DALTON ROONEY

Lo Zingaro - 5x5 Palladium Print

Lo Zingaro is a natural reserve near Scopello on the eastern coast of Sicily. It is rugged and beautiful, but most people are there for the beach rather than for the hiking. The beach is difficult to get to, nestled in a cove and completely sheltered from the outside world.

This is my first finished palladium print. It measures 5×5 inches and looks much, much nicer in real life than it does on the screen. I still need to make a few small adjustments to this image, but overall the process seems to be working quite well. More to come!

Édouard Baldus, Le Moine, ca. 1861, currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

An August weekend in New York is usually just an excuse to get out of town, but if you are stuck in the city (or are visiting) there are a few photography shows closing soon that you should probably know about.

You have one week left to catch the Bechers at MoMA, two weeks to see the phenomenal “Framing a Century” exhibition at the Met, and only a few weeks for Mapplethorpe’s “Polaroids” at the Whitney, and “When Color Was New” at the Julie Saul Gallery, which includes vintage color photographs from Harry Callahan, William Christenberry, William Eggleston, Mitch Epstein, Walker Evans, Luigi Ghirri, Joel Meyerowitz, Stephen Shore, and Joel Sternfeld (just to name a few).

If you are near Washington D.C., it would be a crime to miss the Richard Misrach show at the National Gallery. It closes on September 1.

Summer goes by so quickly. Soon it will be time for corduroy again and we’ll have a new crop of exhibitions to choose from. I just discovered Abelardo Morell on Aline Smithson’s blog and will definitely be visiting his show at the Bonni Benrubi gallery in September.

Are there any exhibitions, current or in the near future, New York City or elsewhere, that you would recommend or are looking forward to seeing?

I have been holed up in my basement for the last two weeks, coming up for air only occasionally. I’m pretty sure my wife has forgotten what I look like by now. I’ve been hard at work developing my process for palladium printing with digital negatives. It has been hit-or-miss so far: these test charts represent only about half of the total work I’ve done in the darkroom. Some of the charts are getting close, but I’m still not really happy with any of them.

I am printing my digital negatives on Pictorico OHP using the QuadTone Rip software I discussed in my post on inkjet printing. Ron Reeder has written a good how-to guide on using QTR to control the ink deposition and contrast settings for digital negatives. The problem is that QTR isn’t very well documented and testing is very much a trial and error process. As I get closer to correcting one variable, all of the others seem to move around. Like herding cats, as they say.

In a fit of desperation, I went ahead and bought Mark Nelson’s Precision Digital Negatives e-book. It was not cheap, but I have read some of Nelson’s articles in various books and magazines and have gotten recommendations from other alt-process printers. PDN seems like a more systematic approach to calibrating the digital negative process. I have learned a lot in my first few weeks of printing, so even though I am starting out with a new calibration system, at least I am not starting from scratch. I think I will be producing my first palladium prints by September.

Oh, and I broke my first Puddle Pusher last night. Doug warned me that would probably happen, I should have ordered more than one!

I just happened upon the announcement of this upcoming show at Bond Street Gallery in Carroll Gardens:

Photo by Gerald Edwards

Young Curators, New Ideas

Organized by Amani Olu

Curated by Alana Celii & Grant Willing, Michael Bühler-Rose, Jon Feinstein, Laurel Ptak, Amy Stein, and Lumi Tan

Opening Reception: Wednesday, August 13, 2008
RSVP: rsvp@bondstreetgallery.com
Press Review: 4 — 6 pm | Public Reception: 6 — 9 pm
On View: Wednesday, August 13 — Saturday, September 6, 2008

Exhibition Artists:

Charles Benton, Alison Brady, Brian Bess, Victor Boullet, Mikaylah Bowman, Olga Cafiero, Talia Chetrit, Tyler Coburn, Petra Cortright, C. Coy, Gerald Edwards III, Daniel Everett, Thobias Fäldt & Per Englund, Martin Fengel, Jason Fulford, Nicolas Grider, Pierre Hourquet, Konst & Teknik, Eke Kriek, Emily Larned, Bryan Lear, Miranda Lehman, Seth Lower, Matt MacFarland, Katja Mater, Kelci McIntosh, Mark McKnight, Erin Jane Nelson, Ilia Ovechkin, Robert Overweg, Alex Prager, M. River, Noel Rodo-Vankeulen, Asha Schechter, Trevor Shimizu, Alix Smith, Jo-ey Tang, Jesper Ulvelius, Anne De Vries, Hannah Whitaker, Karly Wildenhaus, Ofer Wolberger, Ann Woo and Damon Zucconi

Bond Street Gallery can be found online at http://www.bondstreetgallery.com

I was on Brian Ulrich’s blog the other day and noticed that he will be participating in a group show at Bond Street in October. I’m looking forward to it.

Plate burner exposing a digital negative on Pt/Pd paper

All of my equipment and chemicals arrived last week, so I’m finally able to get started in the darkroom with platinum and palladium. So far I’m just doing exposure and calibration tests; nothing to report except that things seem to be doing what they’re supposed to be doing and that I’ve got a lot of work to do.

My wife and I went to Baltimore this weekend to visit friends (Mr. and Mrs. Curmudgeon), and I came across some great photography books in a used bookstore in Hampden. The copy of Winogrand’s Public Relations in the window drew me into the store, where I discovered two more fantastic books: The Photographic Art of William Henry Fox Talbot, and Unclassified—A Walker Evans Anthology. Needless to say, I bought all three.

