pair of glasses,
so that he will have an excuse to come back to the beloved place.
In the same way we leave things here.
In the same way the dead leave us.

See more of VanCamp's work on his website.

Last Friday, the International Center of Photography (ICP) opened its doors for the triennial exhibition of photography and video, Dress Codes. The show takes a look at projects that examine fashion and how it relates to art and cultural and social phenomena. Many international photographers are featured including Stan Douglas, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson and Milagros de la Torre.

The show concludes ICP's Year of Fashion, a series of exhibitions encompassing myriad angles on fashion including the manufacturing industry, impact on identity, relationship to age and gender, and consumption of clothing and fashion-related objects. The series has included Avedon Fashion 1944-2000, Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, The Condé Nast Years 1923-1937, and Weird Beauty: Fashion Photography Now. Dress Codes offers a critical new view on fashion's role from everyday dress to haute couture as a means of expression, statement, or self-identity.

Dress Codes remains on view through January 17, 2010 and ICP will host several events in relation to the exhibit. For more information, visit the exhibition page.

International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas (at 43rd St)
New York, NY 10036
Ph: 212.857.0000

Hours:
Tues-Thurs: 10:00 am-6:00 pm
Fri: 10:00 am-8:00 pm
Sat-Sun: 10:00 am-6:00 pm

Collocation No. 14 (NATURE) Left Panel and Collocation No. 14 (NATURE) Right Panel by Mickey Smith

If you were at the NY Art Book Fair at P.S.1 this past weekend you may have been lucky enough to see Winter 2007 Hot Shot and recent 20x200 edition-maker Mickey Smith's 50-panel TODAY installation on view at the Invisible-Exports booth. If you missed it, then you will be glad to know that Mickey will end the year with a flurry of exciting events.

At the end of this month she'll have work in a group show Artists Who Use Texts to Say Nice Things curated by Aaron Krach. The show will be at 206 Rivington Street, #4D, NYC with a short, two-day run: October 24–25, 1–6pm. Mickey's work will also make a showing in Issue #13 of ESOPUS. The magazine will host a publication launch and exhibition in New York on October 27, 6–8pm. Check the ESOPUSsite for more details.

In December, Mickey will unveil an installation funded by the Manhattan Community Arts Fund Project funded by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Last, but not least, Mickey will join her gallery, Invisible-Exports in Miami for the NADA Art Fair at the The Deauville Beach Resort from December 3–6, 2009.

Still want more Mickey? Read a 20x200 interview with her and visit her website to keep up with more upcoming exhibitions, installations and other news.

LESS 7 by Sergei Sviatchenko

Browsing through this year's second edition of Hot Shot contenders, the bright colors and faceted shapes of Sergei Sviatchenko's photo collage submissions brought my scroll to a stop. A 60-year old architect from the Ukraine, Sergei uses collage to invite the public within his artistic process, asking for reflection on our modern vision of life and culture. His most recent series, LESS, explores portraits and architecture, recombining photos into singular objects that float against a flat space of emotive neon. He writes,

It might sound absurd or surreal, but the recontextualisation [sic] of familiar everyday objects, with the use of photo collage are turned into scarp contoured, sculptural expressions, point out the media imagery all around us and delivers the imagery in new, dynamic forms.

Following a large history of photomontage artists from the Constructivists to the Dadaists, Sergei takes the medium one step further by also photographing his collages parading through real space. These pieces are interacting with fingers, toes and various environmental elements, adding a voyeuristic and process-heavy dimension to the work.

Sergei's surreal world of jumbled miscellany is more readily experienced in his large-scale, pervading installation work, which include drawing, painting and video (an expansion on his belief that all art is inherently a collage).

In 2002, Sergei opened a collaborative non-profit exhibition space, Senko Studio in Viborg, Denmark. The space showcases emerging new media artists and experimental projects, while his accompanying venture, Senko Frame Project, has expanded to include contemporary video art.

His most recent show, Mutatis Mutandis, in collaboration with photographer Jan von Holleben, combined human and animal structures superimposed over scenic landscapes at the Farmani Gallery in Brooklyn, NY.

Toys R'Us Customer Pickup by Darrius Thompson

Darrius Thompson's Toys R' Us Customer Pickup is spare in subject and composition but long on possibility. On one level is the frank presentation of a bland, if not unsightly, scene. A steel door is barely demarcated from the surrounding surface, the side or back of a major retail store. The asphalt comes right up to the edge of the building save for a small patch of concrete. The few other details are pedestrian; the stain on the door is perhaps the most compelling detail of the overall picture.

This attention to the banal and ugly has a proud pedigree in modern photography. Lewis Baltz turned his camera on the unexpressive surfaces of corporate buildings in his landmark The new Industrial Parks near Irvine, California, published in 1974. This would soon be succeeded by the New Topographics exhibition and catalog (of which Steidl has also published a volume dedicated to the show and its legacy). This attention to the ready-made environment at hand transformed photographic practice in allowing the quotidian and distasteful as legitimate subjects for depiction and consumption. Darrius is clearly embracing this tradition in its entirety.

Darrius has more work up on his site as well as a blog and resource site, urbansand, both worth checking out (including interviews with 20x200 edition-maker Michael Lundgren and contender Bryan Formhals).

2009 First Edition Hot Shot Parsley Steinweiss sent us exciting news that two exhibits featuring her work are both opening this week. The first, Derived, Borrowed, and Stolen, curated by Basak Malone and Sara Wight, runs October 1st–15th at Broadway Gallery (473 Broadway, 7th Floor) in New York. The opening is tonight, October 1st from 6:00–8:00 p.m and also includes work by Sarah Sharpe, Katie St. Claire, Sara Wight and Jordan Tate.

Frome the press release,

Derived, Borrowed, and Stolen brings together artists whose work addresses the nature of originality and its complicated relationship with the visual arts. The central theme and title is inspired by the well-known quote, "talent borrows, genius steals," which is said by some to have come from none other than Picasso (rumor has it that it might also have been Morrissey's, of the rock band Smiths, or even Oscar Wilde's). The uncertainty surrounding the origins of the quote is ironically apt. Linked by this common thread, the works in this show raise questions about what constitutes creativity in today's world, one in which the Internet has rendered copying and plagiarizing in the visual arts easier and more socially acceptable.

For those of you out in Colorado, Parsley's work is also on view at the 2009 International Exhibition of Fine Art Photography juried by Andy Adams (of Flak Photo), at the Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, CO. The opening reception is tomorrow, Friday, October 2nd from 6:00–9:00 p.m and will also feature images by 2008 Hot Shot Yijun (Pixy) Liao and Jen Bekman Gallery artist Brad Moore.

The Center for Fine Art Photography also has two open calls for juried exhibitions with deadlines on October 20th and October 27th. The first, New Visions will be juried by Michael Itkoff, founder of Daylight Magazine and offers the opportunity for cash prizes and being featured in various online galleries. The second, Portfolio Showcase, Volume 4 has an open theme and will select fifteen photographers for an exhibition, with the image from the winning portfolio to be used as the cover for the Volume 4 publication. Click on the above exhibition titles for more information about submissions and prizes!

And, last but not least: our 2nd Edition 2009 Hey, Hot Shot! competition closes in just a few, short weeks! The deadline is 8:00 p.m EST on Friday, October 23rd. Enter here!