Hey, Hot Shot! Entries for Contenders

Tonight I e-mailed with old friend Ed Park (author of the fantastic office-novel Personal Days) and also I shot some photos at the National Book Awards 5 Under 35 event, where Joshua Ferris, author of another office-based literary staple, Then We Came to the End, introduced one of the "emerging" readers. I no longer work in a stereotypical American office, and, I admit, sometimes I miss it. If you miss it, or are in the midst of it, you'd do well to pick up both books. Each is brilliant, in its own way.

All that said, look at Hey, Hot Shot! entrant Rylan Steele's work. The piece above, Office, is just sterile enough to imply that there is a force -- other than the workers -- in charge of the space. That the offices in his depictions operate, like most offices, on a mix of logic, nonsense, and mysterious directives from afar, is obvious. Everything is a little too neat. A little too well-lit. About as eerie as I imagine my old offices would be if I visited them now.

Ms. Bekman reminded me of one of the best (the best?) office poems ever: Theodore Roethke's Dolor.

Dolor

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,

All the misery of manila folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,

Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,

Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

The photographs in Hey, Hot Shot! contender Cara Phillips' series, Singular Beauty, feel similar to Taryn Simon's An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar: these are things we aren't meant to see. As Cara writes:

Cosmetic surgery is now a common, if still stigmatized, part of our culture. When you enter the offices of Cosmetic Surgeons you not only discover the promise of happiness but also the fear, self-loathing, anxiety, and desire of millions of Americans. This collection of photographs, resulted from both a personal struggle with body issues, and a long history in the beauty business. While photographing these doctor's offices, I was less interested in capturing the actual place or thing, than in capturing the experience of it...

Street Advertiser | San Antonio, TX | 1-Person Household | Lives on $432 fixed monthly income, 2007, by Mark Menjivar

What we keep behind closed doors, in drawers, places we think that no one else will see, can tell a lot about us. As of late, it seems, a lot of photographers have been peeking and prying into these private spaces: Coke O'Neal documents strangers' medicine cabinets, Paho Mann photographs junk-drawers, and Hey, Hot Shot! contender Mark Menjivar records the contents of refrigerators.
He describes his process:

This project began as I spent time with people who have experienced hunger. As I traveled around the country going to food banks and soup kitchens, my thoughts increasingly turned to the food items they ate on a daily basis. If we are what we eat, then what can we learn by looking closely at the foods we consume? A refrigerator is both a shared and a private space... I see these photographs as portraits of those I have come to know. They are rich and they are poor. Vegetarians, Republicans, the hungry, members of the NRA, Liberals, Catholics, under-appreciated, Atheists, the unemployed, former soldiers in Hitler's SS, midwives, mentally ill, dreamers, and so much more.

Hey, Hot Shot! contender Heather D. Kehoe crafts scenes that are sort of absurd. Observational and humorous, her work puts life-sized paper dolls in real-life, and often suburban, scenes. I tend to like a lot of suburban-themed work. I don't like it at all, however, when I comb through entries and see multiple instances of not-so-hot imitations of any of the suburban greats. "The poor man's version of..." sometimes becomes a game, a tired trope (as do the oft-entered shopping carts and empty swimming pools - ugh). Kehoe's work, however, is original in scope. And, in the photo above, she uses little green army men, an icon I tend to like. (See some old Ryan McGinness.) It isn't clear whether she crafts these dolls herself, or if she procures them and places them in her scenes. It doesn't much matter. They help her tell her stories either way.

With so many entries pouring in at the verylastminute, I spent some time sifting before finding the photographs of contender John Mann.

Mann's images rose to the top, in part because they were familiar. I came across them last week in a newsletter from Newspace Center for Photography where he exhibited work as one of three photographers selected by Darius Himes for Newspace's 2007 National Juried Exhibition. Darius serves as one of HHS' super-star panelists as well.

The photographs also caught my attention because they are gorgeous and smart, turning the genre of travel photography on its head, suffusing the beginning and the end of the travel experience, marking the time when a place on a map ceases to be, and also remains, just a place on a map. Is this confusing? Mann is a little more clear:

Following five years of photographing the landscape and those who travel through it, the series Folded In Place finds its exploration of place though a visualization of the map as the final destination.

