Spent last week in North Carolina on assignment and was blown away by how fertile the land feels there. I realize that for the last bit I've been living above parched lands below swirling winds. I wonder what effect this might have on my being. When I settle down, it will be in a place where things grow without much effort.
photograph: Early Evening, Troy, NC, USA: 2012-05-31
I photographed New Mexico's Governor Susana Martinez a few weeks ago for Newsweek. Click here for the full article as it appeared on the Daily Beast website.
photo: Sunset: Santa Fe, NM, USA. Gov. Susana Martinez posing for her Newsweek feature. 2012-05-15
When this picture was made, I was in the other room dusting some film carriers I think. I remember our trip to Eastport as if it was yesterday. Makes me want to go get lost for a short while.
photo: Philip Heying, "Lamp and Chair Eastport" c. 2003
I have been invited to enter the MFA program at the University of Arizona to work with Frank Gohkle this coming fall. I am on board. Full disclosure: I am anxious about the change and about moving again and about all the adjustments; however, this is now and their offer is too good to decline. Sometimes opportunity knocks once, hopefully not while you're in the shower. It's been ten amazing years since I was in the chair. Philip reminded me that I really never stopped being a student. He is right, and I think I'm a lifer. So I am in Tucson shooting an assignment in the morning and all of this is sinking in hard. Any of you with tips about life and change, I am all ears. Now you know where to find me!
photo: Afternoon, Driving into Tucson, AZ, USA with butterflies, 2012/05/28
...Photographers seemed so strikingly unable to write at length about what they had made, in face, that I came to wonder if there was any exception at all, a single case where an artist’s writing did not end up making a picture smaller, less complex, less resonant, less worthy of comparison with life. Part of the reason that these attempts at explanation fail, I think, is that photographers, like all artists, choose their medium because it allows them the most fully truthful expression of their vision. Other ways are relatively imprecise and incomplete. Why try the other ways? As Charles Demuth said, “I have been urged…to write about my paintings…Why? Haven’t I, in a way, painted them?” Or as Robert Frost told a person who asked him what one of his poems meant, “You want me to say it worse?
The clip above is a short DP reel of mine that my collaborative confident Richard DiBella cut during the wee hours of a bid submission. We travel together a fair bit and always it is a trip. The footage is from all over, including bits from France, St. Petersburg, Shanghai, et al. It was led by a brief and was included in a shooting treatment requested by the European agency overseeing the project.
music: Sea Bear
photo: Evening, Hotel Juvet Near Ålesund, Norway: Jesse Chehak and Richard DiBella working on content delivery mid-production.
I met my wife Erica Browne at a birthday party in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn in 2005. She's the best, my love for her is the truth, and we're blessed to have found each other in this chaotic social paradigm. Soon after we met, our collaboration Brohak began. We have realized many ideas and stumbled into our practice organically, if not under the guiding light of some divine source. Since we had our son Wilder Gram (arguably the most pure Brohak piece to date,) our output has slowed. That is, until recently. I am very excited to use this platform to share some of the work we've made over the last 7 years along with new work, as it is realized. Stay tuned!
photo: Brohak,"Ma & Pa", c-print pair in convex glass oval frames, 16"x12" ea, 2006, 1/1. Acquired 2008, collector unknown.
Here we are. This journal is an experiment and could quite easily self-destruct. Too soon to tell.
Take-your-mark-ready-set-go-blast-off!
photo: Chateauneuf Du Pape, Near Avignon France, May 2010