Texting, Crosby Street, 2011 by Joseph O. Holmes

+ HHS! Panelist Darius Himes is participating in a three-day photobook workshop in September. Photographers Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb will be in attendance in this Radius Books-hosted event, which is open to anyone "who is passionate about a photography project that he or she has been working on—from serious amateurs to seasoned professionals, from documentary to art photographers, from those photographing a theme, place or issue to those working on a more personal series of photographs of family or friends." Head to the Magnum Photos site for more information.

+ Hot Shot and 20x200 MVP Joseph O. Holmes' latest series, Texters, has been making the blogosphere rounds, being picked up by several notable sites in the last week and touted on Twitter. For the full series, check out the prolific photographer's photostream on Flickr.

+ Photographers have been paying attention to Google+, and not for reasons you might think. Flak Photo's Andy Adams got a conversation started after Photofocus and the Washington Post's BlogPost called attention to Google's Terms of Service.

Jen Bekman is featured in Kelly Kingman's recently released ebook, Going Pro: How To Make Money From Your Photography. Released by the Digital Photography School, the 91-page digital download provides step-by-step guidance, advice, insight and tips for becoming a professional photographer.

Jen—a writer, curator, gallerist and entrepreneur—is approached as a gallerist for one of the ebook's expert profiles, where she dispenses invaluable information for photographers looking to sell to collectors and to get gallery representation. Among her words of wisdom for would-be pros: Figuring out how to market yourself and build your audiences is a big part of being successful, whether you have a dealer or not; having a well-defined, well-edited body of work is a cornerstone of any fledgling career.

From choosing a business model that fits your working style, to marketing and selling your work, and from selling stock, to resources for protecting your work, Going Pro touts itself as the complete guide for photographers who want measurable success, as written by an established magazine photo editor. The recession, the digital age and the emergence of microstock have all been factors that have been consistently shaking up the photography world, forcing professionals to rethink the way they approach their craft and success. This ebook—part of a kit that includes two hours of audio interviews with photography professionals and a downloadable guide called Getting Published in Photography Magazines—aims to make the murky waters more navigable, and urges would-be pros, "If you've ever dreamed of making money from your passion, now's your chance to make it happen."

The ebook and kit are available for download here.
For a previous article Kingman wrote about Jen, click here.

Many of us stood outside from about a half past 1:00 a.m. until near sunrise (EST) to watch the Earth's shadow pass over the moon in a lunar eclipse that was fortuitously synchronized with the longest night of the year, the winter solstice. Naturally, the celestial event was well documented; here is just a glimpse at the gorgeous-ness that transpired.

Photo by nmraider on Flickr

Photo by jrzablah on Flickr

Photo by jcasarini on Flickr

Photo by mattdonders on Flickr

Photo by gschotel on Flickr

You can see more photos on flickr, on Wired's blog, Night Sky Live and a time lapse taken from Gainesville, Florida on Vimeo.

I once knew a photographer from the Midwest that had a personal project whose images still haunt me. Driving into isolated and rural areas of western Kansas, he would intentionally drive until he was totally lost, and look for homes or farmhouses that were by all signs completely abandoned. He'd then make careful assessments as to the structural integrity of the place (sometimes the floors would give out, or you couldn't trust the stairs), and go in with his camera and make images of what he found there. What was most surprising about what he found is that most of these domiciles look like they had been left in a hurry: a coat might still be on a hanger in an open closet; the cupboards might still have cans or jars of food in them. Not knowing the stories of how these houses came to be left, or what caused its inhabitants to hasten their leaving was a compelling mystery inherent in these images. Even through scenes of destruction by weather or the encroachment of a returning organic order, it was still very much evident that these were places where people and families lived, gathered and shared experiences.

The New York Times Opinionator blog ran a story by Paul Keyes recently on the imagery of foreclosed homes, bringing back to my mind the body of work mentioned above. While invoking the imagery the Great Depression—the last national crises to so direly affect Americans' standard of living— Keyes writes that the current foreclosure disaster affecting millions of people is happening in a much more diffused and less obvious fashion. While the story can be a hard one to tell, Keyes zeroes in on one common thread that photographers have found to be rich narrative material: foreclosure photography.

Untitled from the series Foreclosed Homes by Todd Hido

Untitled from the series Real Estate by Marion Belanger

Providing a slideshow of sympatico photographers working in the same vein such as Todd Hido, Marion Belanger, David H. Wells, T.J. Proechel, John Francis Peters and Ellen Brownlee, Keyes makes note of the experience of viewing such images:

...in viewing foreclosure interiors, a curious thing happens: the voyeuristic awkwardness passes, and one begins to piece together the missing characters. We already know the circumstances, generally; but why was a wallet-sized snapshot of children left behind? What left the holes in the wall? Through these questions that flit behind the scanning eye, the portraits become a kind of forensic study.

...the more time you spend with these interiors, the more the human presence comes to the surface: in the divots left by table legs, in the stains of use along the edge of a door, or a door not quite shut. From empty rooms to rooms choking with junk, the discoveries speak to a dream shattered.

The various ways of telling such an intimate story of anonymous strangers is evident in the different methodologies employed by the photographers to essentially tell the same tale. Some photographers will embellish a composition with artifacts found in other rooms in the house; others try to show you everything that could encompass both your central and peripheral view. Hido's interiors are largely empty, ghostly rooms, but there are subtle, nearly-hidden details that gradually dawn on the viewer the longer they stay with each image. Hido says of his foreclosure series:

...the story is on the inside. It has a lot to do with memory and details. A lot of these places look like houses I lived in as a kid. Plain, made with cheap building materials. The viewer can't help but project something into this empty space, and a lot of that has to do with memory. In empty spaces, people project their own stories onto them.

While perhaps not as outwardly dramatic as a tornado or other, perhaps more intimate and human, disasters that characterize my assumptions of abandoned farmhouses in Kansas, these strange portraits of the recession in the form of the interiors of foreclosed homes tell no less of a devastating story, one whose reach and echo can probably be felt in most neighborhoods today.

Issues 1-10 of Unless You Will, an online photography magazine curated by Heidi Romano

Online publishing affords an audience and an accessibility that is the envy of their analog cousin, print publishing. And while I subscribe to and wish to subscribe to even more selected art journals of the paper variety, increasingly I am being made aware of high-quality, of-the-moment, closely curated online art magazine subscriptions. Unless You Will, founded by Australian-based photographer and designer Heidi Romano, is a brand-new-to-me publication that has just released its tenth issue. Released monthly, Romano's focus on selecting artists for each issue are guided by UYW's guiding principles:

Sometimes a photo can evoke high feelings of emotion or nostalgia and in a roundabout way it becomes a means of expressing ourselves as photographers. UYW strives to showcase photographers who add layers of meaning and capture these feelings. Their images are a happiness measurement, they give us pleasure, rekindle a memory, or trigger other emotions of their own. Our aim is to showcase these talented artists without too many frills, who work with the notions of play, honesty and craftsmanship.