Many photographers, including Hot Shots Juliane Eirich, Ian Baguskas, Youngna Park, Kate Orne (to name a few), and contender Mann, are also travelers. We have a desire to know the unknown, to be out of our element, to experience something new, and sometimes we just want to be somewhere else. But we always come "home," eventually, and all of the knowledge and experience gained in the last adventure, no matter how engaging and exhilarating, are subject to memory which is a tricky map in itself.

Mann's maps, thoughtfully altered and photographed, tell stories seen and spun, long forgotten and oft recalled, from near and far. Take your own wander on Mann's website.

We are no longer accepting entries for the 2008 Second Edition of Hey, Hot Shot!, but we'll certainly still be featuring our favorite Contenders here each day. Keep joining us for updates on the entrants, on previous competition winners, for tips and tricks, to-dos, and, occasionally, interviews.

Above, take a look at Birthday Princess by entrant Ashley Kazanjian. It is a Nice Shot, and an appropriate and welcome sight as we sort through the tons of great submissions we've received in the past/last day. It's like a party, sort of. We got a lot of presents and we're not wrapping anything up.

It looks like we have a super set of photographers vying for our five coveted Hot Shot slots.

The last few hours of HHS can be hectic with scores of you trying to enter before the deadline. We want everyone to be aware of a few possible hiccups so as to preemptively calm nerves.

The good news:
If you initiate your payment via Google Checkout by 11:00 p.m. EST TONIGHT, you will be able to enter.

A few other things:
1. Everyone who has paid the entry fee by 11:00 p.m. EST will be allowed to complete their entry; don't worry if you have last minute problems. We'll sort them out and get your entry processed.

2. Google checkout can take up to two hours! to fully verify credit cards, so the email from us with your unique upload form url will not arrive immediately. (We know this is annoying, it is to us too!) Do not panic, the email with your unique url get there... we know you're eager to get us your work.

3. If you are waiting on your url, check your spam folder in addition to your inbox. Please do not email us until have looked there too.

4. If you have problems uploading images with our entry form, we can manually enter the images for you. But first, make sure your files are jpegs between 800-1000 pixels wide and have .jpg file extensions and that you have filled in all the other information.

5. If you have any issues not listed here just email info AT heyhotshot DOT com and we'll do our best to take care of your problems promptly.

I'm picking up Jen Snow's new category for HHS: Nice Shot with this photo taken by Nicholas Gaffney. The minute I saw Sunday (Bather) I was convinced that Lisette Model's subject in Coney Island, New York City, Bather Standing was still roaming the beaches around Brooklyn, at least in spirit.
I don't believe in ghosts, not the kind you can see at least. But I certainly think that we are given to inclinations that we can't explain. While I, of course, don't know for certain that Nicholas Gaffney ever saw Model's photograph, I think that in all likely-hood he did, but regardless, the same thing that made me recall Model's photograph probably stirred in Gaffney, whether he knew it or not. Our world is flush and overflowing with iconic images from the photographers who preceded us; it's nice when they come back to visit.

My first reaction: for real?! Bist meshugge?* My second reaction: this looks good and is hilarious.

Upon reading HHS entrant David Eric Davis' statement, though, I'm not sure that he was going for funny. He writes,

"I make art to uncover that which is messy, primordial and preconscious in me. In sharing what I find, I push past my own notions of what is dirty and shameful. For this body of work, I collected the lint and hair from my navel for ten years and photographed the most figurative specimens using a high-resolution scanner. The resulting images, each a massively magnified record of one day's harvest, suggest fuzzy, biomorphic figures with luminous bodies and swirling flagella. The specimens are a direct record of my existence and represent the unique signature of my body. Free from interference by my thinking mind, they are the product of automatic felting. 'Pipik' (or 'pupik') is Yiddish for bellybutton. 'Contemplating your pipik,' or 'navel-gazing,' means being turned inward, disengaged from the world."

Oy. The work looks good, even if the explanation is a bit literal.

*Translation: Are you crazy? (David, I speak some Yiddish.)

P.S. Another Yiddish phrase about belly buttons, in case you were looking for one: "A shaynem dank dir im pupik" = "Much thanks to your belly button." Or, "thanks for nothing."

