Emmet Gowin at Photo Alliance
Photo Alliance is a fantastic local non-profit, offering photography workshops, professional resources, and an incredible lecture series for the past 10 years. (Happy Birthday Photo Alliance!)
This past Friday they hosted the inimitable Emmet Gowin, for a lecture on his lifelong involvement with photography. Having seen him speak on other occasions, I can say that the overarching message he conveys is one of inclusiveness, and great regard for the medium. As an artist, Gowin appreciates the importance of very story. Throughout the lecture he repeatedly encouraged all of the photographers present to believe fully in their own vision, and their own work.
Gowin grew up in Danville, Virgina, the site of much of his photography explorations. and attended Rhode Island school of Design for graduate school. At RISD, Gowin studied with photographers Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. He first gained notoriety through photographing his family and hometown.
Most, or all, of Gowin’s images were done exclusively with a large format camera. He also experimented with 4×5 lenses mounted on an 8×10 camera, resulting in circular images surrounded by darkened vignettes.
He shared a number of stories behind the images of his wife, Edith, and various nieces and family members. Rather than the unmovable vision of the Photographer, his images grew out of an interchange between himself and his subjects. In many ways, Gowin credited his images to the willingness of his participants, and the accident of their collaborations. In this way, he spoke to using photography as a process to confront what we don’t understand.
In his own words, “Looking back on the key moments in your life, you realize that those accidents were what gave your life shape, what gave your life meaning. Things just happen.”
Every time I’ve seen him speak, it’s been an incredible avowal of the weight and potential of photography. In the same vein as the shared involvement between the people he photographs and himself, Gowin brought in this quote,
“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard
over the solitude of the other.” Rainer Maria Rilke
After the Mt. St. Helens eruption in 1980, Gowin began exploring aerial photography. The content of these includes views of missile silos and test sites, paper mills and farms and communicate, with incredible detail, the textures and forms of the land.
He shared a story about one plane light in search of missile silos. The pilot, in this case, worked weekends flying for the military, and had shied away from Gowin’s subject matter. After some convincing, the set off. As they passed over a wheat field, Gowin requested they recircle the field to get a few more images. As he related the memory, the pilot declined, and “with the energy of a newly born convert,” continued on in search of test sites.
By the mathematics of their course, they flew over the exact same field on their return trip. The surface of the field in Gowin’s resulting image had an incredibly beautiful cracked pattern. Upon further exploration, he discovered that the limestone earth underneath contained more water than its neighboring spaces. So as the wheat in this particular field grew, along the network of cracks, it grew just a little bit taller. Giving the entire field the uncommon pattern of the ground beneath it.
His pilot responded, “If you weren’t here, I wouldn’t have seen that.”
In the end, this was the sentiment behind Gowin’s message: If you don’t seek out, explore, and capture the stories that are so unique to you and your work, there are so many stories that will never be told, and images that won’t be seen.
Make sure to catch the next Photo Alliance lecture with Ken Light.
1141 Howard Street is Open
We’re up and running in our beautiful new lab space. 1141 Howard Street is the new address, and we’d love to see some familiar faces stop by.
New Features:
-Expansive gallery walls. Stay tuned to learn what exhibitions we’ve planned for the fall.
-Natural light-filled print viewing areas, thanks to our skylights!
-Ample street parking, and a “California Parking” lot nearby on Minna, between 7th and 8th streets.
-A general good-vibe-ery, felt immediately upon entering.
You can still expect excellence, and our comprehensive list of services. The only catch is we’ll have to host you in our incredible new location!
Amanda Boe’s Progress on “Midwest Meets West”
Amanda Boe was recently accepted as one of our inaugural Artists-in-Residence. During her residency, Amanda will be developing and printing new work for her series “Midwest Meets West.”
Here’s Amanda’s current edit for “Midwest Meets West,” including some shots from her most recent trip.
Kim Sikora: How did you create the concept for this series?
Amanda Boe: My brother’s relationship to the landscape was the inspiration for this series. I was intrigued by how his role as a firefighter had given him a sense of purpose through protecting the local forests and wild lands in the Black Hills. I spent some time with him there in 2009 and the pictures I made during that trip became the foundation for this project.
KS: Can you tell us about your overall goals for this project?
AB: I’m currently developing this body of work and I plan to make a few more trips back to South Dakota over the coming months. Ultimately, I’m working towards making a book.
KS: You were recently on a shoot during the wildfires in the Black Hills region. Were you looking for anything in particular during your shoots?