Each issue is prefaced with either a notable quote or a meditation from Heidi that serves to frame the work that is available to view either on site or as a nice, luscious download. Henri Cartier-Bresson provides context for the current issue, with the observation that:

We photographers deal with things that are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory.

This month's issue features the work of two photographers whose work we've featured in HHS! (and who both have editions on 20x200), Juliane Eirich and Bryan Schutmaat.

Untitled, from the series Korea Diary by Juliane Eirich

Untitled, from the series Heartland by Bryan Schutmaat

The refreshing change in online publication formats is that because nothing is actually going to press, and there are no exorbitant price-per-page fees to print, the web-based display can allow for a lengthy rumination on a theme, and a generous amount of space for a photographer's project or portfolio. Both Schutmaat and Eirich's projects fit well within Cartier-Bresson's sentiment of vanishing moments and environments: In Heartland, Schutmaat's concentration lay in the quiet and expansive topographies of the American Midwest, and speak to a sense of loneliness that can be found both within barren landscapes and in the lives of those who live in them. Eirich's Korea Diary portfolio tackles similar themes but in a place where population and activity is dense and frenzied. Instead of training her eye on the easy blur of constant motion evident in a large city, Eirich instead is drawn to finding the calm and the intimate of everyday life, and her images reflect the sensibility of one who finds respite in disparate places.

Take a look at the current issue of Unless You Will—or all ten of the whole series—or subscribe to their feed to be notified when new issues are available. Are you a photographer who likes what they see in UYW? Currently photographers shown in the magazine are by invitation only, but you can submit your work to the UYW blog for consideration in future issues.

Rachel Sussman gives a TED Talk on The World's Oldest Living Things

Rachel Sussman's 2,000 year old trees and shrubs have made a few appearances here in the past on both the HHS! and 20x200 blogs. But, there is a new reason to cheer for Rachel's astoundingly (geographically and chronologically) ambitious project, The Oldest Living Things in the World. We find cause to write about Rachel and her project yet again today, as the project is experiencing even more (much-merited!) exposure: Rachel was invited to give a talk about the project as part of the TED lecture series, offering a concise and fascinating account of her ongoing endeavor to track and document of some of the world's oldest living organisms.

Initially inspired by an encounter with the 2,200-year-old Jōmon Sugi tree, while on a trip to Japan, for the past five years Rachel has traveled the globe, hunting and photographing ancient, continuously-living species of plant, fungus and bacteria, among others. She set 2,000 years as a minimum age—the idea being that everything documented would thus pre-date what is commonly thought of as "Year Zero".

On her adventures, Rachel has encountered some amazing things, many of which she describes in the lecture: Siberian Actinobacteria (400,000-600,000 years old!); Baobab trees in South Africa, which grow so large that their hollow interiors have in the past been variously used by people as toilets, prisons, and even bars; as well as a clonal colony of Quaking Aspen trees in Utah, (80,000 years old!) which resembles an entire forest, but is in fact a single tree, all connected by one enormous subterranean root system.

sunland baobab #0707-2301 (2,000 years old; limpopo province, south africa) by Rachel Sussman

Rachel has traveled around Africa, Asia, North and South America, and to Greenland and Scandinavia. She has a map where you can follow her progress—blue markers indicate the places and species she's photographed; red ones are those she has yet to visit, in part funded by her successful campaign on the micro-funding site, Kickstarter. She estimates she will spend another two years on the project, and has trips to Sicily, Australia, Antarctica and others in the works. She also keeps a blog that charts the progression of her research and travels in detail.

She describes The Oldest Living Things in the World as "a record and celebration of our past, a call to action in the present, and a barometer of our future." With the project, Sussman attempts to call attention to these astonishing and little-known environmental phenomena, and in so doing, ensure their continued preservation.

Watch her TED talk above—it's an excellent and thoroughly entertaining introduction to her project, and check out more images from the series on her website, (but be prepared for the frenzy of nature-related Google-ing that it will doubtless inspire).

On Friday, Jen (@jenbee) asked the Twitter-verse, "What's your favorite photography related quote? Who said it? Points for something pithy!" And, the responses came rolling in. Here's a compilation of what we heard:

"And all these no's force me to the yes." - Richard Avedon. (@litherland)

"If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough." - Robert Capa (@kavehg)

"To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event." - Henri Cartier-Bresson (@AnthonyRhoades)

"Any photographer who says he's not a voyeur is either stupid or a liar." - Helmut Newton (@laughingwoman)

"Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies." - Diane Arbus (@cgmoyer, @kowalskiphotos)

"I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything. " - John Steinbeck (@katetropa)

"Photography ... is the only medium in which there is even the possibility of an accidental masterpiece." - Chuck Close (@josephholmes)

"A camera is a tool for learning to see without a camera." - Dorothea Lange (@josephholmes)

"One doesn't stop seeing. One doesn't stop framing. It doesn't turn off and turn on. It's on all the time." - Annie Leibovitz (@josephholmes)

"I never have taken a picture I've intended. They're always better or worse." - Diane Arbus (@josephholmes)

"Too many photos make a statement, not enough ask a question." - Joseph Holmes (@josephholmes)

"Photography is all right if you don't mind looking at the world from the point of view of a paralysed Cyclops." - David Hockney (@austinkleon)

"Photography begins with an "f" sound that stands for fiction, fake or forgery. And that is the original sin of photography. Only the most untainted purists (and the pedantic New York Times) seem to be unaware of this." - Jorge Calado (@katetropa)

"Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference." Robert Frank (@sethbutler)

"There's nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described. I photograph to see what something will look like photographed." Garry Winogrand (@jessangelo, @laughingwoman,@bryanf)

"To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed. .... The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. .... The picture tells you how to arrange the words and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what's going on in the picture." - Joan Didion (@bobulate)

"One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind." - Dorothea Lange (@moyamcallister)

"Photographs stop time and bring people together." - A Mexican Street Magician (@juanrFotos)

"When your mouth drops open, click the shutter." -Harold Feinstein (@PanoptGallery)

"All photography to some extent is a violating act as you are seeing someone as they could never see themselves." - Susan Sontag (@Weegee)

"There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept." Ansel Adams (@BespokePhoto)

"Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference." - Robert Frank (@momenta,@AhrensEditions,@indifferences)

"When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice." - Robert Frank (@sandyiowacity)

"Photography is not an accident --it's a concept." - Ansel Adams (@J_Isarankura)

"Photography.. is the only medium in which there is even the possibility of an accidental masterpiece." - Chuck Close (@AnthonyRhoades)

"I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers." - Mahatma Gandhi (@dantebusquets)

"Teachers don't work in the summer, and photographers don't shoot in in the middle of the day." - John Loengard (Steven Quinn on Facebook)

"Shoot first, ask questions later." - Victor Burgin (Kylie Macey on Facebook)

"I have all but killed myself for Photography. My passion for it is greater than ever. It's forty years that I have fought its fight - and I'll fight to the finish - single handed & without money if need be. It is not photographs - it is not photographers - I am fighting for. And my own photographs I never sign. I am not fighting to make a 'name' for myself. Maybe you have some feeling for what the fight is for. It's a world's fight. This sounds mad. But so is Camera Work mad. All that's born of spirit seems mad in these [days] of materialism run riot." - Alfred Stieglitz to J. Dudley Johnston, 15 October 1923 (Tim Baskerville on Facebook)

‎" . .with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film" - Jack Kerouac in the intro to Robert Frank's The Americans (Vance Lessard on Facebook)

Thanks to all who sent us their favorite lines. We hope this inspires you to take a second look at your own photographs and send us five before Hey, Hot Shot! 2010 comes to a close tomorrow night, 8/31 at 8:00 p.m. (EDT). If you have a favorite quote that you haven't sent in yet, we'd still love to hear it. Leave a comment or send it to @jenbee + @heyhotshot on Twitter.