Picket Fences
2005

I have always been fascinated with model homes. When I was a kid growing up in the sprawling South Jersey suburbs, we used to break in to model homes and just imagine what adult life might be like. Mobile homes also hold a special place of wonder for me, so I naturally feel a connection to the model mobile homes series by Amy Eckert.

Manufacturing Home attempts to understand definitions of "home" and to explore the multi-billion dollar industry selling the idea back to us. The manufactured homes in my pictures are brand-new, having come off the assembly line complete with curtains and wall-to-wall carpeting. Once on the sales lot, they are furnished and propped to present a homey, blank slate for the buyers' dreams. The decor generates a kind of nostalgia which can veer into parody. These display homes are earnest and infused with a sense of potential: the poster fireplaces roar, the flowers stay fresh, and the ice cream never melts.

See more of Amy here

HHS contender Samuel F. Falls submitted images that are simple and elegant, with the exception of this one; it's simple and elegant and unsettling, border-line nightmarish. Really, it makes my skin crawl. It's disconcerting but a gut reaction, good or bad, is usually the best reaction.
Falls writes:

Lately I have been taking more biographical pictures, thinking less about 'why' and 'what does it mean', and taking more photos just because they feel right.

Hey, Hot Shot! contender Tanja Geis is currently completing a Master's in Marine and Coastal Management in the city of West Fjords, in Iceland. I am not sure that this is something we need to know, but I definitely feel Iceland in the background of her work. Or, I feel what little I know of Iceland: a dreamy mix of precipitation and visual clarity.

Nevertheless, Geis's work is great. In photos like the one above, she first draws, from memory, the faces of those she knows. Then, she shoots their portraits and layers the two. The result is one that asks the viewer to contemplate which came first -- the drawing or the photograph -- and whether that answer even matters at all. The line drawing is a tracing, either of memory or of the recorded object, the photographic portrait of the person. Geis's combination of the two is key.

It's a little late in the game*, but I'd like to introduce a new category of HHS blog post. "Nice Shot." It is exactly what it sounds like. One post = one great photograph.

The photo above, by HHS entrant Sarah Kane is a perfect fit. Look at it. All that bright white, the bits of color on the price and item signs posted on the sides, the amazing "Thank you" signage all the way at the end of the aisle. All told, a "nice shot." No need to belabor the point. That is all.

*Note: all entries for the 2008 Second Edition of Hey, Hot Shot! are due tomorrow, Tueday, November 11, by 8:00 p.m. EST. Enter now! And return to the HHS blog in the next few days for more contender picks from the team.

As always, everything reminds me of something else, and in this case, I am reminded of Finnish photographer Esko Männikkö. There is just something about the brilliance of Scandinavian light mixed with the stark simplicity of remote villages...
French photographer Celine Clanet's images of Norwegians living above the Arctic Circle in Máze depict the daily life of people, animals and landscapes of "a reality that will be soon impossible to see due to cultural integration and the global warming disaster in Arctic".

See more from Celine's Máze series here.

I love this image from contender Anna Krachey (yes, it immediately reminds me of Laura Letinsky's work). Krachey seems to be interested in making bittersweet images that capture what we leave behind, and, as her statement declares "this passion for the tangible might not be so possessive, since the pleasure is so widely available, much of it is ephemeral, and some of it is cheap, or free as clouds."

Sigh.

See more of Anna's images here

Image from Sharzad Kamel's Silent Mountains, Lonely Shores series

Hey, Hot Shot! Contender, Shahrzad Kamel, submitted images from her Silent Mountains, Lonely Shores series shot along the borders of the Caspian Sea.

My ancestry is also tied to these regions: my paternal grandparents were originally from Azerbaijan. My maternal grandmother was born in Turkmenistan. Whilst on a personal search for my own roots and selfhood I am also discovering countries still in a transitional period in the post-Soviet world, dealing with issues of their own long suppressed national identities. Iran of course undergoes its own identity crisis in the wake of an Islamic Revolution. The Caspian Sea has become for me a perfect place to investigate my own questions of identity. I aspire to show the beauty in the region, the eccentricities of it, and the splashes of color and life we find in sometimes somber environments. The Caspian Sea has become for me a perfect place to investigate my own questions of identity. I aspire to show the beauty in the region, the eccentricities of it, and the splashes of color and life we find in sometimes somber environments.

