photoworks no.6 $8.00

Transcription

1 photoworks no.6 $8.00

2 PHOTOWORKS SPRING 2012 PHOTOWORKS is published irregularly at 2077-a market st., san francisco, ca. Editorial contributions are selected through the flickr.com group friends of photoworks SF. To be considered, prospective contributors should join the group and post photos to it. PHOTOWORKS does not accept unsolicited artwork in person or by mail. s can be directed to hannah@photoworkssf.com for any comments, suggestions, or contributions. PHOTOWORKS does not accept responsibility for the care or safety of material in its possession that is submitted for publication. All images are the copyright of the credited photographers and may not be reproduced without permission. EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Dave Handler CURATION & DESIGN Hannah Schuster EDITING & PRINTING Michele Rider IN THIS ISSUE Matt Sawyer Ashley Anthony Paige Campbell-Linden Mikey Baratta Nate Skinner Aaron Durand Rachel Walther Katelin Arizmendi Jeff McElroy FRONT COVER IMAGE BY MIKEY BARATTA James DeLeon

3 A Note From The Creative director If you ve ever looked at our PHOTOWORKS zine before, you may have noticed that this one is quite a bit larger, and has a lot more text. Some of you may prefer to gaze at pictures unhindered by words, but I think it s worth something to know a little about the person behind the camera. When I finally convinced our editor-in-chief, Dave, to let me curate this issue, I knew I wanted to take the zine in a new direction. We have previously published five issues; the common theme tends to center around toy cameras and film. I wanted to (of course) stay as true as possible to the film aspect- I think there is a great amount to be said for the merits of analogue photography. But I also wanted to look for photographers that had a very distinct style, whether they shot film or digital, and to show a broader range of their work rather than the customary one image. Included as well is a short bio from each featured artist, and all the film/camera stats one could want. In regards to all the nudity, I find that in a time where this is so prevalent in modern art, the photographs selected for this print are stunning examples of tasteful representation, and are not intended to offend. In any case, I do hope all you gazers and readers enjoy this issue of PHOTOWORKS, there s a lot of fantastic photographers featured who are out there working hard, and they absolutely deserve to be seen! -Hannah Hannah Sony A850 Ashland, Oregon by Mikey Baratta

4 I had never actually owned a camera until 2003 when I was preparing to take a two week trip to Japan. My love for photography had not completely taken hold yet. However I knew that this might be a once in a lifetime event, and that I should at least attempt to document it. This was around the time that small digital cameras were becoming very cheap. So I picked up a tiny cheap digital camera and went to Japan. Hiking throughout Osaka and taking in its culture, architecture, and atmosphere was one of my most signifigant steps towards falling in love with photography. Over the next couple of years I began to slowly teach myself the technical aspects of photography, everything from aperture and depth of field to digital post-production. My friend Sam Stanton introduced me to the world of film, especially medium format film and vintage cameras from decades ago. It was through experimenting with film that the shutterbug had finally and incurably bitten me. It may be that I m very stubborn or just slow, but I realize now how my former assessment of photography was somewhat naive. I now think of the process of photography -- at least in its landscape and street forms -- as more like sculpture than painting. Instead of adding a composition to a blank canvas, the photographer s environment is a block of material, waiting to be subtracted from and focused down to a coherent piece. This also happens in the 3rd dimension where the photographer -- using the tools of light, glass, and film -- chooses a perspective of field and depth of field and further subtracts elements from our perception. Matt Sawyer is a photographer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and a mail in film customer of photoworks! Upon asking him why he was interested in photography, he had these lovely things to say, which I think many photographers can find at least some relation to-- For as long as I can remember, I have been passionately interested in the practice and study of various forms of art and music. I spent much of my childhood relentlessly studying and performing classical and modern piano music and delving deeply into ceramics in high school. However I must admit that early on, I viewed photography as some kind of lesser art form (I had also written off photorealistic painting in a similar way). To me it seemed to be a relatively mindless or banal documentation compared to say, Van Gogh s work, with which I was enamored while studying art history in college. My artistic values were skewed towards forms and artists who dared to wildly distort reality with expressionistic renderings, or dissonant and epic musical overtures. It was a few years after college that one of the catalysts for my appreciation of photography was sparked- when I met my very creative wife Amy in She had a sort of personal collection of old photographs from vintage stores, clippings from books and catalogs, and collages she d constructed with many types of photographs. She also liked to take time to hike through parks and meadows to take photos only for her own personal enjoyment. I wanted to impress her and so I tagged along and began to attempt to photograph things for the first time (not including obligatory holiday snapshots that everyone has endured at one time or another). For me, to really appreciate an art form or medium, one must spend time participating in it and at least giving it an assiduous effort. This slowly happened to me by accident in the process of spending time with Amy.