We're excited to announce that JBP's own Youngna Park will be guest curating Pictory's next showcase of picture-stories around the theme: Bodies of Water. The deadline to submit is August 11th, so hurry up and send your photos in!

Editor Laura Brunow Miner writes:

There's something so indescribably calming about oceans, lakes, rivers, swimming holes, even pools. Show us the bodies of water -- large or small -- that summer adventures have taken you to and describe your experiences there. We've invited Youngna Park of Jen Bekman Projects (20x200, Hey, Hot Shot!, and Jen Bekman Gallery) to guest curate.

For the unacquainted, Pictory is "a showcase for people around the world to document their lives and cultures." How does it work? Anyone can submit one large, captioned image to each of Pictory's editorial themes. These submissions are assembled by Miner, a guest curator, and a guest editor into collaborative photo essays on subjects like: New York City, Are You There, Dad?, Life Lessons, The One Who Got Away, and more. As you can see, the Showcases are pretty wonderful, and this is a great opportunity to be a part of Pictory!

To keep updated on new Pictory showcases, follow them on Twitter: @Pictory.

A quick memory of a familiar argument frequently hashed out amongst art-minded friends: Which takes precedence: a well-seen image or a well-formed idea? Is an artwork less strong if it has to be followed by an explanation as to what it is or why it exists, or is it better if it is just a plainly stated, obviously well-seen and/or well-executed thing? Sure, we'd love it if all artworks could be both things at all times, but that's art batting in 1000 territory, and how often does it do that?

For some time now, I've become increasingly drawn to something that I can only quantify as open-ended collaborative works. Threads of commonality to the kinds of things that have sparked feverish, I-Should-Have-Thought-of-That! admiration include a willingness to start a conversation around an idea but not control it or its outcome, and a zany confidence in the idea itself that precludes having to offer up full disclosure of contents or contributions (i.e. not having to satisfy an artist-as-omniscient arbiter-of-everything, but to be generously willing to create guidelines in the artwork that allow for both participation and privacy on the part of the collaborators).

Take for example, the recently launched project by artist Jason Lazarus, Too Hard to Keep.

Submissions from too hard to keep, a project by Jason Lazarus

Open for submissions throughout all of 2010, Lazarus is collecting images from anyone willing to send fragments from their lives that are too hard to hold onto any longer. From his solicitation for submissions:

I am creating a repository for these images so that they may exist without being destroyed. You may dictate whether the images you submit to the archive are:

1. images not to be shown again, or
2. images that may be exhibited in the future with other submissions to the archive.

The reason you can't live with the photo or photo album I do not need to know...

Images of exes, deceased grandparents, friends or pets, children, or even self-portraits taken during hard moments, the most compelling aspect of Jason's project is that it's so what-you-see-is-what-you-get. Too Hard to Keep is a repository for things that you don't want around you but you also don't want destroyed. To contribute to the project you don't need to offer any narrative or explanation, you can even stipulate that you want the image to remain "publicly private," and Lazarus will scan the back of it and display it on site face-down. The whole idea is almost a complete inversion of the experience of something like, say, Post Secret, in which as a viewer you are privy to someone's actual darkest, silliest or most mundane thoughts, and where you are also a consumer of an endless interior monologue—someone else's. Lazarus has instead created a space where individuals can offer something up rare and raw of themselves and have it not be a spectacle; release is the principal artistic realization and revelation here. I really hope that Jason's project takes off and receives many more submissions; the potential for the project is so big. To view the entire archives of submissions thus far, or to read Jason's guidelines for submission, visit the site.

Images from Week 1 of The California Sleepwalker's Treasure Hunt by Alec Soth

Another project that we've been following with growing curiosity is Alec Soth's California Sleepwalker's Treasure Hunt. Back in April on the Little Brown Mushroom Blog, a crowd-sourcing call was made for people to give tips on where to find condors, hare krishnas, punk hangouts, metal detector enthusiasts as well as, "anything else that fits into this line of thinking" (the actual request list is longer). In his solicitation, Soth promises that for any tip that leads to an actual photograph, that person who provided the lead will receive a reward. The solicitation entry received over 75 replies, mostly from helpful people in-the-know of the exact kinds of spots Soth hinted having an interest in. Since then, a few threaded exchanges have revealed that Soth is not disclosing what generated his scavenger list, why he's doing what he's doing, and that he's entirely comfortable with you not knowing.

Maybe this project will turn into another limited-edition, lo-fi and full-of-punch publication, or maybe it will become something none of us in the cybersphere will ever see. Something that is very appealing in these works that Soth has been engaging in is that they are chock-full of artistic license and liberty for the artist, and have none of the expectation for a highly-polished, or prohibitively expensive (in terms of time as well as money) execution or release. And by dint of his participation in the LBM blog (and in the past with his own, now defunct, blog), Soth gives us occasional glimpses and moments of what a successful working artist is both thinking and doing, allowing us in to see a process that may yield something tangible and "finished" as well as the moments where you're just left to wonder. And that's okay. And part of the point.

Image from Things For Sale That I Will Mail You by David Horvitz

I first came across David Horvitz's work through his website Things For Sale That I Will Mail You. Beguilingly simple, Horvitz's site offers up several conceptual "products" available for purchase via Paypal in which he is willing to perform specific acts related to your purchase.

The product listings range from the exotic ("If you give me $1,626 I will go to the small Okinawan island called Taketomi and send you an envelope filled with star-sand (don't worry, I've been there before, I know where to go). I will send it from there."), to the quixotically quick and intimate ("If you give me $1 I will sit in silence and think about you for one minute. I will send you an email when I start this, and I'll send you another email when I'm done."). Each product listing is also accompanied by a list of those who have contributed to the project thus far, when they contributed, and often, what they received from Horvitz in return for their payment.

Horvitz's offerings on Things For Sale That I Will Mail You read to me like the dreamy meditative acts that I might enact on a daily basis were I paid myself to be a dreamer. What I realize as I consider whether I want to buy a photograph of the sky made just for me that moment, or if I want him to write a letter of apology on my behalf for someone I've wronged, that these products are of the making of many general acts in life that we as Horvitz's consumers might engage in were we not too busy in our workaday lives to set aside time to wonder, reflect, give back and blissfully blank out. When considered in that context, I am beset by two conflicting impulses: to both buy one or several things on Horvitz's site, or to doggedly determine that I will carve out space and time to do things on his list that only require my time and/or thoughtfulness. Send something to someone for free, just because. Apologize to someone that I know I owe an apology to. Think about someone else, and only them, for one whole minute. Horvitz's project is an instruction as well as a caution: you can do these things for and of yourself, or you can pay me to do them for you.

