first mentor meeting

On Monday I met with Laura Blacklow for the first time. The meeting was great it was nice to connect with her and have both my work from the residency and new contact sheets from the work I have been shooting over the summer to look and talk about. We looked through my new contact sheets talked about ideas and questions I have about my own work.
She spoke to the ideas of cropping, disorientation, scale, loss of horizon line, a visual memory, folding time, sequence. I talked about light and shadow in my work, and she asked "What does light and shadow say to me in the 21st century?"
Another question was "Why is this working for me?" The new work I have been shooting, imagery that for me also questions why am I photographing this?
Laura recommended looking at Alice Wells work and to read the first chapter of John Berger's Ways of Seeing before I read Walter Benjamin Illuminations. We looked at Robert Frank's Lines of My Hand and a Lee Friedlander book while I was at her house.
I felt good about the meeting and challenged at the same time. I'm looking forward to printing this new work. I'm struggling a little with the first thought piece but I know I will get there. Meetings at my teaching job start this week so I'm feeling a little stress from all around.

getting there

I'm back from Michigan it was a great trip, lots of photographing and relaxing. My family had a service for my grandfather and it was wonderful to have some closure after he passed away in January. While I was there I was thinking more about my work for this semester and my idea of place. What is my sense of place? and how do I photograph that? Even if I do photograph my personal sense of place how does the viewer determine that? How does the viewer know that it has to do about my ideas of place? Does that matter? I feel that's an important idea to keep in mind. Something that was discussed in critiques during my first residency that the work should be able to speak for itself.
Perhaps what I need to consider more is my story. What am I trying to say I seem to be using the landscape so far. I'm hoping to start making some prints. I just ordered a new lap top and an Epson printer for my space.

Completed

I finished my task to see all the shows that are ending soon, before I leave this morning for my trip. Yesterday I saw the Edward Hopper show at the MFA. His paintings are beautiful, however, I have not seen that much of his work besides some of his most famous pieces such as Nighthawks. I had never seen his etchings and was intrigued by his understanding of light which is evident as well in his paintings. One etching in particular A Corner 1919, an image of a street corner with strong sense of light in the small print. I was really attracted to the warm light in the painting Sun in an Empty Room 1963 which was towards the end of the show. . Something I try to translate into my color photographs a strong sense of light and color. The show Jewelry by Artists: The Daphne Farago Collection was a striking show of such different types of jewelry. The last show I viewed was a Contemporary Outlook on German Photography. I enjoyed looking at Thomas Struth's image, Galleria dell'Academia 1 Venice. The show was a mix of German photographers I would expect to see in a show of that nature the Becher's, Ruff, and Gursky to name a few.
It was a good trip and I'm glad I saw all the shows before heading out of town. I'm looking forward to some more vacation before teaching starts. As well as some time to photograph and work on more reading.

one more to go

Well the past week has been busy but I've almost completed my goal one more museum to go. Thursday I met Alison and Melissa and saw a few galleries on Newbury street, many are closed for August good to know. Some interesting work and some not that interesting. That evening I went to the ICA to see the Philip-Lorca diCorcia show which was larger than I expected. I enjoyed seeing all that work especially the portraits capturing people on the street; where the background disappears allowing you to focus right in on the person. I was also interested in his experimental narrative sequence a Storybook Life.
Continuing on my journey to visit shows that will end soon or while I'm away. I visited the DeCordova Museum to see there Annual Exhibition coming into the space and seeing Sandra Allen's enormous drawing of a tree was incredible, the detail it was so beautiful. I was attracted to the large prints by Sarah Amos and I look forward to doing more research on her work. The kinetic sculptures by Anne Lilly were very impressive just watching the smooth movement of each piece was amazing. I decided I had some more time so I was off to Winchester to the Griffin Museum. I wanted to spend a little more time looking at Joyce Tenneson's photographs since I didn't see all of them after the lecture.
This morning I went up to the Peabody Essex Museum which is a wonderful space, I had never been to that museum. The Joseph Cornell show was amazing and worth the visit. I spent the majority of my time there at that show looking through all his images and boxes.
Monday I'm off to the MFA to see the Hopper exhibit the last on my list before I leave on Tuesday.