As an Iranian American, raised mostly in the UK, Shahrzad uses photography to attempt to connect to a culture and impossible reality of what life might had been like had she been raised in Iran. Her images are rich with an imagined nostalgia and, as the title of the series suggests, deeply lonely.

See more of Shahrzad's dreamy images here.

Master of the Universe Preparing For Battle from The Best Memories I Never Had series, 2008, by James W. Reiman

In the office last week, we had an interesting conversation about how the role of photographs in memory is a sort-of generational thing. Raul has this theory that our parents and grandparents attached memories to objects. We (late 20s, 30s and, 40-somethings) grew up with photographs and albums. Generations growing up now will probably attach memories to less tangible things like jpegs.

HHS contender James W. Reiman is a part of our generation, the one that still attaches memories to photographs. He uses his old photographs in his work, replacing his father's figure with his own in the images and forcing us to consider, as he has had to do, what happens when the things in those photographs, the toys, the old homes, and especially, the people, cease to exist? What happens to those memories if the other people who were a part of them don't continue on with us?

James' work considers these things, see his website to see more.

Hey, Hot Shot Second Edition of 2008 contender Erin K. Malone's entry is gorgeous and gruesome. Whether the disasters she displays are real or imaginary, she freezes a moments, instants, on an otherwise super-fast highway. And she totally caught me with the photo reprinted above.

I've taken some photos while driving. I hate driving to begin with, and do it as little as possible, and only out of necessity. It makes me anxious. Probably definitely the worst possible time for me to take photos. I doubt I'll be able to do it again without thinking of Malone's images first.

This photo is of some very excited members of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club's during ther annual New Year's Day swim. The are running into and toward the near-frozen waters off the coast of Coney Island.

This photo has nothing and everything to do with America and patriotism and/or how most of us are feeling right now. And it is a good shot. And so it is a contender, in the Second Edition of Hey, Hot Shot! for 2008.

Look at some more of entrant Shizuka Minami's work on her website.

Stripes, May 2007, by Meredith Andrews

The entire country is a buzz about the election and who can blame us!? So, I couldn't resist the temptation to write about an image that appeared, initially, to be oh-so-American. Really, what is more American than stripes and shopping carts? Upon closer inspection though, you'll realize these aren't the shopping carts you see in this country, they are instead those that you would find if you were a consumer in post-Soviet Russia.

HHS contender Meredith Andrews explains:

In post-Soviet Russia, where the mighty petro-dollar rules amid entrenched oligarchs and newly emerging entrepreneurs, lies the awkward struggle of the old and the new, the past and the inevitable.

Hers is an approach entirely different but not in opposition to fellow HHS contender, Davin Ellicson. Both are exploring the awkward transition between socialist and capitalist economies, the meeting of agrarian and consumer cultures, and the fight over the Lexus and the olive tree that is happening in post-Soviet countries and all over the world in the name of progress. Both also raise the question, what is progress?

Progress and change are long overdue in the U.S. and with our new president (fingers crossed, holding breath!) we'll be facing new challenges and awkward struggles against the inevitable, but for now, hope remains as strong and bright as these red stripes.

Polar Bear Chained, 2005 by Lex Thompson

First time HHS contender Lex Thompson hails from Minneapolis, the same great photographic city as fellow contender Colin Kopp. These two Minneagraphers are in good company at home in MN, as well as in this round of Hey, Hot Shot!

While Thompson's working from the Midwest, his interests take him all over the United States. In his artist's statement he writes:

All Our Pleasant Places is a series of color photographs of ruinous landscapes, amusement parks, museums, zoos, and private homes that explore the American myth of Manifest Destiny and its seemingly endless horizon of optimism and possibility. The images depict the construction of fantasy and desire in our landscape, offering a return to the innocence of the Garden, but revealing the frailty of the hopes we bring to the world. From religious conviction to Manifest Destiny to Disneyland, America struggles with fusing two desires, to return to a state of childlike innocence and to realize a future utopia.

This photograph, like many others in Thompson's series which you can see in full on his website, vacillates between tragic and funny. It's tragic, of course because we've all seen the fate of polar bears, swimming in the sea where they should instead be sliding around on icecaps. It's funny because it aptly shows how we humans both over- and underestimate our impact on the life around us, and funny of course, because it's a tacky statue, chained to trees. It strangely shows the control we wish to have (really, assume to have) over other life and just how bizarre that desire is.