For more on David's past and more recent work, you can peruse this Chicago Art Review from last fall, or this recent Bombsite interview from this spring.

We here at Jen Bekman Projects are also very fond of collaborative art projects that our artists are engaged in, such as nearly every project that Jason Polan has undertaken (his most ambitious project to date underway with his stated goal of drawing Every Person In New York), or the work of someone like Jane Mount, who has been creating artworks of actual people's Ideal bookshelves. We have several for sale here, or you could go directly to Mount's Etsy store and commission an custom ideal bookshelf of your own.

The allure of the collaborative art project is seductive in its simplicity to you as a viewer: in order to become a fully realized object d'art, the artist needs you to be engaged, willing to participate or share a piece of your life, pay a small amount of money for, or otherwise be a willing patron/co-creator in an act that will be a dance between you, the artist, and everyone or no one else.

The clock is ticking down to Sunday, May 2nd, at 15:00 hours Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is just under three days away. You may be in New York City reading your morning paper, in San Francisco on an early morning bike ride in the Presidio, or in Beijing having a late night beer with friends to cap off the weekend. What else will happen at that moment in time? Photographers all around the world—including you, we hope—will pull out their cameras and snap a picture capturing the world around them.

Photo by Jan Paulick on Flickr

The New York Times is inviting the world to create a collaborative portrait in which they are asking "everyone, everywhere, to join in making this worldwide photographic mosaic, with each photographer submitting their one best picture." They suggest topics like family, community, nature, economy, social issues and work—the possibilities are endless, so long as they happen at 15:00 UTC.

The project pays heed to a 1986 project, A Day in the Life of America, organized by David Elliot Cohen and Rick Smolan in 1986, which was also coincidentally on May 2nd. This project, part of a series of books capturing a day-in-the-life of a specific place in the world, has been published internationally as compelling portraits of our vastly diverse cultures.

You can snap a picture with camera phone, Polaroid, Contax, Canon or Nikon. Shoot digitally, on film, by pinhole, or through your computer's camera. You may be a professional photographer, a hobbiest, or a student. The invitation extends to everyone, all over the world: really!

Once you've taken the picture that represents your moment on time, be sure to submit it to The New York Times. Pictures will be published up to 1000 pixels wide, so the larger the file the better. Then, send your image to submit.nytimes.com/moment anytime before Friday, May 7th. Between the 2nd and the 7th, the photos will aggregate on the Lens blog and the NY Times, where you'll be able to view them by country and topic.

To find out what time 15:00 UTC is in your part of the world, check Time and Date, then set your timers and have your cameras ready.

Alec Soth needs your help! He's heading out West next week for a new project entitled, The California Sleepwalker's Treasure Hunt and is actively seeking leads to the following people, animals, hangouts, and actions-in-progress:

-Condors
-Sleepwalkers (specific individuals would be best)
-Punk hangouts
-Self-mutilation/flagellation, scarring
-Horror film (in progress....otherwise horror makeup artist)
-Star Wars iconography / Star Wars collectors
-Dolores Huerta / United Farmworkers
-Bats
-Hare Krishnas
-Metal detector enthusiasts
-Hang Gliders
-Frankenstein
-Emo's in Tijuana or Mexicali
-anything else that fits this stream of thinking

Alec Soth's treasure hunting route

If you're familiar with Alec's work, you know that he has a proclivity to wander along the wayfarer's path, whether that's down the Mississippi River, to and from Niagara Falls, or on a birthday trip to Las Vegas. Some of these travels are now being documented in his new blog in The New York Times, "Continental Picture Show"; last week's first installment took viewers to New Orleans in the aftermath of Mardi Gras, which begins with a shot of a barelegged Alec watching celebrations on TV from his hotel room then continues with an annotated foray into Nawlins. As expected, Alec's wanderings reveal a few truths beneath the celebratory veneer and those revelations surface much to the viewer's delight.

In an interview with the Walker Art Center in May 2006, shortly after completing NIAGARA, Soth spoke of his lists, and how they inspire his framework for looking:

PS: If you're starting a new project, how does that work? Do you just start shooting and see where it takes you?

AS: No. I did this project recently in Niagara Falls, and it started before I'd ever been to Niagara Falls. I had these pictures in my head of things I'd hoped to find. I have a list of things I want to shoot. One thing is "men in pajamas." I've yet to find a man in pajamas, but it's something I'm looking for. Why is that? That's the way I go out into the world, is looking for certain things.

This time around, Alec is crowdsourcing your insight and expertise to guide him from Los Angeles to San Francisco by way of condors, Hare Krishnas, hang gliders and punk hangouts. If you have hot tips you can leave them in the comments over at Little Brown Mushroom, where there is also an ever-growing discussion about the list itself.

Blogging, micro-blogging, vlogging, webinars—there are ever-increasing means and a multitude of ways that people are networking and communicating across the web these days. We'd like to turn your attention, art and tech-savvy among you, onto a new emergent trend of twitter chats, perfectly realized in a new joint venture by photographers and art bloggers (and chat moderators) Todd Walker and Harlan Erskine.

Transcripts of photoartchat with gallerist Debra Klomp Ching, March 16, 2010

Since mid-December 2009, Todd and Harlan have been sourcing guests for semi-regular moderated photoartchats, which take place entirely on Twitter. The format and time are always the same, Tuesdays at 9 p.m. EST (6 p.m. PST). There are usually two chats a month, each lasting for exactly one hour. Todd and Harlan both actively solicit the guest "chatters" as well as guide the evening's discussion; the quick format is fairly low-pressure for the guests, and really and truly only commits them to one hour of their time. Working artists, bloggers, collectors and anyone with interest is welcome to ask questions and participate in an extended (but at the same time micro!—as in 140 characters) topic of conversation. Past guests have included Radius Books editor (and HHS! panelist) Darius Himes, Fraction Magazine founder David Bram, gallerist Debra Klomp Ching of KLOMPCHING Gallery and most recently the editors of The Photography Post. Given the varied and impressive roster of invited guests, there's a wealth of information provided in a relatively informal and relaxed format—and it's available to anyone and everyone at any level of interest in photography and the arts.

Transcript of photoartchat with editors of The Photography Post, March 23, 2010

The next photoartchat is scheduled for Tuesday, April 13th. That night you'll get to tweet-meet Art Fag City's Paddy Johnson in, who'll be on hand to field questions about everything under the art-loving sun. So, get your questions ready! The easiest way to be notified about the times and guests for upcoming photoartchats is to follow the founders, Todd Walker (@ocularoctupus) and Harlan Erskine (@HarlanErskine), on Twitter.

Todd also recommends using the TweetChat client to more easily follow the posts, although you can also find them easily on Twitter by simply searching for the hashtag, #photoartchat. A complete transcript of each chat's discussion is available the day following the chat at What the Hashtag? #photoartchat (just scroll down the page and click on the tab for "transcript"—you can fill in a specific date or give a range of dates to view the entire archives of photoartchats).

