considering pictures | sean justice > open journal

Art that Iterates , a set on Flickr. This is an exhibit that I curated at Teachers College recently. More pictures are being added!

Bright day. Summer. Waking up again.

Harbor, New York [light version](3 breaths) 2011 , originally uploaded by seanjustice . from the Breathing Pictures project. Also, there is a code-animated version of this that plays in a browser (it loads into a loop automatically on open; a modern browser and fast processor is needed or else it blocks up....sorry!)

© 2011 Doyeon Kim A question we keep coming back to: how do we balance skill-learning and skill-teaching within the multifaceted conversation about ideas, history, and practice that makes up art education? If you're studying photography, design, new media, or art in any of a dozen guises, this question is at the core of what you're doing — whether you explicitly ask it or not (because the folks who run your course have asked and answered it for you). And if you're teaching photography, design, etc., it's even more critical — because your answer affects, de facto , the lives of everyone who studies with you. There are several ways to divide this up, and many different rationales for arguing this side or that side, but the equation basically comes down to two options: either skill is more important than history and theory, or vice versa. And perhaps a third option — oops, almost forgot — skill, history, and theory might be equally important. Abandoned © 2011 Yar...

...so many amazing conversations this week...my head is spinning... These pictures and essays and websites and code poems...all of it. Your work inspires me. I am reading Maxine Greene and thinking about being an artist educator within the framework she illuminates. We may have reached a moment in our history when teaching and learning, if they are to happen meaningfully, must happen on the verge. Confronting a void, confronting nothingness, we may be able to empower the young to create and re-create a common world—and, in cherishing it, in renewing, discover what it signifies to be free. ( Dialectic of Freedom , p. 23) The common space emerges from our conversation and I am transported to the edge of something I don't know how to describe. I'm on the verge. I am the young and your work is the teacher; in class and at the coffee shop I learn again and again that mark making matters (whether with a camera, a crayon, a line of text or a string of code on a computer), an...

Surplus of Achievement a photo by seanjustice on Flickr. Is there something this is for -- rather than what it simply is -- this relentless rush towards more and more, this accumulation, this surplus of achievement? Everyday pictures mark our individual paths. The process reminds us that work comes from work, inspiration from doing, and reward from waking up and doing it again. Breathe in, breathe out. My friend Tony is on a journey to mark the days, each day, with a new picture. Can you chart it? It's a Hotel by AMRosario

Paraphrasing from the TED talk: Art can't change the world. Art has no power to change the world. Art can't do anything like that. Art is a neutral space, a place where nothing matters, a place where new ideas and new questions can be asked, a place where new thoughts and feelings can take root. And maybe they bring new ways of thinking...that change the world. If you've seen JR's work over the years, and perhaps especially if you haven't, you're going to love his TED talk:

Chrisler Building From Pongal Restaurant, by Luis Paris This photo was snapped by my colleague and former student, Luis Paris. Last week after class at ICP we went over to Jerry Vezzuso's opening at the Camera Club of New York , and then got a quick bite at Pongal . Along the way, walking from ICP to the CCNY, and then briskly from there all the way to Lex and 26th (a long chilly stroll!), we talked about photography and how one knows if the pictures are making sense, if they're working, if anyone likes them, and if it even matters -- or, more precisely, how it matters. At dinner Luis summed it up with a few thoughts about what he's looking for from the conversation whenever he's showing his work. From a critique I'm looking for two things: first, whether or not my pictures appear visually similar to other pictures that I might not know about, and, second, if there's an interpretation of my work that I don't want to have anything to do with. Thi...

The evolving work with China keeps me occupied when I'm not in class teaching, or on my way to class, commuting. Here are some pictures from the evolving series. Click through to flickr to take a look. Ceramic 31 (Two Birds), 2011 In 2005 I went to Beijing to investigate Chinese contemporary culture—art, business, and education. After two tumultuous weeks of meetings and random discoveries, I landed a temporary teaching contract that required me to travel back and forth between Beijing and New York five separate times in 2006. Since then I’ve returned numerous more times to curate exhibits and lead workshops in Chinese culture for Western artists. In a sense, strangely, I’ve never fully come back from that first trip. The continuing challenge of working in China—the reason I keep going back—is that I never know what to expect, or what I’ll see. Surface clarity might mask confusion, or it might not. Language difficulties might shroud understanding, or it might be something deep...