Hey, Hot Shot! Second Edition 2008 contender Jowhara AlSaud scratches the emulsion of her negatives and makes prints from the line-drawing-like images that remain. Her work takes on the appearance of hand-drawn cartoons, albeit sad ones, censored ones.

She writes,

"The latest body of work began as a comment on censorship in Saudi Arabia and it's effects on visual communication. There are regions in Saudi Arabia where people still draw a line across throats in photographs (figuratively cutting the head off.) There are blurred out faces on billboard advertisements. Skirts are crudely lengthened and sleeves added to women's outfits in magazines with black markers. Figurative work is still considered by many to be sinful. As with everything else here, there's a lack of consistency, and things change from region to region, but overall images are highly scrutinized and controlled.

In an attempt to comment on this censorship, I tried to apply the language of the censors to my personal photographs...

It became a game of How much can you tell with how little. When reduced to line drawings or sketches, the images achieved enough distance from the original photographs that neither subjects nor censors could find them objectionable. For me, they became autonomous, and I became interested in the minimal narratives they created."

AlSaud currently lives in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and her work is on view through December 13 at the Schneider Gallery in Chicago.

I just saw Synecdoche, New York. Or, as I've started referring to it since, "Synecdoche, My Life." Okay, it's not exactly my life, but it sort of is everyone's life. I loved it. Much like the last movie that Charlie Kaufman wrote that I loved (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), this one has wonderfully crafted sentences but it also looks, visually, SO good.

If I may project, Fred Muram's work seems a bit of a kindered spirit. I mean, part of his statement reads sort of like a textbook report on either of the films above. Muram writes,

"I want my audience to experience images and video that can be understood within the context of similar experiences that might have occurred within their own lives. As individuals we share so much in common with other people, but we are isolated within our own minds. There is a disconnectedness created between every individual and their surrounding universe that is fundamentally integrated through that personʼs ability to accept sensory information and respond with language."

First of all, as a theme, "kissing the ceiling" is great. It's silly and sweet, and just absurd enough, but not too absurd. In the photo above, the girl, clutching at the top of the door and the delicate balance of her shoe on the knob are great details. In the tiny thumbnails I saw of thw work at first, I figured she was "floating" up to kiss the ceiling/sky. I was relieved to see the full image, for it goes far beyond what could have been trite, a trope.

I also tend to fall for repitition. Muram's series is filled with many perfectly quirky moments. Also enjoyable, some of his other work: The Rug Series and I'm Going Baldessari. There is more Kissing the Ceiling too.

Untitled from the Traveling Dream series by Angela B. Kidwell

I do love, love black and white photography. I was that student in grad school who insisted on working in the darkroom; scanning and editing on a monitor just didn't (and still doesn't) amount to the same experience for me, (plus the mural room was slightly larger than my apartment). So, I get really excited when I see silvery HHS submissions; there are too few of them!

Angela's images resonate with the work of black and white mastersSally Mann, Roger Ballen, and Duane Michals. They are dreamy and mysterious and packed with stories that come from the subconscious. As she explains: "...random moments combine to form sleep stories that are rich narratives, ripe with symbolism. With that as my model, I construct sets, use props and invite myself and models to perform in a natural, intuitive way."

I checked out Angela's website which is chock-full of photographic fiction, perfect for Friday morning fantasizing and daydreaming, and wasn't disappointed.... until, I found out that her prints are Epson inkjets. Doesn't anyone else miss the smell of fix?
I'll forgive Angela for now; I'm sure her prints are as luminous and lush as they appear on screen.

Will we have the opportunity to see Angela's inkjets here in NYC? That's for time to tell; we're all picking favorites and holding our breath until the panelists step in and determine the fate of all the fine photographers who have submitted their work here at HHS. Just having your work in front of the eyes of these peeps is a pretty good fate if you ask me, so don't miss your chance! Competition closes one week from Tuesday!

HHS Second Edition 2008 entrant Manuel Vasquez's work looks like a cross between those framed office-worthy Successories posters and the magic-eye posters that all of my friends had on their walls in elementary school (described recently by one as "One of those 3-D posters that were all the rage in the 90s where you have to let your eyes go out of focus to see the hidden picture within." That applies to my first thoughts of Vasquez. Exactly.) This sounds, clearly, like a recipe for something awful, and yet, I spent a good long time staring at his work.