Inside Out, Feature Issue 38, a curated selection of artwork from Culturehall by Tema Stauffer

Not enough hours in the day to see all the gallery shows in the NYC art fairs this week? We're more than happy to help you get your fix after the lights have dimmed and the doors have locked from the art spaces you find yourselves visiting in the daylight hours. In this day and age, curating has gone digital: 20x200 artist Tema Stauffer has curated the current featured exhibition Inside Out, featured in Culturehall, an online resource for contemporary art. Culturehall describes itself as a place...

...where selected artists can share their work with curators, gallerists, collectors and other artists. We provide free artist portfolios with an easy to use set of web-based tools to make presenting art online simple and efficient. Our community of artists consists primarily of MFA graduates, arts professionals and teaching artists.

Inside Out presents four photographers that are coming out of the raw documentary traditions of contemporary titans like Robert Frank, Larry Clark, Diane Arbus and Richard Billingham. From the exhibition page:

In this highly personal and subjective tradition, Culturehall presents four contemporary photographers with a similar sensitivity to the struggles, fantasies and realities of diverse groups of people whose lives have resonated with the photographers' psychologies, personal histories, cultural backgrounds or social concerns.

Fishbowl, 2010 by Julianna Beasley

The featured photographers in Inside Out are Juliana Beasley, Wayne Liu, Heather Musto and Dave Jordano. Juliana Beasley is a Fall 2006 Hot Shot, whose haunting portraits of societally marginalized denizens of the Rockaways definitely harken the same conflicted care seen in the work of Richard Billingham.

The Inside Out online exhibition will be on view through March 9th.

I'll admit it: I'm a sucker for stories without discrete endings—tales of lost loves, notes written into the ether, missed connections and stories of profound relationships that dissolved for reasons beyond one's control.

Pictory Magazine's newest project, The One Who Got Away, collects photographs and anecdotes about lost friends and loves from contributors around the globe. Magazine editor, Laura Brunow Miner created Pictory as a way for people to share the stories that accompany their photographs. For each issue, Miner selects an editorial theme, ranging from the conceptual (danger) to the much more specific (Portrait of London), then accepts submissions of captioned photographs. At any given time, several themes are open for entries, then 20-40 images and captions are published as collaborative picture stories.

In the introduction to The One Who Got Away, Miner writes:

Think about the people missing from your life, and how you feel about them. What we remember -- and what we forget -- may reveal more about ourselves than about them. We have photos, letters, souvenirs, and fragments of memory, but our powerful imagination takes over from there: We color in the blanks. And that's OK. Retouching old loves is a way of understanding what we want. It helps us find our way to new ones.

It's impossible to know whether the experiences below are about infatuation, true love, lust, or something else entirely. But we can be sure that each of these contributors learned about life and themselves in the process.

See Pictory's theme page for topics currently open for submission, and make sure to take the time to read through the captions of The One Who Got Away; they'll tug on your heartstrings.

Spring 2005 Hot Shot and 20x200 edition-maker Rachel Hulin is no stranger to writing about photography. Since writing for Photoshelter's widely read Shoot! The Blog, Hulin has served as a photography columnist for The Daily Beast and The Faster Times while also writing a blog of her own.

Rachel has just joined the tiny team at The Photography Post, an all new site aggregating the latest in photo news from blogs, newswires and beyond, and propelling discussions about the state of contemporary photography. The Photography Post provides dynamic content in many sub-categories of the industry including: business, commercial, editorial, fashion, art, reportage and more. You can opt into one (or many) of their filtered "Live Feeds," providing you access to the full range of content within these topics. Editors Kate Steciw and Hulin oversee the content that streams into each of the feeds, which are updated (an unbelievable) every 15 minutes.

You can tune into The Photography Post on facebook and twitter or subscribe to their RSS.

Issue 11 of Fraction Magazine is now on view featuring work by Hey, Hot Shot! contender and 20x200 edition-maker Liz Kuball, Jonathan Blaustein, John Divola, Gordon Stettinius and 20x200 edition-maker Brian Ulrich.

Untitled by Liz Kuball

All of the series by the above artists surround the theme of "place," focusing on spaces that are imagined, idealized, celebrated and mourned. Kuball's California Vernacular reflects on going to a place surrounded by mystique—and the fantasy, expectation and desire that come with what you'll find once being there. She writes of California: "we hang on--hang on to a world that, to us, is even more fantastic than the one we thought we'd find, because it's real in its absurdity and because we have stories to tell."

(X18F5) Brady Bunch House - Stage 6 by John Divola

John Divola explores transient places: sets made on The X-Files during their final season in 2002. He photographs aspects—otherwise ordinary—of homes created to make a fictional world full of its own existential mysteries, feel more real. Divola writes of his series, "I was interested in The X-Files because it is literally a stage for the expression of these desires. I hope that there is some resonance between the generic nature of these sets, the character of photographic insistence on the observable present, and the X-Files as cultural fact."

Fraction is also collaborating with Radius Books to give away six signed books—three each of Debbie Fleming Caffery's The Spirit & The Flesh and Michael Light's Bingham Mine/Garfield Stack. To enter, send an email to fractionmag@gmail.com with the subject line "radius book giveaway" and you automatically get a discount code good for 25% at the Radius Books online store. The winners of the signed artists' books will be randomly selected on March 1st.

We're excited to announce that Kickstarter, the Brooklyn-based online micro-funding community launched by Perry Chen + Yancey Strickler will also be sponsoring the HHS! Confab + Print Trade next Tuesday, September 29th, 6:00 to 8:30 p.m. They'll be on-site to talk about Kickstarter, which enables artists and creative thinkers to propose projects for funding, and allows interested supporters to pledge both small and large amounts to meet their financial goals. The pledges are reciprocated by incentives offered by the the artists, like an exchange for a screen print, homemade cookies, or copy of an album (that you might be helping create!).

20x200 edition-maker Kevin Cyr has raised $820 of a goal of $2,000 thus far for his project, CAMPER KART. In order for the funds to be distributed to the project creator, the entirety of the funding goal must be met (or exceeded). Cyr has 38 days left in his goal to meet the funds of CAMPER KART, and you can help him out by going to Kickstarter and making a pledge for his project. He writes,

I'm building the CAMPER KART: a pop-up camper affixed to a shopping cart. It's a functioning sculptural piece that seeks to explore aspects of housing, mobility, and autonomy. It is also largely about self-reliance and making do with less....

Throughout the last year, I decided to build my own type of vehicles. On a trip to Beijing, I conceived and built a CAMPER BIKE: an amalgamation of a Chinese 3-wheeled flatbed bike with an American cabover style camper. Interested in building a series of mobile vehicles and inspired by Cormac McCarthy's novel, The Road, I started sketching plans for CAMPER KART: a mobile unit built into a shopping cart--an ubiquitous urban object....

With your support, I can not only finish the construction, but document the piece through drawings, paintings, and a photographic print.

