Freshly Pressed

That my Looking at Photos post ended up on Freshly Pressed was a pleasant surprise. The amount of positive feedback and new followers I’ve received in the last week has also been tremendous.

Thank you to everyone who has commented on, liked, tweeted, shared, etc. my work. It’s been a great experience.

And welcome to everyone who just started following. While this is not exclusively a photography blog, photography is the dominant theme here. If you’re a new follower who’s interested in other photography posts, the following are ones I either reference a lot or am particularly proud of.

• Editing and Art — On the concept of what it means to be an artist if someone else is doing the editing. Part 2 takes this concept and starts to apply it to my own work.
• Approaching Art — Thinking about the different ways I approach art, and photography, depending on the medium it’s presented in.
• Government documents — On editing government photos and presenting those as art even though the photographer may not be an artist.
• Art, Craft, and Function — On how we present art. Specimens versus functional objects. And what that requires from people who view the exhibition.
• Photography and Function — On art photography and how it’s typically presented as functionless. And what kind of functional photography is acceptable as art.
• Liking Art — Just focusing on “liking” art is an extremely limiting way of approaching art.
• Human Zoo — On travel photography and exoticizing the “other.”

I also go to museums a lot and a large percentage of what I view are photography exhibitions. I try to write reviews of most of what I see. Sometimes it’s just a journal for myself. Other times I end up writing something I really like. A few favorites (photo-based).

• Robert Mapplethorpe portraits at San José Museum of Art
• Richard Misrach: Oakland-Berkeley Fire Aftermath, 1991 at the Oakland Museum
• Rineke Dijkstra at SFMOMA
• Photography in Mexico at SFMOMA
• Looking at the Land by Flak Photo
• South Africa in Apartheid and After at SFMOMA

And I’m getting sucked into the photobook thing. While I’m not on the bleeding edge here with new releases and many of my reviews are more like personal notes, there are a few photo book reviews which stand on their own as blog posts.

• Westward the Course of Empire by Mark Ruwedel
• Full Moon by Michael Light
• The Last Pictures by Trevor Paglen

Many of the posts listed here have a tendency to talk a lot about art rather than photography. Despite most of my posts being photography-based, I come to photography from an art point of view rather than getting into art from a photography point of view. Many of my thoughts are about art in general and only focus on photography because that happens to be my favorite medium.

In addition to my writing, I try to post a gallery of my own photos every week. I don’t claim to be a great photographer. At the same time, a lot of my ideas are influenced by how/what I shoot so examples of my photography all give context to my writing. I’m also slowly working through categorizing and editing my photos into useful sets.

If you continue to follow this blog, stay prepared the occasional post about sports, my family, or silliness on twitter. I don’t stay on tangents for long, but I will go off on them regularly.

Thanks for reading!