AB: I make a shot list before my trips with ideas and locations in mind, but that’s just a starting point. I wanted to take more portraits for sure, and I really wanted to photograph a wildland fire that my brother was working on. It didn’t happen on this trip, due to unfortunate circumstances and timing, but I’m trying to make it work for a future trip.
KS: What was your biggest challenge?
AB: Trying to get access to a wildland fire was definitely the biggest challenge. I took some wildland fire tests through FEMA before this last trip, and I had been in touch with people from the forest service and state wildland fire department about media access, which did not come through. Tragically, four people died working on the White Draw fire (near Edgemont, SD), which my brother was also working on, and I could not get access. The Black Hills region had several wildland fires this summer and that particular fire was the only one that occurred while I was there.
KS: From your statement, “Midwest Meets West” is closely tied with your memory of this region. I’ve noticed some of your other series that deal with memory as well. When did you first begin exploring this subject matter?
AB: In 2008, I started photographing in my home state of South Dakota and I was thinking a lot about my connection to home and memory. Around that time, I read Dakota by Kathleen Norris, which captures the spirit and character of South Dakota. Her book inspired me to explore the landscape and revisit places from my past. My grandma would share old family photos and relics with me as well, and I became more interested in our family history. I started going back there more often to take pictures of the landscape, my home, neighborhoods, and family. I finally felt inspired by a place that I couldn’t wait to escape years earlier, and now I absolutely love going back there.
KS: How has your imagery changed in the past few years?
AB: I think my imagery remains personal, but perhaps is more psychological in nature these days. My influences have evolved but I’m still very much inspired by film, music, and of course, photography.
KS: Given the obstacles that most of us face as artists, it can be a struggle to make the time and space to create new work. How do you balance your personal and professional time?
AB: I have two jobs, so making time for my own projects means a lot of late nights and spending my day off working on scanning, printing, and editing. I’m still trying to figure out that balance with my personal time.
KS: Can you tell us what to expect in the next few weeks of your residency?
AB: I’m working on a batch of prints during my residency so I can start editing my new work. I’m also going to make exhibition and portfolio prints.
Be sure to stop by the lab and meet Amanda during her Monday work sessions.
Her work is also on view at SF Camerawork in Transient States, through August 25.
Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Electric Imagery
I have very few words for these images, in the ultimate awe they’ve just inspired. Hiroshi Sugimoto’s series, “Lightning Fields” was shown in 2009 at Fraenkel Gallery.
Each of Hiroshi’s images was created using a 400,000-volt Van De Graaff generator electrically charge his film, producing the incredibly haunting images you see here.
Bringing Kodachrome Back from the “Dead”
Garnell brought my attention to this fantastic experiment by photographer Chuck Miller, written up on PetaPixel.
Miller’s process went something like this:
He composed the photograph using a tripod, and shot the image through a red Bower 2 filter, then reshot the same image green with a Tiffen 58 filter and blue Tiffen 47 filter. His images were process by Film Rescue International, and scanned.
Look for the KR 64 in Miller’s negative below.
Using this as a alignment point, Miller layered all 3 images to create the final color image:
For those of you who don’t remember Kodachrome film, here’s a little history on the content of its fantastical nature.
Kodachrome was the first accessible color film that used a subtractive color method. Up until its recent discontinuation in 2009, it had been the oldest surviving brand of color film, the subject of a song by Paul Simon, as well as a national park namesake.
Most of us have been around long enough to watch most movies shot with Kodachrome film, sold exclusively through Technicolor Corp as “Technicolor Monopack.”
Kodachrome films are “non-substantive.” The difference between this and substantive transparency and negative films is the lack of dye-couplers in the film’s emulsion. Dye couplers were adding during Kodachrome’s complex development process, allowing the emulsion layer to be much thinner than other films. Thinner emulsion allowed less light to scatter during exposure, and allowed much great sharpness and detail to be recorded.
The last developed roll of Kodachrome was shot by Steve McCurry, on assignment for National Geographic. Browse through all 32 frames in an article from Vanity Fair.
Photograph by Steve McCurry. 
Photograph by Steve McCurry.
From McCurry’s experience (all 80,000 shot frames of it),
“I don’t think you can make a better photograph under certain conditions than you can with Kodachrome. If you have good light and you’re at a fairly high shutter speed, it’s going to be a brilliant color photograph. It had a great color palette. It wasn’t too garish. Some films are like you’re on a drug or something. Velvia made everything so saturated and wildly over-the-top, too electric. Kodachrome had more poetry in it, a softness, an elegance. With digital photography, you gain many benefits [but] you have to put in post-production. [With Kodachrome,] you take it out of the box and the pictures are already brilliant.”