A video also accompanies his project, which you can watch by clicking on the widget above. You can browse other projects on the site, including a great one titled Designing Obama proposed by Scott Thomas, Design Director of the Obama campaign, to fund a book chronicling the art and design of the campaign. Backers get copies of the book, starting with $10 earning you digital access all the way up to $150 for a special-edition copy with a gold sleeve.

At the Confab, Perry and Yancey will be around to answer all your questions about the ins and outs of Kickstarter (and hopefully give us all a demo). Look for them there!

These days, you can find 20x200 photographer Kevin Miyazaki in the classroom at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design where he is busy teaching the course Professional Practices. But Kevin, who you may know for his his blog or his ongoing curated group show on the web, Tiny Tiny Group Show, is not settling for in-classroom teaching alone. His latest web endeavor, MIAD-FA382 (named after the course title), serves as an online photographic resource for his students (and the lucky public). The site, in the form of a blog, includes an extensive collection of artist and industry interviews culled from blogs and magazines, gallery listings, and also features the work of his very own students.

We've picked out a few of our favorite interviews from his listings to get you acquainted. Start with an interview with last week's 20x200 edition maker Liz Kuball who discusses her early beginnings and her most recent series California Vernacular, from which two editions are currently available on 20x200. Other 20x200 artist interviews include an in-depth look at internet phenom Noah Kalina, the creative processes of Curtis Mann, and Joseph Holmes' dialogue on photography from start to finish. Also not-to-be-missed are the interviews with photography heavyweights Ryan McGinley, Cindy Sherman, and Andreas Gursky. Whatever your tastes, you'll come away from Kevin Miyazaki's experiment in education both inspired and informed.

London-based photography and fine art printer, theprintspace, is running a monthly photography competition judged by photographers Julia Fullerton-Batten, Harry Borden, Rob Jarvis, and Editor & director of 1000 Words Photography Magazine, Tim Clark.

Each month brings a new theme and a new round of the competition; photographers can submit up to 5 images each month. All images selected for monthly competitions will also be included in theprintspace's two-week long grand bi-annual group show at their gallery in East London, opening at a TBD date. Winners of the monthly competitions will also receive a mounted 20x24-inch print of their choice from theprintspace studio, an entry on the 1000 Words photography blog and continued exposure from theprintspace.

This month's theme is Portraiture and the deadline for entries is tomorrow, June 30th. Applicants must join theprintspace's Facebook group for further details about entry terms and conditions. Winners will be announced on July 13th and notified via Facebook. Good luck to all applicants!

Douglas Stockdale has been writing photo book reviews at his blog The Photo Book since last September, but it was brought to our attention again today via Rob Haggart, and we returned to the site to re-discover Stockdale's fantastic insight into a long list of photo books, both new and old. I was psyched to see interior shots of the retrospective of William Henry Fox Talbot edited by Geoffrey Batchen and Stockdale's discussion of the book's printed page. He also offers a great list of links and resources to photo book publishers, gallery bookstores, university presses, and other related resources. If you are either book or photographer-lover, or like us, both, then Stockdale's blog is a daily must-read.

A friendly reminder from Jen Bekman Projects HQ that you can hear about the latest new editions from 20x200, all about Hey, Hot Shot! (and what past and current Hot Shots are up to), and about new exhibits & ongoings at Jen Bekman Gallery by following us on twitter.

Where to find us on twitter:
Hey, Hot Shot!
20x200
Jen Bekman Gallery

We always love hearing from you, whether it is here, at the 20x200 blog, Jen Bekman Gallery blog, on facebook, or via our twitter accounts!

Hey, Hot Shot! is now twittering! Follow us and hear about the goings on of our current and former Hot Shots, the next round of the competition, and the latest news from Hey, Hot Shot! HQ.

We've joined Jen Bekman Gallery and 20x200 and all our friends over on Facebook. Come find us!
You can check in on this blog, receive reminders about deadlines, announcements about the winners, and invitations to Hey, Hot Shot! openings at the gallery.

Come one, come all!

You only have eight more days to enter the Second Edition of 2008 round of Hey, Hot Shot! But as of right now you have less than 24 hours to vote.

So go, now. And take photos when you do. Take photos if you have problems. And take photos if you have no trouble at all. Use Twitter, use Plodt (my new favorite web thing), use Flickr, use your blog. You don't need to hear this from me, you know what you need to do. Do it and document it.

I am going to guess that if you are reading this you are an "emerging photographer," or someone who is interested in "emerging photography." And if either of those applies to you then you probably already know about Rachel Hulin and her fantastic blogging about photography (emerging and otherwise).

But did you know that Rachel is a Hey, Hot Shot winner? Spring 2005.

Did you know that Rachel has a new blog?

Bookmark it. If you fall into one of the two categories above then hers is one of the most important voices you should be listening to about photography each day.

Hot Shot Jennifer Boomer's zine The Uncommon Vantage Point

Fall '07 Hot Shot Jennifer Boomer makes a zine, The Uncommon Vantage, and it was featured in the July issue of PDN. The zine includes images from Boomer's Dutch Harbor, Alaska adventures. Each is Ssgned and numbered and includes a 4X6 C-Print and a "cute" sticker designed by Leslie at Pancake Meow.

The PDN article, titled, "The New Portfolio" explains that, "Photographers are marketing themselves online and in print to potential clients in all kinds of new and interesting ways that are more portable and less expensive than traditional portfolios." It cites Boomer's zine as a particularly interesting mode.

The article, by Jay Mallin details:

"Smaller printing projects--still larger than the traditional promo postcards--are gaining some attention as well. Jennifer Boomer (28 and currently traveling, according to her MySpace entry) created a new portfolio by moving to Alaska and, photographing while working for a few months in a fish-processing plant. When she was done, she created a 'zine' to present her work to potential buyers.

As zines go, it's definitely upscale, with four-color reproduction and professional design in place of mimeographed monochrome. She sent it to 125 people she'd like to work with, from reps to editors to gallery owners. Again, no immediate jobs, but Boomer says she got a good response. "I felt like it was a good, positive step."

'I remember Jennifer's booklet, and I still have it,' reports Anne Lyse Tardivat, an editor with Agence Vu in Paris. 'I rarely receive such material. I guess it's not in the European style--yet.'"

Are you planning to head to SXSW? Are you not going but simply super interested in all the awesome talk that will go on there? Then vote, now, for Jen Bekman's SXSW panel proposal:

Curating the Crowd-Sourced World Level: Beginner Type: Panel Category: Content Presenter: Jen Bekman, 20x200 | Jen Bekman Projects, Inc. Description: With all the stuff we weed through online, good filters are crucial. Who's best-suited to determine what's best - curators or the crowd? People have their religion about one or the other, however this panel will focus on the overlap, the grey areas and how curating and crowd-sourcing enrich each other.

With the curatorially-mediated online phenom of 20x200, Jen's a pretty good fit to head up this panel which is sure to be filled with other talents -- who can speak as both curators and "crowd" -- that she'll announce in the coming weeks.