Much like the magic eye posters, I don't think I really get it at all. I was never once ever able to see the fighter jet or panda bear or rocket ship or soaring eagle dolphin that supposedly was hidden there. And here, in this work, I think I see something, but I'm not sure quite what. Like the oddball decorations, though, I am positive that other might see something.

Driver's Seat by Alan George

HHS contender Alan George's name was slightly familiar as I was scanning the entries yesterday afternoon. Familiar, I realized, because I had recently seen it on a list of photographer's selected to participate in The Exposure Project's Graphic Intersections. Graphic Intersections is loosely based on the Surrealist drawing game, the Exquisite Corpse. The first photographer is given a word or concept to work from; s/he shoots, selects an image and sends it to the next photographer, who makes an image based purely on a philosophical, visual, emotional, or intellectual response to the photograph received, and then sends her/his selected image to the next photographer who repeats the process. Sounds like fun, huh?

Among the photographers participating are Alan, of course, and Winter 2007 Hot Shot, Scott Eiden. The work of both Scott and Alan make me particularly nostalgic for the West, even more so than I usually am. Sure, there's something slightly foreboding about the barbed-wire bound, chain-linked fence in the background and the doberman behind the wheel of this RV that's certainly seen better days, but, the big sky behind it implies big dreams. This thing might have been parked for weeks, or months but there's nothing stopping it from arrowing down south, Baja-bound, with the pup at the helm.

While I'm a sucker for the dreamy, creamy gray and blue palate of this photograph, Alan's other photos of homes on wheels are worth checking out along with the rest of his portfolio on his website.

Dear fellow HHS blogger Sara,

I disagree. This photo is easy for me to write about because it is, is, by far, one of my favorite images entered this round. (Not that we vote, but still.) Look at that girl's face! Her head tilted next to the rabbit's droping, lolling head. Look at her grin! The rabbit looks far more demure than she does. The girl's excitement and intrigue are tangible. In this shot, Donald Weber has created/captured an amazing character. That + the hilarious mimicry of the composition = why it's an easy one for me to write.

Love,
Jen Snow

Korean Notebook #25, 2008 by HHS entrant Ellie Brown

Hey, Hot Shot! Second Edition 2008 contender Ellie Brown explores personal typologies via photographs of handwritten notebooks. She found and kept these notebooks during an extended stay in Korea and although, in her statement, she seems conflicted about something related to the trip, her images are head on. Her re-chronicling by photographing feels like an attempt to figure something out. This makes sense. And as such it's a successful series. The images show diaries that are cut up, collaged, and water-stained/streaked. The words (Korean? English?) are obscured. The viewer is made to search too.

I looked a bit more, at some of Brown's other work. Some of the work on her site seems like she's studied a bit of Lauren Greenfield. Greenfield is great, so learning from her is never a bad thing.

Wecome to Alton, Illinois, from the series DOG TOWN, winter 2008 by Jo Ann Walters

It's hard to write about photographs, (really, it's a tough job but someone's gotta do it!).

It's especially hard to write about your own photographs. So when you read an artist's statement that's fluid and powerful, it kind of knocks the wind out of you.
This was the case when I read HHS contender Jo Ann Walters' statement about her series DOG TOWN. Since I'm pretty sure I won't be able to say it any better, here's what she wrote:

Though I have employed the well-worn mannerisms of photographic documentation the work is not only a record, per se. It is also an elegiac work of remembrance. The images are mined from my earliest recollections, and are made up of tired light, dog days and falling, rending time through the luminous reflections of winter light. Together they comprise a quiet + stoic meditation on the mineral wastes and dregs of an unsparing economy, as well as, a song of MOURNING + MEDIATION for my father and men at work in a different time and place.

She's right, isn't she? That's what these photos are (sorry, I know you only get to see one here, you'll have to take my word for it on the others). If you don't believe me or her, yet, (and I have faith that you will) you can see a little more (but not enough) of her work on her temporary website.

Since it is clearly always all about me, I'll admit, it is 2:45 a.m., as you probably already saw in the time stamp, and I am awake. And working. And chatting intermittently on instant messenger with, among others, fellow non-sleeper Jen Bekman.