Here’s my favorite photo from the Talbot book. This image is more than 150 years old and yet looks so modern to me:

Photo by William Henry Fox Talbot

We also made a quick side trip to Washington D.C. to see the Richard Misrach show at the National Gallery. The show is only open for two more weeks, I highly recommend it if you can make the trip. The next trip we’re making to D.C. is in January, when Robert Frank will be at the National Gallery, and Frank Gohlke will be at the Smithsonian. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for an Obama inauguration.

I’ve been reading The Exposure Project blog for quite a while now for their great taste in photography, but I didn’t know much about the group itself until today. They are a photography collective, and they are having an exhibition and releasing a book of new work next month. The opening and release party is at Tillie’s in Forte Green on August 18.

Photo by Fran Osborn-Blaschke

Photo by Anastasia Cazabon

The details:

The Exposure Project
Tillie’s of Brooklyn
248 DeKalb Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11205

August 18- September 20
Opening Reception: Monday, August 18 from 7-9 pm

Includes photographs by Ben Alper, Anastasia Cazabon, Lauren Edwards, Kate Emerson, Adam Marcinek, Fran Osborn-Blaschke, Justin James Reed & Eric Watts

To be honest, I still don’t know anything about these characters, but it sounds good to me. See you there?

Sicilian cities decay in the most graceful and beautiful way imaginable. I had such an incredible time roaming the back streets of Siracusa and Palermo, especially late in the day when the shadows became deep and the textures of the buildings stood out in high relief. This dog was mellow and very friendly. I have no idea why he was wearing the muzzle, maybe he just thought it made him look tough.

Try clicking on these images, I think it is worth seeing them larger.

I was a bit taken aback when I read the review of the current show at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in the New York Times this morning. “How Soon Is Now?” is a show of work from emerging artists in the NYC metro area, graduating from a program at the museum focused on professional development. Reviewer Roberta Smith had quite a few unkind words for the show; the review is at times cringe-inducing and also enlightening. Tough criticism is a tricky line to toe; when does a bad review devolve into mean-spiritedness? Is it fair for a media giant like the New York Times to go all-out on a small group of relatively unknown artists? On the other hand, I do feel that it is important not to give hand out free passes to bad—or even just uninspired—work. What I do know is that I would not want to be on the receiving end of comments such as:

“…this show of amateurish and derivative work by 36 emerging artists also says a lot about the competition among art mediums, the latest trickle-down trends in art making and the shortcomings of higher art education. In answer to the show’s catchy title, for many of the artists here, “now” may never come.”

“It does gives me pause that 26 of the 36 artists have master’s degrees in fine arts from respected universities or art schools. I think most of them should ask for their money back. On the evidence here, at least, they have only a meager understanding of what being an artist entails.”

Smith makes a few points about the greater world of contemporary art that are undeniably accurate. Artists statements are often full of what Smith describes as “overblown, one-size-fits-all artspeak,” and the bland pronouncements she calls out here are great examples. Artist statements are one of my pet peeves; they can be at turns overly vague and complete bullshit or overly specific and complete bullshit. It is a joy when I read a statement from an artist that is plainly written and clearly describes the work. As an aside, I am completely taken with Jennifer Loeber’s Zeig Mal series, and I think the statement accompanying her work is admirably clear about where the photographs come from and how they were made. (I should also note that that link might not be safe for work, just in case.)

Smith finishes with the following:

“”How Soon Is Now?” suggests that there is no point in spending time on “professional development” or learning how to advance one’s work in the marketplace if artistic development is not well under way. That requires lots of long, hard looking at all kinds of art, in all mediums, from all periods and cultures. Aspiring artists need to expose themselves to the sheer intensity and variety of art, to learn what they love, what they hate and if they are actually artists at all. New York’s galleries and especially its great museums offer ample opportunity for this kind of self-education, which leads to self-knowledge. Anything is possible when artists set to work knowing they have something they urgently need to say, in a way it hasn’t quite been said before.”

I had to stop and re-read that paragraph at least three times, because she brings up questions that I have been struggling with myself. Sometimes I feel like I have no direction, no overwhelming urge to say something important. Sometimes I am entirely closed-minded about the kind of work I like and want to see. Sometimes I just want to make simple, beautiful photographs.

What I am realizing is that beauty, even if it goes deeper than a purely aesthetic, pictorialist kind of beauty, is not enough to make something important. To be clear, I’m not talking about capital “I” Important; I am not planning on taking the world by storm. I just mean important in the sense that the work is challenging and transformative to create; work that is more than just my best effort but inspired and inspiring. Is it possible to manufacture inspiration? It is a lot more than just being in the right place at the right time, which has been my mantra until now. It requires forethought and conviction, which are two things that I am still a bit unsteady about.

I happened across an old episode of Art:21 on PBS this morning, and enjoyed a short feature on Robert Adams. The website has quite a few video clips, slideshows, and an interview with Adams.

If you are unfamiliar with the work Robert Adams, I can’t recommend his book of photographs The New West highly enough, it is one of my all-time favorite books of photography. His book of essays Beauty in Photography is a must read, too.

Bonus: Sally Mann and Hiroshi Sugimoto on Art:21. Seeing Sally Mann with her collodion plates and Sugimoto in his studio making pictures of fossils just made my day.