considering pictures | sean justice > open journal

This morning I saw the sun rise in Beijing, hazy and white. Across the top of the world, from thirty-five thousand feet, in blazing sunlight, I stared at ice on the surface of the far north sea. This evening, home on the porch with Diana, Staten Island, New York City, I watched the sun set on the western hills of New Jersey. In my mind I see the hotel room I left this morning and watch again the growing brightness from the rising sun on the other side of the world. In my mind the globe is whole, the map complete -- without flattening, without projection, without metaphor. Somehow it feels like a miracle, though I don't believe in miracles. Instead I know that simple technology and fossil fuels are responsible. And yet, tonight, experience feels contiguous, and I feel lucky, rested, connected, human. Tomorrow the jet-lag and discombobulation will catch up with me, and I'll have to rely on pictures once again. But tonight, Beijing and New York rest side by side.

On the weekend at the Summer Palace, morning, wandering. On Longevity Hill the quiet was deep and still, cicadas in the trees, dense and present. Near the lake the crowds pushed in, and tour guides with megaphones blaring. Amidst it all, water writing. He turned and saw me photographing him, and handed me the brush. I'd always wanted to play that language. In the crowds I heard the cicadas again and felt a private silence working through my shoulders and torso as I swept backwards trailing water, momentarily fluent in my private writing. Day ten approaches; our workshop is ending tomorrow. I've learned so much more about Beijing, China, teaching, and cultural exploration. I'm so grateful for the excellent company of the group who joined me. See more pix on flickr ...added daily (almost), and please check in with the project blog .

Zha Zhiang Mien on a warm afternoon. Summer Palace majesty in the morning, still hot on my feet, and the silence of the mountain still humming in my heart. A short ride past the noisy gates and we arrive. This must be what heaven feels like. I'm posting pictures as fast as possible on flickr (click on these pictures to connect to the collection). More to come. Sorry about the minimal captions. Lunch is long and dinner is longer. This isn't the time for sitting at the computer. Please follow our workshop blog !

Yesterday at the Lama Temple, walking slowly in the heat, I held the camera to my belly and shot at slow shutter speeds, breathing quietly.

4:30 am. Time to get up and start shaking off the jet-lag. Breakfast downstairs starts at 6:00. I'm using the quiet fuzzy hours to enable the proxy server so I can keep posting. In a bit, or so, I'll get together with Songzi, my friend, a script writer who works with foreign movie productions here in Beijing, to go over the plans for the coming weeks. She's helping me arrange transportation and other logistics for the workshop. Then, off to Three Shadows to compare notes with Isabelle and say hi to Rong Rong and inri. Can't wait to get my feet on the ground. The workshop blog is Beijing2010 , as I noted in a earlier post . Please check it out and follow along. Outside my smudged hotel window, the early morning sky looks promising. Bright sunrise reflects off the buildings in the distance and wispy clouds show the blue above. Time now to get some breakfast and that first cup of Chinese coffee.

China Air to Beijing today. Follow the workshop at Beijing2010 . The goal is to unfold something authentic about the experience — to get below the surface of the cliché that we think we know. It can be simple, like learning how to drink free leaf green tea, or more complex, like learning how to navigate a world without an alphabet. I want to learn how to picture a process that is subtle and multi-varied. Can a camera show us something we don't know how to see?

June 28, 2010 Wow — perhaps? — I can't believe there's a sprout already. But here it is. I'm skeptical, however. It might not be a gingko. What is it supposed to look like? Picture from the Ginkgo Bilboa Pages I've been searching. This looks about right! And yes, now I think I've confirmed it. Here's a shot from another participant in the Tree Project: Ya-wen Chang. Ya-wen's photo of the gingko sprout. From the Tree Project. The Gingko Pages has lots of info on how to grow gingko trees from seeds. I'm sorry to say that I didn't follow any of these recommended germination methods. Yikes. I just put the seeds in the ground. But it's been so hot here lately that maybe nature is just doing what it has to do. I'm holding my breath! Hiroshi ~~ I hope it's going to work this time! I love the Tree Project ! Julie Walton Shaver kept a blog about her try at gingko too, complete with great photos and step by step instructions. Her...