Look at entrant Sarah Fuller's work. Fuller submitted three photographs from a series titled Dream Lab,which is a collaboration between her and the Dream and Nightmare Lab at The Sacred Heart Hospital in Montreal. She creates portraits in an attempt to "produce new knowledge about the hypnagogic stage of the sleep cycle."

What is fascinating, though, is a mix of the experiment and her imaging technique. Fuller captures her subjects, including herself, at the super vulnerable moment of literally falling asleep. Before "falling," actually, as she notes that the camera's shutter is tripped even before the customary head nod at the start of sleep.

Looking at her portraits, the moment of falling seems both magical and so normal, so recognizable. Her photos are so honest and so silly and so special at the same time.

Fuller writes:

"Artists like Salvador Dali used this stage of sleep to harness creative imagery and problem solve. Dali also employed the 'upright napping' technique which involves falling asleep upright and seated in a chair. I have used this technique in my series. Typically in the lab, sounds are used to awaken the participants but the study I am currently working uses a flash (visual stimuli) and the sound of the camera (audio stimuli) to waken the person from an upright nap. Participants sit quietly in a darkened room lit only by a single black light and try to fall asleep. When the researcher observes the EEG indicating a shift to sleep, the camera and flash are triggered, thereby illuminating the room. In essence, what results is a photograph of the exact moment the person is falling asleep, just before the customary head nod. Conceptually I am intrigued by the fact that as this photograph is taken, each person is literally in another state of consciousness."

I must admit, a few days ago I fell asleep while getting my hair cut. Not during the quiet part where my hairdresser (Keith at Devachan) cut each curl individually, methodically. No, I fell asleep while my head was inside of one of those huge hair dryers attached to the wall. Also, the hairdresser was pointing a second hairdryer into my hair drying helmet in order to do some sort of special, extra (and extra loud) drying to my hair. And I fell asleep. One of those falling asleep sitting up things where your head actually falls forward. My head fell forward and hit the inside of the hair dryer. I wish I could make this stuff up. I also wish that Fuller had been there to capture it on film.

Haymaking, Valeni, Maramures, Romania July 2003 by Davin Ellicson

It's difficult to place HHS contender Davin Ellicson's photographs in 2003, the year they were taken in the Maramures region of Romania. It is even harder to suspend disbelief when you realize that this is the same country that delivered the stunning (and very contemporary) film 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days just last year. The traditions and way of life he is documenting in the village of Valeni have long disappeared in the West and are slowly disappearing in Romania too as the country embraces the shift from Communism to Capitalism.

I've been fascinated by these transitions since studying in Prague as an undergrad in 2001 and recently, for reasons that don't need to be explained here, found myself delving into post-Ceausescu Romania and was shocked to read that it's possible still to see women sweeping stoops with brooms made of sticks and men steering carriages drawn by horses. But now, seeing Ellicson's photographs, and seeing more of them on his website, and reading about them on his blog, I know that it's true. It's true in spite of the fact that this is also the country that was dazzled by the soap opera Dallas and is home to a sprawling replica of the set.

The remarkable thing about Ellicson's photos is that they do not show any malignant signs of Capitalism, especially not the particularly offensive American brand that seems to have manifested elsewhere in the country. In fact, he shows no evidence of this change at all, effectively creating nostalgia for a time and place that, in most places of the western world, have ceased to exist, and making a solid case for preservation.

I can't help but think of the brilliant body of work, Czech Eden, by Matthew Monteith. Monteith's photographs feel like modern day myths among the everyday. Ellicson's works seem mythological for plainly showing what is "everyday" in this part of Eastern Europe. He does for us viewers what he sets out to do for himself: "I want to personally savor this magical, peaceful place before it vanishes forever..."

Image from Luke Cassady-Dorion's series on Ramkamheang University in Bangkok

Did you, dear readers, ever see the UK television The Prisoner? If you have, I bet you'll agree with me that the image above looks very much like a secret room in Number Two's residence in The Village. If you haven't see the series, you needn't rush out to rent it, unless you are a serious sci-fi fan. Suffice to say that the image above captures something familiar and completely uncomfortable, much the same way The Prisoner made me feel. Nothing was quite right, although it seemed like things could be okay...if only...if only.

See more images from Ramkamheang University on Luke's site.