A few weeks ago, Rob Haggart at A Photo Editor put out a call for work. He curated a slideshow meant to forge new relationships between photographers, photo editors, and art collectors. It's up now, on his blog, and with an embed code so that others can host the show too. It's called I Like These Photos (to the point, perfect), and it features the work of 297 (!) photographers. It's a novel way of collecting images, for sure.

He writes:

Attention art buyers and photo editors, this is a free promo that’s meant to supplement all the other ways you find photographers to hire. I created it see if there might be an easier more efficient way to quickly look at 200-300 photographers. Compared to the weekly promo pile this works pretty good. Plus, if you’re like me, you remember a picture and not necessarily who took it so you can come back to this slideshow and find the name and website of the photographer whenever you like. This project only works if you find work you like and hire the photographer. I can create more of these but it’s a complete waste of time if it doesn’t connect buyers with photographers. That’s the only reason I did this.

Are you a photographer who missed out this time? Don't worry, Haggart promises, "we’re going to do this again with different editors in a couple months."

• The New York Times reports that MFA students at SVA show at the MoMA. In the bathroom. The show lives on, online.
• In the 40th anniversary of New York Magazine, they attempt to define a New York Canon from 1968-2008, and they also run a few Q&As with "iconic New York artists about creating their masterworks." Mark Stevens talks to Cindy Sherman about her Untitled Film Stills. She discusses process, character creation, and, to some extent, intent.


• Earlier this week, the Pulitzer Prizes were announced. Adrees Latif of Reuters won for Breaking News Photography "for his dramatic photograph of a Japanese videographer, sprawled on the pavement, fatally wounded during a street demonstration in Myanmar." Preston Gannaway of the Concord (N.H.) Monitor won the Feature Photography category "for her intimate chronicle of a family coping with a parent's terminal illness."


• Mike Stimpson uses Legos to recreate famous photos from Robert Capa's Death of a Loyalist, to Cartier-Bresson's Behind the Gare Saint Lazare. "Strobist.com taught me everything I know," he says.


• It's photo auction time. Controversy over the oldest — or just an old— photo. Even Gawker's covering the photo auctions, drawn to the nudes. Phillips de Pury canceled a sale of Diane Arbus prints because of concerns about a recent lawsuit. There was even a Fine Photobooks Auction at Christie's.


• Cathy Horyn discusses Juergen Teller's role in Marc Jacobs' ad campaigns. How great is it to see a photographer so in charge of a commercial campaign? Small thing: the NYT blog swapped out the photo they initially had (Teller's ad that featured Victoria Beckham's legs splayed out of a shopping bag) at the top of the post. Why?

By Rachel Hulin, shown in the Hey, Hot Shot! Spring 2005 Showcase

Rachel Hulin at Shoot the Blog has done all of the hard work for you. She's compiled a list of opportunities -- competitive, fellowship, grant, publishing -- open right now to photographers like you. It's an exhaustive list, so, seriously, you should really thank her. And report back on your progress.

P.S. More info about our own competition, Hey, Hot Shot!, coming soon.

P.P.S. Hulin, herself, is a Hot Shot; she showed in Spring '05, our very first show.

• Former Jen Bekman intern Jane Tam is selling inexpensive prints of her photos to finance her senior show. Such a simple, brilliant plan. Jane writes,

  "I am currently a senior at Syracuse University, preparing for my BFA Solo Thesis Show on May 3rd. Like many college students, I am immensely in debt from the costs of film, processing, developing, and printing. Frames cost money. Mounting costs money. The space I rented cost money. This is all for a solo show featuring my photographic series on my family. I do not ask my family for money as they are a working class family who struggle enough to put me through a private university. So, any little bit will help me. Thank you! For those who donate $15 or more will receive a 5x7 print in the mail."

  I love Jane's Can I Come Home With You? series. In it she sketches families from found family photographs into images from her own home life. Two great ones from this series are available among the prints in her store.

• I should admit, I do not know how to use Photoshop. It was only after I started shooting regularly on assignment that I figured out how to resize and rename my images before I turned them in to editors. I'm not proud of this. Since then I've been intrigued, but not hooked, each time someone shows me a free, quick-fix type tool. I've played with Picnik, etc., but I still have pages of steps bookmarked for the boring batch operations I must often perform. Last night I signed up to try Photoshop Express, Adobe's new free online version of Photoshop. The flash-based interface is easy to use, and there's even an Auto Correct option and some organizing options. A few minutes of playing with it didn't teach me how to do anything, exactly, but I'm willing to give it a try. Although, if you want to give me a cheap Photoshop tutorial, I'm up for that too.

  
  

• Rob Haggart, A Photo Editor, writes about an exciting new opportunity for free promotion:

  
  

  "I've wanted to do this for awhile and my thinking on the future of photography and photo contests and other things I'm cooking up has gotten me inspired to offer everyone the chance to promote your best work for free by submitting a couple images for a slide show. There's plenty of photo editors and art buyers who are readers and I know they will find it extremely beneficial to view a quick slide show with hundreds of different photographers featuring their best work and I can't think of any other examples where this exists, so here we go.

  There will be a bar for entry and I will edit out any photographs that are a waste of time for potential buyers to look at. I know there are a lot of top shooters who may be wary of submitting their photographs so I'm going to make sure all the work displayed is top notch. You can also remove your images at any time if you don't think I've done a good enough job.

  The purpose of this is to connect photographers with buyers for FREE. That's it. No bullshit. If that doesn't happen to anyone then the project has failed."

  Rob has a good eye, and from this, it seems, a good heart. A no-bullshit approach to connecting shooters and editors seems generous on all fronts. Visit his site for details about how to participate in this Flickr-based image pool.

  
  

• Spring '06 Hot Shot Casey Kelbaugh founded Slideluck Potshow, a slide show and potluck gathering for artists in New York (that has since branched out to other cities too). The next New York event is tomorrow night, Saturday, March 29, at the Chelsea Art Museum. The theme is patterns. Artists of all sorts each get five minutes to show slides of their work while everyone eats and chats.

Sold out 20x200 edition Untitled (Astoria Park, Queens, New York), by Carlo Van de Roer

"It's a gateway drug for art."

Today's Houston Chronicle writes on all things Jen Bekman — specifically 20x200, Hey, Hot Shot! and the gallery — in "On the Internet, it's real art for $20."

A last minute heads up to anyone and everyone who happens to be in New York tonight. Ms. Bekman will be giving a special presentation at The Apple Store in Soho [@ Prince + Greene] as part of the NYC Photobloggers event. Come hear about HHS!, the gallery, 20x200, and other excitement! AND Ultra Joe Holmes is also on the bill. This is an event not to be missed.

TONIGHT - Sept 26 - 6:30PM
The Apple Store [Prince + Greene]

PS: There will be goodies involved. Be there or be [ ]

Read the announcement over on Personism.

We're still in private beta for a few more weeks - Sign up for our mailing list and we'll keep you posted!

Chip's Drawing of a Robot From Outer Space by Spring 2006 Hot Shot Andrea Longacre-White

As we get closer and closer to the deadline—we have officially passed the two-week mark—there is more and more talk about town of Hey, Hot Shot! Props to the competition have been popping up all over the place...Daily Candy, Art Fag City, murketing, Design Observer, Conscientious, Modern Art Notes. A Hot Shot favorite, Alec Soth, recently mentioned the competition on his mandatory blog. Photo District News just gave us a shout out on their blog.