  Shoe store, NYC, June 2010 Waiting to see Toy Story 3 there's time for a quick browse in DSW with Diana. They have strange windows in that store. Yesterday we chatted about impatience with the act of photography. The single-minded ego that simply points the camera will often make pictures that feel flat and one-dimensional. But I want to work against the simple already-seen of our commodity world. I don't want to exacerbate the isolation and the loneliness that the rush and fuss for more stuff creates. I don't know how to do that. I'm working now on simply seeing, though seeing isn't simple. On certain days I'm back to pointing the lens at the shared world. The world of stuff. Radically, I want to question the value of being present to these atmospheric changes. Is this something? Can we visualize a different kind of sensitivity? Can we do it with a camera?

Beijing Airport, China plate display The Beijing photography workshop with the International Center of Photography and the Three Shadows Photography Center is about to start. I'll be in Beijing next week to get the final details put together. There's still time to join us ! We're going to explore the process of learning about culture with our pictures. Learn more about the workshop at the ICP website , or ask me directly. It's going to be a blast, an adventure, and a fantastic learning experience. Come dance with us!

I'm up again. Third try. Hiroshi's ginko seeds are in the dirt this week. A favorite project from this past year is Hiroshi Sunairi's Tree Project . I've documented two previous attempts at growing a seed from the hibaku trees in Hiroshima -- the trees that survived the atomic bomb. Unfortunately, both of those attempts ended badly (view those posts by clicking on the keyword "tree project"). But with Hiroshi's encouragement, I'm going for another attempt. This time I've planted ginko seeds. There are many reasons why this project appeals to me so much. I like the idea of new life generating from the ashes of the bomb site. I also like the idea of nurturing and relationality that is inherent to participation. As well, especially with these seeds, I like the memories that resurface and reconnect me to my South Korean childhood—in the backyard grew a centuries' old ginko that, according to legend, the young emperor played beneath. (The le...

My point has been that photography is a way of pointing. The language around photography and making photographs is varied and has multiple, folded, agendas. Compare, for example, the New York Times with BP press releases about the oil spill, or with any annual report from your favorite tech company. Who points at what? What is their goal? Who do they think is looking at what they're pointing at? The use of a lens system to make pictures means pointing at objects, one way or another. The choice of which objects to point at is determined by context, by what you care about, by what you want me to care about. Sontag says that photographing is a way of collecting the world. Wrong, nearly. Photography (in so far as we think of photography as making pictures with lens-based technology) is a way of pointing to what you've collected of the world. Your collection is different from mine, but I'm confident that you have a collection. Let's think about how a lens coaxes us...

School's out for summer, and all that. But keep going with your photography. Keep making pictures and paying attention to the way the world looks and feels. I've thoroughly enjoyed working with all of you this term and hope to keep crossing paths. Please keep in touch! And please keep tuning in to these pages for occasional updates and thoughts about the learning process. As always, I'm grateful for your thoughts on it.

After you've decided to make pictures you must decide how your body will frame the experience. That is, where is the edge? The boundary? The horizon between what is in, and what is out? These choices matter, and photography it's the shape of your body that determines how your audience will see what you see. In class we talk about what you want to look at, and about what you want me to know about it. These are the ultimate questions. But buried within them, preceding them, is a skill more primary: can you feel the frame? In The Photographer's Eye , John Szarkowski writes The central act of photography, the act of choosing and eliminating, forces a concentration on the picture edge—the line that separates in from out—and on the shapes that are created by it. In this essay ( read it here ) Szarkowski is trying define the major differences between photographic picture-making and other kinds of picture-making, as he sees them. In one way or another you've most lik...

What do you want to look at? What do you want me to know about it? These are the questions as we move toward photography projects. The goal of our work together is to make pictures that relate to our time together, that explore and expand from one another. Sometimes called a "series"...I prefer to think about "projects." The difference might not be evident on the surface, but the distinction is about the idea of work itself, and pictures that emerge from work. I've written on this topic before , but it bears repeating. The work you do is emotional, intellectual, spiritual, historical, even mathematical; it's the work of exploring and thinking; the work of breathing, of just making it through each day, each week. You're working it because you chose to do so. Even if you don't think of it as a choice. The pictures that emerge from the work have been the focus of our seminar. In other words, all the talk about computers and buttons, aperture...

