So I just gave a talk to Marni's class

My biggest concern (not blaming the lack of coffee) has been my endless inability to say what I want to about my work.

Over this past weekend, I had an incredibly thought provoking conversation with someone about the ability to talk about art. It seems, though we were talking about non-attachment and impermanence, that both of us felt that our abilities to really talk and write about what we do in photography is limited by many other forces. For me, these forces are timidness, and confusion about ambiguity in my own life, which come off as incoherence.

I'm sure that I am exaggerating on my lack of comfort that I felt about talking about my work today. I just really felt out of body in talking with peers. I am limited by this mental plague where I believe I must not sound preachy, nor must I sound too confident. Thus my feelings become introverted and I attack myself. This is not who I want to be.

It is time for me to move on in my work. I have shyed far away from the person I was when I began the work for Closer Than We Notice and thus I don't feel comfortable with talking about my work, for I feel as if I am talking about someone else's work, not my own. I thrive right now on interactions with other people when making photography, which sounds contradictory, but it's not. Whereas Closer only worked when I was photographing alone, I feel I need to interact more with other photographers and non-photographers when I work now. Because I use photography as a way of creating memories, I feel this is a good thing. I am in a passionate desire for memories with other people.

These are just ideas. Is it ok that I'm unsure?

Ed Panar "Animals That Saw Me"

Holy moley, what a great series of works. Brilliantly done capture of a relatively simple concept (which sometiems feel the hardest)

All Images Courtesy of http://edpanar.com/animals/index.html

Ed Panar_ Work Like Mine

More than any other effect, Ed Panar's photographs reminded me that there is nothing wrong with shooting the same thing. I must just find another angle if I'm really worried about exhausting originality. From Panar's photographs, I have come to believe that it's not my style and subject matter that's getting stale for me, rather my energy should be refocused. I believe that clarity will come with a new geographical location. Patience Dan.

Panar seems attracted to a similar color palate and depth of field as me. His photographs are more varied than my own, less restricted. However, this provides his single images with a greater, more overarching idea. It's more grown up- it has a distinct atmosphere and moodiness that works extraordinarily well.

It's not that I chose to restrict my photographs to specific settings because I'm disciplining myself. Rather, from Panar's model, I am not (thoroughly enough) engrossing all beauty in the mundane. I am setting too many parameters upon myself.

With my thesis work pretty much printed, I believe a constant glance at Panar's work will set the stage for the next step of my photography. I am free from boundaries now, ready and willing to engross myself in all experiences, not just specific feelings, with a camera. I believe I know a camera is not just a tool anymore, it's what I've accepted as part of my life experience.

All Photos Courtesy of Ed Panar

"An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way." -Charles Bukowski

Tehching Hsieh

I first Saw Hsieh's work in 2009 while I was in NYC. The exhibit at the MoMA, deemed a performance piece, I believe expanded upon the sometimes artificiality of performance art. Hsieh very much was an artist with a cause, and in my mind, that cause as the illumination of grief and different levels of hardship. In 2009 the MoMA displayed a wooden cage like the one which Hsieh had spent a year doing nothing but photographing himself once each day. Around the rest of the space were the photographs of Hsieh from the 1979 confinement he put himself in. (I do have my own photographs (somewhere) of the exhibit)

Courtesy of the NYTimes (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/arts/design/19perf.html?_r=1)

I bring up Hsieh now because I think his purpose in art is a noble one. His work does not come off, like a lot of performance pieces (not just as artificial as I have mentioned but also) as selfish with a little bit of finger wagging to its audience. For the Talent Show Exhibit now up at P.S. 1 (until April 4th) Hsieh had but one image: of a poster he made in 1978 advertising his illegal status where he encouraged people to turn him into the proper authorities if they saw him. Here Hsieh was not promoting his own interests, but commenting on both insignificance and status. An illegal immigrant seems to represents only a shadow- someone whom would be disposed of if properly searched for, but at what cost is a government and its citizens willing to pay, especially when an illegal immigrant has no legal income, or is barely scraping by, far from being noticed.

