I’ve been having so much fun with my night photography. I’m really digging the results I get with my RB67 and Kodak Portra 160.
Studio Theater, from 14th StreetBarrel House LiquorsStudio Theater, from P StreetPearl Dive Oyster Palace, Vespa, 14th StreetNeon, Glen Echo Park14th & Rhode Island Avenue, Moon
And last but not least, two of these things are not like the others. One is a daytime image I shot of one of the older, more original, and most brightly colored food trucks here in DC – Fojol Brothers. They have three different trucks each catering a different ethnic cuisine – Benethiopia (Ethiopian), Merlindia (Indian) and Volathai (Thai). The bright colors and shiny metal, plus the repetition of the circles and semi-circles just cried out for an abstract treatment, so here it is…
Abstract, Fojol Brothers truck, Merlindia
And last but not least, the happy accident: I was a dingbat and triple-exposed the same frame. But it turned out really neat in the end!
Well, everything is coming together, on time for once. I just picked up the new hard-copies of my Introduction to Platinum/Palladium Printing manual from FedEx/Kinko’s today. They look very nice. I hope the students will enjoy and appreciate them. It is 29 pages, spiral bound, profusely illustrated and with plenty of white space for note-taking. If anyone wants to buy a copy, email me and I can make the arrangements. They’re $30 each. Class is all set to run on Saturday, and I’ve even met a couple of my students already.
My picture frames for the Artomatic show arrived last night. It was a bit odd because the FedEx Ground guy not only left the packages themselves on the front steps, but he/she ALSO left a hang-tag on the door to tell me that the packages had been left on the front steps. Never you mind that you could barely open the front door to the house for the boxes; somehow I also needed to be reminded that the packages were there and needed to be taken in. Over the weekend I bought the paint for my wall – I got a gallon of flat black interior paint, that SHOULD be enough. My postcards are set to arrive on Friday – I’m getting antsy to see them!
I also had my first faculty meeting at Glen Echo Photoworks last night. It was very productive, and I’m looking forward to being a regular participant there. I’m especially psyched to find out that it is possible to arrange a human figure study workshop – given the general demographic at Glen Echo (there are lots of kids and kids activities there), I was concerned that they’d shoot it down, but if the studio sessions run at night, we should be fine!
I’m re-running the Intro to Platinum class in mid-October, and I’ll be doing the Advanced Platinum class in September. When I have dates finalized, I’ll post them along with a full course description here. Topics will include using digital negatives, printing in Platinum, advanced paper selection and handling, gum-over-platinum, fumed silica treatment and advanced contrast control techniques.
Quite possibly the oldest stereoview I have – I’d put this one at no later than 1870. This may have even been taken during the Civil War, although I think you’d have been hard pressed to find Pennsylvania Avenue that empty during the war. The area around the White House was even more the center of government at that time than it is now (now federal agencies are spread throughout the town and into the suburbs). The State Department was across the street to the north, and the War department was the other side of the White House. But Washington was a much smaller town in those days, and when Congress was not in session, half the town was empty.
Seth Kinman's Elkhorn Chair, Presented to A. Lincoln, November 26, 1864
I was able to kill two birds with one stone on this image – I found an Alexander Gardner CDV (which is rare in itself!) and an image nearly identical to a Mathew Brady version I had seen, but in better overall condition, for the same money as the Brady. So now I have two official Gardners.
For those who don’t live in the Washington DC metropolitan area, Artomatic is this HUGE “art happening”, by artists for artists, with no jury or curation, just pick a 12′ wall and hang your work to your heart’s desire. It encompasses just about every conceivable artistic means of expression, from painting, photography, drawing, sculpture to music, theater, dance, performance art, video, poetry and the just plain incomprehensible. Artomatic strives to be a bi-annual event, but that doesn’t always happen, as it has no permanent home and is dependent on property owners of large empty spaces being interested in making those spaces available. The last few Artomatics have featured something on the order of 1000+ 2-d/3-d artists and 600 performers of some kind. The whole thing is produced on a volunteer basis, which makes it all the more amazing that it even happens at all.
For more information about Artomatic in general, the history of the event, and schedules for this year’s event, go to Artomatic.org
Important dates relating to this year’s Artomatic:
May 18 – Artomatic Opens
June 2 – Meet the Artist Night (I will be there, with wine and cheese if allowed)
June 23 – Artomatic Closes
The show is open Wednesday and Thursday from 12 noon to 10 pm, Fridays and Saturdays 12 noon to 1 AM, and Sundays 12 noon to 5 PM. It is closed Mondays and Tuesdays. There is a recommended $5 donation for admission, but it is pay what you can. Despite the fact that over 75,000 people attended, Artomatic did not make a profit – this is a very expensive, labor intensive effort to produce a show of this size and scope.
