Organic Photography

Okay, give me a second.

I have been talking with a lot of people recently about where my project should go, how to get back on track, and what I need to do to complete my MFA. I know, small stuff, right? The strange thing (or perhaps entirely appropriate) is that I have been getting a lot of the same advice. Two very important people to me said different things that ultimately lead me to a joint conclusion. The first told me to think smaller. The second told me to be more clear. What this ultimately leads to is a realization that what my work needs more than anything is a clear concept. A single-sentence, driven, tight, comprehensible concept. I am thinking smaller in the sense that I am not trying to tackle the world on statement and image making, and more clear in that the information I am trying to convey will be distilled into something sharp and poignant. I hope. That is the goal. Of course, I am still working on what that concept is, but at least now I feel as though I have direction to lead me to

I have been feeling a greater and greater need these days to make artifacts. Not just simple photographs, but things that are unique, individual, solitary items. A lot of what I want to make involves some sort of photography, but not all of it. There are a lot of things that I want to make that have nothing to do with photography. It is starting to concern me from a perspective of getting an MFA in photography. And there is something else that is bothering me, too. One of the elements of photography, one of its driving principles is the concept of reproducibility . One image printed thousands of times over again that makes a tangible, visual impact. That is what a photograph is. Digital media just make that a more pronounced and immediate phenomena, but it has been that way since the advent of collodian wet plate photography. A glass negative that you can make a positive image from, as many times as you like. My images, my artifacts , are not true to the medium in that reg

Photo LA was awesome. Mostly because I was introduced to five photographer's work that I did not know that I really like and because I got to meet, talk to, and get my picture taken with Joel-Peter Witkin. I love him. I will blog more about this later because I think the experience was an important one, but I wanted to at least make a statement about it to some degree because I am still giddy about meeting Witkin. I love him.

I have been stunted in my artistic growth for several months now. It is actually difficult for me to admit this here, as putting those words in print forces me to admit it to myself as well. I have been blaming my artistic monsters, the program administrators, my greatest supporters, and even my highly admired instructors. Anyone and everyone but me. That is not to say that there haven't been issues in some of the other areas of my life, there certainly have, but a lot of the anger and frustration (with one notable exception) has been in regards to my lack of progress. Hence the previous post. I have been terrified of not being able to finish to the detriment of not even being able to take any steps forward. I met with my friend Kara the other day when she stopped by on her fantastic journey for lunch, conversation, and a moment of rest and she and I discussed the concept of the black hole that I am so terrified of stepping into. I remarked that it is an emptiness that I do