To make a long story short, I found it most interesting that Hsieh has stopped considering himself an artist. His works seem to stem from the deepest depths of personal grievances. I am incredibly interested to find out how someone can tap into making work from pain and injustice without raising a hand in protest. Or, is Hsieh a quiet protester?

After a long, interrupted hiatus....

I plan to this week update the world (all three of you) upon our trip last week to NYC. This is a good start to the catching up on my blog.


I must begin with the fact that last Friday was a full moon- apparently the largest/ closest in a whole long time. Because of the moon, the train from NJ to NYC stopped in Princeton for an hour and a half. Better yet, the whole service was shut down for that time. Fast forward past the stress and such to us at the MoMA where currently on exhibit for which I saw are Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914; Pictures of Women:A History of Modern Photography; Staging Action: Performance in Photography Since 1960; & Abstract Expressionist NY. Here is a taste of some of my favorites:

Matthew Barney: Cremaster 3: Garry Gilmore 2002. Courtesy of the MoMA.
This whole series is really cool, check it out here: http://www.cremaster.net/#

Pablo Picasso. Still life with Guitar. Variant state. Paris, assembled before November 15, 1913. Subsequently preserved by the artist. Paperboard, paper, string, and painted wire installed with cut cardboard box, Overall: 30 x 20 1/2 x 7 3/4". Courtesy of the MoMA

Jackson Pollock. Number 1A, 1948.1948. Oil and enamel paint on canvas, 68" x 8' 8". Courtesy of the MoMA. This exhibit was possibly my favorite. Early Jackson Pollack is great, and Barnett Newman (I will be posting about him soon) were quite interesting)

William Wegman. Foamy Aftershave (L-Foamy; R-Aftershave). 1982. Color instant prints, 28 1/2 x 22" Courtesy of the MoMA. If any of you have seen the puppy book I have in my studio, this is the same guy. This work is a lot more interesting to me that a lot of Wegman's stuff.

So, after the MoMA, we went over to P.S. 1., which generally is a great time. I was a little more disappointed this time with them, especially the works by Laurel Nakadate. Her exhibit was called "Only the Lonely" and the shitty "365 days of crying" works were both incredibly juvenile, incredibly kitsch and entirely absent of anything interesting. She was just crying everyday and taking Myspace like pictures? What is that shit? Though her films were kind of interesting, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the men she seemed to exploit in them. On P.S.1's site they say:
      'The exhibition brings together bodies of work that touch on voyeurism, loneliness, the manipulative power of the camera, and the urge to connect with others, through, within, and apart from technology and the media' 
       (See the rest of the description here: http://ps1.org/exhibitions/view/321 )
To me, her work doesn't glorify, but abuses most of modern art photography's desires to see works which are voyeuristic, and which pinpoint the manipulative power of the camera. They're way too direct in an absurd and underdeveloped manner. I guess, what sells sells. I hope this is an approach P.S. 1 ceases to take in the future.

Installation view courtesy of P.S.1

In the forest, hear the trucks

It's been a very crazy mundane week. Mostly memorable. I've spent so much time off the path I thought I'd take over spring break: there exists little partying, less sleeping, and (what seems like it has been) even less time left. Artistically, I may have either had a revelation or just solved another riddle of my thesis work.


That being said, I've come to solidify what I have been shooting all along,  and why I'm doing it. I've come up with a tentative title of "closer than we notice" and I believe it fits my work because the overarching idea of my photographs has been based around trying to see things the way they are rather than the way we want them to be. I have been trying to place an explanation to the work, but it has only really brought me into conflict. Instead, by realizing that the ideas of suburbia, family history, chaos/order, narratives, space, memory, etc make up my work, I began to realize that I am trying to comment on our (or my) perception of a very subtle but omnipresent and beautiful world.

I'm kind of a freak: basically, I have these moments almost everyday, where I just choose to really look harder at the visual world happening before me. That sounds silly, I know, but when I just stop thinking and begin focusing on the colors, movements, and shapes and their interactions in context of one another, I've been able to see how magnificent the visual world can be. I'm not on drugs, I promise.