5 matt sawyer matt sawyer on current work: kit: These days I most enjoy photographing landscapes, not excluding urban scenes, but specifically rural environments. The reasons for this are many- one of my strongest core values and motivations is the sense of exploration. I have a constant yearning to travel and experience locations that are unfamiliar to me. Another reason is growing up on a farm in a small town in Oklahoma. Though I don t see myself living in a place like that again anytime soon, I do want to maintain a connection to wide open spaces and memories of my childhood. Currently I only shoot film, mostly medium format. Last year I gave up my last digital camera (except for the ever-present iphone) and found a camera system that is sort of a jack-of-all-trades: a Mamiya 645AFD. I ve found it seems to have the least amount of compromise for several different types of shooting. That said, it doesn t really excel at any one task too well. I had also sold a Mamiya RZ67 kit last year and have regretted the loss of those giant 6x7 film frames ever since. So as a result I am now trying something different and piecing together a Pentax 67 system.

6 matt sawyer matt sawyer on photography as an art form: I think that experiencing an image frozen in time is not simply one less dimension, but fundamentally a different kind of thing than experiencing the sensation of sight or watching a video or movie. As we look into the world around us, we are being flooded with sensory information from almost 180 degrees. This information is correlated also to what we re hearing, smelling and touching. By carving out a small fraction of that information into a photograph, freezing it in time, and detaching it from other sensory experiences, I think that it allows a strong sense of memory to be invoked as our minds attempt to grasp it and make sense of it. It s almost as if your mind is tracking forward in time until the photograph is viewed; it is then arrested and sometimes reels backwards into memory or nostalgia as the photograph is taken in. More of Matt s work can be seen at

7 Paige Campbell Linden is a 20 year old photography student at the Academy of Art. She s been shooting film since her sophomore year in high school. The first film camera she shot with was her grandpa s Canon Rebel S and she still uses it often today. She also uses a point and shoot Canon Prima, an Olympus with a 50mm lens (which she finds to be perfect), a TLR Ricoh Diacord (photos are always crystal clear), a fujifilm instax camera (which she treasures). and multitudes of disposables. When she does shoot digitally, it s with her Canon XTI. Happily, she feels no need to upgrade due to the fact that she is so hooked on film. I m constantly shooting no matter what my friends and I are doing, but when I do get inspired I come up with the idea and then figure out what fits exactly with my vision. The fine art quality to my work comes out on a whim, yet I love the fashion aspect of every shoot. When people ask where I come up with my ideas it s seriously a hard question to answer. For some odd reason they just come to me. Molly Ilford Delta mm Fulton & 48th, San Francisco Untitled Digital canon XTI Soma, San Francisco Untitled Canon XTI Digital Parking Garage on Sutter, San Francisco

8 paige campbell linden paige campbell linden Untitled Ricoh Diacord TLR Overpass, San Clemente California Untitled Ricoh Diacord TLR Abandonoed House, San Clemente California

9 Ashley Anthony is a self taught photographer working out of Los Angeles and San Francisco. She uses vivid colors and story telling to bring her ideas to life. Primarily shooting fashion and ad work, her style translates across traditional genre borders and presents her subjects in a unique light. inspired by kitschy profiles and hyper-realism, she enjoys finding the abstract beauty in the ordinary. more of Ashley s work can be seen at Nine Lives Hasselblad 500C Kodak Portra 160 Los Angeles, California

10 ashley anthony ashley anthony Rotary Hasselblad 500C Kodak Portra 160VC -R.I.P. Portland, Oregon Self Portrait 5D Mark II digital San Francisco, California

11 Mikey Baratta is a fine art photographer based in San Francisco. He studied at San Francisco Art Institute and is a long term intern at RayKo Photo Center. His main focus is portraiture, but he has a broad range of other works including the documentation of various recording artists at Radio Star studios in Weed, California and of production at kink.com in San Francisco. His appeal is in the genuine and serious way he handles his photography, he has fantastic technique and a clear passion for the art. More of Mikey s work can be seen at Nettie R. Harris Hasselblad 500CM Fuji Provia 400X San Francisco, California untitled Kodak Portra 400NC R.I.P. Hasselblad 500CM Los Angeles, California B.C. Nixon Hasselblad 500CM Expired Kodak Tmax 400 San Francisco, California