I have NOT yet decided what work I will be putting in the show. It’s a toss-up between doing some really large color prints of my night-time work, or making some new platinum/palladium/gum male nude images inspired by Japanese landscape screens. The $64,000 question is will I have enough time to produce that work before installation is over.
I was out to my parents’ house this weekend for Easter dinner, and I found my stash of stereoviews I had been keeping there. I thought I’d scan in a few of them to add to the online collection here. These are from Washington DC, my guess is mostly from the 1920s and 1930s, although the one of the Library of Congress as viewed from the Capitol dome could be as old as the 1890s.
The US Capitol Dome reflected in the rain
I love this shot because it represents a personal passion when photographing- nighttime photography. It’s just a great shot of the Capitol dome all illuminated, reflecting in the wet street.
Capitol Hill Aerial View
Here’s an aerial view of Capitol Hill, looking west. In the immediate foreground, starting with the US Capitol as the 12 O’clock position, going clockwise, is the US Senate offices, the US Supreme Court (the very bright white building, which stands today on the grounds of the former Old Brick Capitol Prison, home to civil war spies among others), across the street and a little more to the foreground is the Folger Shakespeare Library, and then continuing on is the Library of Congress, and finishing up to the left and slightly into the background/west of the US Capitol are two of the US Congress office buildings. On the right, far in the distance, is the Natural History Museum, and the big gulf between it and the Capitol shows these to have been taken before 1937, as the National Gallery of Art building was begun at that time and opened to the public in 1941.
Library of Congress, as seen from the Capitol dome
Last but not least, we have the Library of Congress, as seen from the top of the US Capitol dome. The view is looking east down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Anacostia River. This, the main building of the Library of Congress (LoC) is one of the most spectacular buildings in Washington DC, and if you are ever here, well worth the visit for the architecture alone, if not for one of the special exhibits they routinely have on display. When I went in last year to see a photography exhibit (and yes, the LoC is one of the great photography museums of the world, but much of their collection is viewable by appointment only), they had the reconstruction of Thomas Jefferson’s personal library that he donated upon his death to form the nucleus of the LoC collection. In comparison to today’s LoC, which has a copy of every book, magazine and newspaper published since the 1870s, and a healthy selection of those before as well, Jefferson’s collection was a meager 6500 books, what he lacked in quantity he made up for in quality. He had his own organizational scheme for his library, arranged by topic. It’s a fascinating display and worthwhile for any bibliophile. For more information about the exhibit, see the LOC Website
I was adding some more photographers to my maps (two more New York and one more DC), and I was re-thinking the addresses of some of the DC photographers. If I take as legitimate the KC Woodly studio address as ” 181 Pennsylvania Avenue, between 17th and 18th Streets”, then there was another studio that I had, Henry Ulke, at 278 Pennsylvania Avenue, that would make much more sense being between 18th and 19th Streets instead of more-or-less on the grounds of the US Capitol. I’ll have to do some research and see when the addresses on Pennsylvania Avenue stopped being split east/west of 16th Street. My guess is that it was sometime shortly after the Civil War, if my CDVs are anything to go by.
I will be doing a live demonstration of the platinum/palladium printing process at Photoworks in Glen Echo, Maryland as part of the FotoWeek festival. The date and time has been finalized – Wednesday, November 9, from 7-9 PM. Topics to be covered include: tools, paper, chemistry, coating techniques, processing, contrast control and altering image color. The session fee is $40. The session will be held in the upstairs classroom in the Photoworks facility.
Photoworks in Glen Echo, Maryland (just outside Washington DC) will be putting on a slate of events as part of FotoWeek DC from November 5-12, 2011. I will be participating in the alternative process show-and-tell on Sunday, November 6, from 11AM to 4PM. I will be showing selections from my recent body of work of DC at night, all shot on large format film.
I will also be giving a platinum/palladium printing demo later that week (date/time to be determined) – admission is $40 plus a $10 materials fee. Here is the slate of presenters and schedule for November 6. I encourage everyone to come out and see the show, and if you’ve never been out to Photoworks before, please come check it out, it’s a lovely facility in the terrific (and photographically ripe) setting of Glen Echo Park, which is part of the National Park Service!
For more information about the park and its cultural, social and educational activities for people of all ages, here is a link to the park’s website: Glen Echo Park
11:00 11:30 Barbara Maloney Intro/Temperaprint/Photoetching/Cyanotype
11:30 12:00 Scott McMahon Gum bichromate
12:00 12:30 Scott Davis Platinum/palladium
12:30 13:00 Sheila Galagan Lith Printing
13:00 13:30 Andrew Currie Tintype
13:30 14:00 break
14:00 14:30 Grace Taylor Vandyke brown
14:30 15:00 George Smyth Bromoil
15:00 15:30 Keith Williams Monobath/IR/UV
15:30 16:00 Richard Pippin Lith Printing
dcphotoartist 