The photograph is dead; long live photography. Sorry for the melodrama. I like to exaggerate, but this isn't an exaggeration: there's a lot of worry and chatter these days about what's happening to our sacred domain. In fact, the anxiety is so thick you can shoot it at 1/15th of a second and still catch it clearly. Last week, the New York Times spelled it like this: For Photographers, the Image of a Shrinking Path . ( Karen d'Silva , an industry guru, wrote in an email: "It's crazy how many people sent me this article. Very telling.") Blogs everywhere record the hubbub, including this post by Shannon Fagan for Ellen Boughn a few weeks ago, a post that generated more than a hundred frantic replies. And on the APA listserve conversation yesterday, a fellow member asked us if anyone, anywhere, had any good news to report. I could go on and on in this vein (just one more: at the SPE national convention last month, an industry executive told a ...

I'm thrilled to announce that a long term dream is beginning to take shape. In collaboration with the International Center of Photography , here in New York, and the Three Shadows Photography Art Center , in Beijing, I'm leading a workshop in photography this summer in China. From the ICP website : Explore Chinese culture through your photography. Join Sean Justice for a behind-the-scenes, upclose and personal tour of Beijing, an urban powerhouse and city of many charms. Our host, the Three Shadows Photography Art Center, is a contemporary gallery and research institute devoted to photography as a fine art. We will visit Beijing's art districts, galleries, and studios, enjoy the city's cafés, bookstores, and art-related events, and attend guest lectures by Chinese artists and curators. All the while, we will be using our picture-making skills to engage what we are learning and seeing. The trip includes must-see city highlights and cultural outings to the Temple ...

All photos copyright Laurie Lambrecht A terrifically exciting component of any photo festival, aside from the portfolio reviews , is the range of exhibits you'll see. One of my favorites this year at Fotofest was Laurie Lambrecht's project, Inside Roy Lichtenstein's Studio , from her days as Lichtenstein's assistant. Roy in Red Interior , 1992 Laurie worked in Lichtenstein's studio in the early 1990s, assisting in the daily routine, and occasionally making photographs. About the experience: One of my greatest joys was that Roy appreciated the photos I was taking.  He liked the way I used the elements from his work in my compositions.  His work was so often art about art and my photos were reflecting, revisiting and honoring his art.  I remember exactly the day I photographed "Roy in Yellow interior".  It was a very pleasant morning in Southampton.  He arrived in the studio a few minutes after me.  After greeting each other he said " today woul...

On the computer all day. Had to take a break late this afternoon. What does the rain look like? These are regular woods up the hill from my house. I'm crouching in the wet mud and pointing my camera slightly up. In a month the leaves will be thick against the sky.

This month I went to Houston to show my portfolio at Fotofest. This is essential: show your pictures. There are many different photo review events; I wrote about the fun at Photolucida last year ( here ). Previous to Photolucida I'd been to the review in Atlanta, and to several other reviews here in the New York area. Wherever you live, whatever photographic stage you're on, attending a photo review is a valuable goal. The structure of each review is fairly similar: photographers register and pay a review fee; the organizers distribute a list of the curators, critics, and gallerists who will be attending; you research their biographies and decide whom you'd most like to see; a few days before the event your appointment schedule arrives. (Some of the smaller, one-day events don't distribute a list ahead of the event itself; rather, you sign up for appointments when you arrive at the venue.) The day of the event (or days — Fotofest and Photolucida are multi-day ev...

We're over the middle part now and it's time to start digging into something sustained. We're talking projects. Every week I show you pictures from artists who have taken a stand, made a mark, looked carefully. And I ask you to simply drink in their pictures, to trust yourself, and to respond. What do you want to look at? What do you want me to see? Sometimes you answer that question by simply getting up, getting outside, breathing, and getting involved, taking pictures. And sometimes it's more quiet and internal. There's no right answer; it's your choice; it's your response. But you must respond. Even if you're not sure exactly how or why — pick up the camera and make a picture. During the last snowfall a couple weeks ago (dare we hope it was the last?), I was drawn to this backyard basketball hoop across the street. It resonated for me, but I didn't know why. From my window I watched the snow fall through the night. And in the morning...