12 mikey baratta mikey baratta The Night Porter Hasselblad 500CM Fuji Provia 400X Los Angeles, California The Day Porter Hasselblad 500CM Polaroid Sepia 1000 San Francisco, California

13 Nate Skinner is a photographer based here in San Francisco: Photography has always been a way for me to show and tell the things I ve seen or where I ve been, I suppose. I ve been getting more serious with it over the past 8 or 9 months, but I ve had a camera to document the things I do on and off since I was 16. I ve never really been good with words, so a camera helps me tell my stories. Photos have always moved me more then other visual arts too, so the pursuit of trying to make an image that has an emotional push on me (and others, hopefully) drives me too. Plus, its a good excuse to go on adventures and get people to do things with you they probably wouldn t have to begin with. Untitled Yashica Mat 124g Kodak Portra 400 Melrose Place, San Francisco SLO Farm Yashica Mat 124g Expired b/w film?? San Luis Obispo, California Untitled Yashica Mat 124g Kodak Portra 400 Melrose Place, San Francisco

14 Untitled Pentacon Six tl provia 400x East Bay, California There s something about being amateur Aaron Durand takes very seriously. Being average. Being the dude to shun responsibility for having created something other people enjoy looking at. It was just a moment, I pressed a button. You coulda done this. It s partly why he s known as everydaydude to those who view his photos on Flickr, Tumblr or Twitter. Ironically he hopes you like what you see. Aaron s not one to study much more than his surroundings. He s greatly inspired by the creative people around him and draws much joy from surrounding himself with as many of those people as possible. He ll shoot with just about anyone but won t know what you mean when you say stop down and bracket, or push and pull when developing film. Aaron began taking photographs when he moved to San Francisco from Portland, OR near the end of His initial focus was on graffiti because, hey, walls don t move and it makes learning a camera a little more straightforward. He s shooting an array of film and digital cameras these days and looks more for the ambiance and the atmosphere than the art on the wall. Here are a few of his recent snaps. Untitled Pentacon Six tl provia 400x East Bay, California

15 aaron durand aaron durand Untitled Pentacon Six tl East Bay, California Untitled Hasselblad 500cm Marin, California

16 Rachel Walther is our charming new lady clerk at photoworks. Now based out of San Francisco, she was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. She received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; she has worked at the Whitney Museum in New York, the Chicago History Museum, the Music Box Theater and Facets Multimedia in Chicago, and Amoeba Records in San Francisco. Currently she works at Photoworks SF and Le Video. She has been working on a series for some times now called The Palaces by the Bay, documenting old theaters in the area. The Palaces by the Bay project was intended not as a fine art series, but as a straight visual archive of the still extant theaters in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berekely. The Bay Area has so many great examples of California palace-style movie houses, and I ve learned through working on this project that although there may not be as many around as there used to be, there s still plenty to choose from when you want a night of entertainment. One of my main activities in life is watching movies; and often folks have remarked on the cinematic quality of the images that I do display in a fine art context. I don t deliberately set out to take pictures that look like film stills; but I will admit that I have inherent preferences of what I like to look at that have been greatly influenced by movies, and classic Hollywood in particular. I don t like the look of most new gadgets and vehicles, and anything I shoot that s too modern rarely gets past the editing process. The images I consider to be most successful are generally ones that display the timeless aspects of life in a society, of any age. More of Rachel s work can be seen at

17 Katelin Arizmendi works as a cinematographer. her career goal is to shoot feature narratives, and that is very clearly reflected in her photographic style. She has been published in CHAOS magazine and was featured on the cover of Sex+Design. She finds shooting for fashion magazines and designers exciting, but her favorite kinds of photoshoots are ones that begin spontaneously, and are shot on film- purely based on an emotion, location, color scheme, mood or lighting- where nothing is planned ahead of time, and all created in the moment. More of Kate s photographs and films can be seen at cargocollective.com/kateariz

18 katelin arizmendi katelin arizmendi

19 Jeff McElroy More of jeff s work can be seen at

20 jeff mcelroy jeff mcelroy

21 jeff mcelroy jeff mcelroy

22 James DeLeon is one of the lucky fellas we ve come across who can take gorgeous portraits with the new IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT polaroid film. Because we ve all had such a hard time acclimating to the new film and it s many quirks, I thought a feature on James successful polaroiding might give us all the boost of hope and inspiration we need to keep shooting. More of james work can be seen at Good Luck You Believers!

23 james deleon james deleon

24 Thank you to all our featured photographers for contributing your wonderful images; and to michele, our digital press specialist, for printing this issue! --- image by hannah schuster

25 photoworks sf A market st, san francisco