Motel (#1) 2005 by Bethany M. Souza

In her bio, Bethany Souza writes that she's delighted she no longer has to shovel snow in the winter. A recent relocation from Chicago to southeastern Louisiana has her exploring areas of central Florida she grew up in. She continues in her statement:

Was I still a Floridian or if I had become a tourist again; or did the truth lay somewhere between these two extremes?... My intent is that these images work together to represent the unique dichotomy, between home and away, that exists not only in me personally, but in the everyday lives of most Floridians.

I definitely feel like "the other", not because I am actually sitting at a desk but because of the way Bethany has composed her image, her subjects are protected by that lurking yellow building (which is appropriately ambiguous, a hotel or an apartment complex? and also, btw, reminds me of these buildings shot by fellow sunny clime photographer and recent Hot Shot Brad Moore), and there is also a great distance between her and her subjects.

Thankfully, for me, and Bethany too, we are encroaching on an actual weekend, even for us northerners and non-Floridians, so it's ciao for now. For more weekend/weekday photo goodness, check out Bethany's site.

Wow. I just really like this photo by Chris Bentley, current entrant to Hey, Hot Shot! 2008 Second Edition. I can picture it in a gallery and on someone's wall in someone's home.

I sort of want to lie down in front of a large print of this photo. I don't want to watch a movie on it. Just to look at it. I'm afraid I won't find a drive in anywhere near my home in Brooklyn anytime soon. I"m afraid that this was all, somehow, too much information from me.

Unsurprisingly, Bentley is also a filmmaker. And, according to his submission, this isn't his first time. He entered Hey, Hot Shot! last year too. Which I think is a good thing. Admirable persistance. How American.

Read a bit of Bentley's statement after the jump.

Forest. Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, February, 2006 by Donald Weber

This photograph from Donald Weber is not my favorite photograph of all the images he submitted. This one is. But this photograph of an orange car as seen from the woods around Chernobyl is much easier to write about than the photograph of a young girl grinning at a rabbit skin while a man behind her dresses the flesh of the animal for dinner, which is part of Weber's point. He writes:

What's important about this work, in my view, is that it reveals the fateful intersection of history and the human soul. The West has its own versions of materialism; we may pretend that these people and their sad condition have nothing to do with us. But something in their eyes tells us more than we want to know. We are being tested, all of us. These photos confront us with the inescapable truth: life is a journey through a dark wood. We must take it one step at a time.

"When we were small, my younger sister, Cheryl, played with a set of dolls she called the 'McCann Family.' They were a thinly disguised version of our family. Cheryl decided she was 'Tom McCann,' the spunky boy doll. I was, 'MaryAnn,' the girl doll. Cheryl often had Mother McCann say to Tom, 'Mary Ann is wonderful.'(If I wrote the script, Mother would say, 'Tom is so gifted' and 'Mary Ann is average.') At first Tom could stand on his own. Later he always lost his balance. Cheryl diagnosed Tom with Polio. She fitted him with crutches and braces just like hers. (Cheryl was born with spina bifida.) Tom thought Mother disliked having a disabled child. He felt bad about that. One day Father's leg fell off. Cheryl taped it back on as a prosthesis. After he became an amputee, Father was a lot more understanding about his son."

Forces of Nature by HHS entrant Zack Bent

I fell in love with Zack's work when I saw it in other contexts — highlighted at various times by the Asthmatic Kitty record label and website — so I was thrilled to see this entry.

Bent's images are familial and familiar. He captures moments that manage to be both joyous and mysterious. I find myself looking at his photos and really wondering what his characters are actually up to.

Peony Bay, by HHS entrant Myriam Lutz.

Myriam Lutz combines found photographs with self portraits. I like that in this one, Peony Bay, she is not dressed up as a character from the photograph's time. I like that it's her, in today's clothes, and that she's placed herself, sort of awkwardly, posing in the past.

John McCain by HHS entrant Shana Wittenwyler

I thought I wasn't much for cheesy reasons to post. But this photo by Hey, Hot Shot! contender Shana Wittenwyler warrants almost no comment. The energy is high, it is humorous, and it tells a story from an unexpected angle. It does more than document a public moment; it provides what seems to be a private window behind tons of turned backs. And something political obviously seems especially perfect for today.