Anyone out there have their own Kodachrome images to share? Feel free to share them on our Facebook page.
Our New Location
Our fearless leader has been working hard at our new location alongside his faithful band of craftsmen. Here are some shots from the new space, in preparation for our move this August (…we think!)
This from when the roof was off in April. Photograph by Seth Dickerman. 
Before construction. Photograph by Seth Dickerman. 
Our BEAUTIFUL new gallery walls. The exhibition possibilities are endless! Stay tuned for work from our artists-in-residence, beginning this September.
PDN’s “The Curator”
PDN recently announced the winners of its “The Curator” contest, which sought excellence in new and undiscovered fine-art photographers across the country.
These from Student Work category winner, Clarissa Bonet. Images are from her series “City Space”
Matthew Gamber won the Installations/Still Life category.
From his statement,
“‘Any Color You Like’ is an experiment in how photography can confuse our perception of information. These photographs represent objects whose primary function is to simulate our observation of color. When these items are rendered in a traditional black-and-white format, the information that remains is merely an abstraction of its previous form.”
Tamas Dezso’s exploration of the inescapable march of time and its effect on the cultural and personal history of the Balkan Country in “Romanina.”
See the full article, and contest winners here.
Damien “DEMO” Loyola
**Sadly, the intro writing for our recent interview with local photographer Damien Loyola was lost in a web server failure. Below is his original interview text and images.**
Kim Sikora: I’ve read that your inspiration comes from “the things you can relate to.” When you first started out photographing, what things did you first gravitate towards?
Damien Loyola: Yes nothing else moves me, I was instantly drawn to up close and personal street style documentary work. Before that I had been photographing the side profiles of vehicles for a site I had created it was boring but it was business.
KS: A lot of your images seem to have storied narratives behind them. Can you tell us a bit more about a few of these?
DL: This is Concord, CA, Mohr Ln AKA Dope Lane, and Monument Blvd rain or shine we were on the block 8 to 15 deep. I’ve seen a lot here, though its the suburbs. We’ve been shot at here, dopefiends run out their apartments after being awake for 5 plus days on meth, I learned how to cook crack here (I never sold it), I met my best friends here and lost close ones. The point is, I wanted to give Concord its respect because it also shaped me and helped create my style.
DL: This one is in Respect to the graff game where I fit right in after meeting some homies at James Lick Middle School back in 1994 much love to them some got deported,some are doing time,and some are still in frisco.
KS: Do you see any trends in the local photography scene?
DL: …Railroad tracks and women posing in front of graffiti. I’m not going to front, this ones cool but being a graff artist, the artwork is the focal point, not the partially naked woman taking up half the lens. It can take hours to days to create a piece on a wall so show that talent.
KS: What is one thing you want your viewers to walk away from your photography with?
DL: One word “Inspiration”
See more of Damien’s work here.
Robert Buelteman Shocks His Subjects
Right on the tail of our previous post about Hiroshi Sugimoto‘s Lightning photographs, came this write-up on PetaPixel of Dickerman Prints client Robert Buelteman.
Robert’s process is another interesting method to grapple with, as he uses 80,000 volts of electricity to capture auras of electrons and light radiating from his floral subjects.
Robert employs what are called Kirlian photography techniques, or electrophotography. He pares down the natural objects with a scalpel, shaving away layer after layer until the resulting flower is almost transparent. The flower is layered with color transparency film and a diffusion material, and photographed on his fabricated metal conducting easel.
ArtSpan Flash Friday Mixer
This past Friday we hosted a great event at the lab, as a part of ArtSpan’s summer Flash Friday Mixer series! Local photographers, artists, and neighborhood friends stopped by to help us kick off the “summer” season (though really, it’s been unseasonably nice out, hasn’t it?).
We shared the rock and roll photography of Baron Wolman, great pies, and a generous donation of absinthe from ArtSpan. It was great to get a chance to relax with familiar faces, and meet some new faces, too.
Visitors taking a look at examples of all our photographic papers and archival printing methods. 
Seth speaking with local artists. 
izzie Karr playing songs from her new album “Bones.” 
Kim Sikora (your friendly blog stewardess) chatting with artists Jon McNeal and Heidi McDowell .
A few new photographers got the chance to try out the DIY Print on Demand service and print out their images, and a great time was had by all!
Friends of ArtSpan unraveling the mysteries of the universe. 
Talking about our new photography residency program. 
ArtSpan’s Community Partnerships Program Manager Cristina Ibarra, with Lizzie Karr and Kim.
See the rest of our event photos on our Facebook page.