The word is spreading! Hot Shots will be announced on November 20.

Previous showcases have been a shortlist pick in The Village Voice and received mentions in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art in America, Gothamist and Flavorpill, among others.

Stay tuned! Enter today!

He's the hand that guides so many of us through the quickly condensing photographic-web, the man who consistently brings us new artists to ogle and old favorites to rehash. He's the one we can depend on for genuine thoughts and opinions, the one who brings us outstanding interviews and always keeps us entertained. He's a photographer, a thinker, a writer, a blogger, and an astrophysicist. He's a staple for us all, the photography/life/art/culture blogger of bloggers, and the mind behind Conscientious—Joerg Colberg, our Special Guest Panelist for Hey, Hot Shot! Fall 2006.

In his own words...

I was born on 15 February 1968 in what was then West Germany. I wish I could write that my interest in photography started when I found an old camera as a little boy. But alas, that didn't happen. Instead of using it I took it apart when it didn't work. In this spirit of wanting to know how things work - instead of being creative - I went to school and university. Eventually I ended up with a Ph.D. in theoretical astrophysics, a degree that doesn't have all that many applications in one's daily life (but, hey, it's quite interesting). In a sense I could write that I turned to photography after I had learned how - literally - the Universe worked, except that that's also just partly true (but it sounds good). In any case, I picked up photography at around the age of 30, again by chance. This time I had to buy a camera, because apparently there are only so many free cameras in one's life time. In parallel to learning how to take photos (by making each and every mistake that one could possibly make) I started compiling a weblog about contemporary photography, Conscientious. I guess it would have been harder to pick up theoretical astrophysics at the age of 30, so I'm not complaining.

We are thrilled to have Joerg on board and along for the Hey, Hot Shot! ride. This November he joins our amazing group of panelists in looking at your work. We are four weeks away from deadline, so get it in and let Joerg be the judge!

Sometimes people come by the gallery, introduce themselves, and start talking about how they're planning on entering the upcoming round of Hey, Hot Shot!. I'm always happy to put faces to names of people who have entered the competition. If I'm sweating a deadline, as I so often am, I might not be as attentive and engaged as I'd like to be, so it goes, but this kind of interaction gets to the heart of the matter for me: the whole reason I started the competition is because I really do love looking at new work and meeting and working with emerging photographers. Hey, Hot Shot! allows me to engage in this process regularly in a manageable way.

Anyway, these aspiring Hot Shots usually ask me for some pointers about what kind of work they should submit. My stock answer is this "Think of it like a haiku." Meaning: you get three chances to express something and although each expression might be wildly divergent from the next, there's something that ties them all together. OK, maybe it's kind of corny, but it's how I see it.

Panelist Eliot Shepard was less corny and more specific in his very thoughtful post on the slower.net weblog, Advice for those considering entry into the Hey Hot Shot competition at the Jen Bekman Gallery. His post caused quite a stir a while back - it got Kottke'd and then in turn inspired another post on the Signal vs. Noise blog entitled Art statements, Pitchfork, and fancypants analysis, which was a broader meditation on "fancypants, look-at-me analysis has nothing to do with good art or good rock 'n roll." It was all good stuff, and the discussion threads on both posts are interesting reads. Jen says: check it out.

Also, and for the record, I'm not one for a lot of flowery prose when it comes to statements, but I do like to know what an artist has on their mind when they go about doing what that they do. It's just about that simple.

Rebecca Smeyne, Winter 2006 Hot Shot and lead writer and photo director for myopenbar.com, was at a wild party in Manhattan called Happy Valley a few weeks ago where she took some photos. One of them was included in Anthem Magazine on April 19th.

Black Face Jesus by Rebecca Smeyne

Hedda Lettuce by Rebecca Smeyne

This excerpt from Anthem Magazine does its best to describe the scene:

"So this club Happy Valley has been getting mad NYC media love lately, and after last night's Joanna's Angels release shindig, I can certainly see why. It's like some weird amalgam of crass Eurotrash excess and a cocaine-fueled 1980s I never lived through; transvestites with big fake boobs; a DJ booth set in a gaudy disco ball; various people taking their clothes off; various people smoking inside and not getting yelled at; $11 plastic cups of Jack Daniels; a really flamboyant dude who was, I swear, wearing a jacket made out of an oven mitt; a 20-minute trailer of the Angels' porn, the plot of which was a bit hard to follow (presidential meetings and secret missions punctuated by bouts of tender, tender lovemaking); trying to sit next to various transvestites with fake boobs and/or wearing nurse's costumes in the hopes of procuring some of their Grey Goose bottle service overflow (which never happened); arriving home at 5 a.m. still wired and waking up feeling like somebody chewed on a vital corner of my brain. As a former college classmate of the lady in question, I can still remember when Ms. Angel was a saucy co-ed with a Web site and a dream. After last night, all I can say is--these kids sure grow up fast."

Paaarty.

Photojojo is a quirky and creative photo newsletter edited by an entrepreneurial duo: Amit Gupta and Kara Canal. They keep their readers both entertained and well informed with DIY projects and tips on how to become a proficient digital camera user. All good stuff.

It turns out they've just written a piece entitled "The 7 Best Photo Contests to Enter Today: You're a Star, Now Show the World," and Hey, Hot Shot! was on the list! Damn straight.

Salutations.

You met Christine the intern a few weeks ago. I'm Anna, and I'm an intern, too. Jen has asked me to edit a new blog that will focus specifically on the quarterly Hey, Hot Shot! photography competition. We recently had an exhibition for the 10 Winter Hot Shot winners, and it received great press. The opening packed the gallery to the gills and was a wonderful success. Stuff about the competition and the artists will be posted regularly, but first I must introduce myself properly.

This may help:

February 22, 2006
Dear Jen Bekman and friends, When I saw your post on NYFA, I was so excited. I discovered your gallery a few years back and have always appreciated the art you exhibit. I received a Bachelor's degree in Art History from Davidson College in May, 2005, where I discovered a passion for Contemporary Art. As an undergraduate, I studied the works of established Contemporary artists. However, I have always been interested in learning about unknown and emerging talent; your gallery appears to be the perfect venue for this.
You're a young gallery doing so much! I am interested in learning about how you operate, from the curatorial and research aspects to your web blog and Hot Shot photography contest (I love that you have this contest!). I believe an internship at your gallery would give me the opportunity to understand how the scholarly world of art and that of commercial art are bridged. I am thrilled at the prospect of helping out with upcoming exhibitions. I also have strong research, writing, and computer skills and am able to do any and all curatorial and handy work around the gallery. Below you will find my resume with additional information including education, experiences, skills, and languages. I would love to meet with you and discuss the position in further detail. Jen Bekman is a fresh gallery where I hope to get my wings!
Thanks in advance for considering me as an intern at your gallery.

Sincerely yours,

Anna Wolfgang

Until very soon, then!

Anna