Tree Project, Winter My gingko is asleep. Last month all the leaves turned, finally, and winter crept inside. We're connected; the cycle reaches through us. At first I wondered if, somehow, my small tree was somehow exempt from the gray hibernation settling on the neighborhood. In fact, I was worried that maybe keeping a gingko in the house had somehow ripped it from the seasonal fabric that it needed in order to survive. I didn't think it could be so, but week after week the small leaves remained green, long after all the trees outside had become bare. Now the transformation is complete, finally, or nearly so. That is, the gingko leaves never dropped, though winter's desiccation appears complete. I'm watching the snow melt outside and anticipating the first new buds of spring, which I know will emerge in about a month, and I'm hoping that this small tree is, in fact, asleep, merely, and that it will awake when the cycle turns through again. For more, se...

branch2011 , originally uploaded by seanjustice . I'm only averaging a moment a month to write and share pictures. That's not a great pace. Space has closed in around me and the grit of the term is under my feet. I know you know how that feels. This piece was almost a year in the making. I knew what I wanted but not how to see it, nor how to get it. There's an early still image posted on flickr at the very beginning, back in April 2010, but the long slog through technology and imagery and idea that finally brought me to this point is lost in the background. It looks best in a separate browser frame , where it'll play on a continuous loop. See it here: http://seanjustice.com/branch . Reactions so far have been mixed. Some people don't see it. Perhaps they're looking too hard. In the periphery you might feel the shift, or you might not. The piece (and the project as a whole) activates a way of paying attention, for me, and that's the underlying quest...

Tea, fine , originally uploaded by seanjustice . Hot tea on a cold day. New York slush and sleet can't spoil the warmth of a good conversation with an old friend. On Broadway pedestrians slouch against a sudden wind and shield themselves from slanting snow. Inside we wonder about wisdom and doubt ourselves for going back to school at this time in our lives. What use are advanced degrees for us now? A sudden break in the overcast brightens the tea in front of me. What do you notice? Make pictures everyday.

Sunday Morning, Staten Island , originally uploaded by seanjustice . Starting a day of printing, but going slowly. Earlier this week it snowed again. More coming Tuesday, they say. The world is quiet and slow. The morning sun slips over the Eastern ridge and makes hard shadows of the trees and street signs. I'll stay inside today to print a new portfolio of the Breathing Pictures . Ironic, that is, because I've caught a cold and can only sniffle and sneeze my way through it. Distracted. This can be photography too. I like to start masking with the fun and funny Photoshop merge. It can be taken seriously but I prefer to feel the humor in it. This 'frame' feels loose and dreamy to me -- a lazy brush eases the transitions just a little bit, but without getting too uptight about it. I especially like the way the lens warp/distortion becomes so evident. The proof that indeed we are not living in a flat world. In other words: Surface matters.

Last week at ICP we ran with Collage/Montage again. This is one of my favorite ways to teach. Basically it's like finger painting. We throw ideas on the table from many different directions -- that is, pictures from the history of collage and montage, pictures from today, Photoshop techniques, darkroom techniques -- and then cajole folks into letting their intuition loose. Headless Barbie on the scanner. By the end of the week we were zooming back and forth between the computer lab, the black & white darkroom, and the color darkroom. People were scanning and printing and rescanning. Stuff was getting cut up, recombined, and then re-cut up. An inkjet negative getting ready for the darkroom. The organizing question at the root of this workshop is about the role of the edge of the picture within the picture itself. When you shoot a photography, what do you include inside the frame? What do you exclude? Normally that boundary is invisible (we don't think about the stu...

Wonder Horse, March 2010 Yikes. I've been away. Not in body but in spirit, and no time to post for far too long. Hasn't the year just galloped past? Not for me. This hobby horse appeared on my front stoop early in the year, randomly, and then one day disappeared. I remember wondering why and where it had come from. I also remember that seeing it each morning reminded me of whimsy, curiosity, and imagination. I'm remembering all this again, suddenly, because I've just rediscovered the picture. And more: in thinking about this past year, the thought occurs that Wonder Horse is a fairly accurate illustration of right now — a lot of motion but not much movement. That's the way 2010 feels to me here at the end. Picture-mining is the year-end ritual of sorting moments from the past twelve months. When we used film we'd do this by pulling out the proof sheets (not the edited prints) from the year and passing them around. Or the boxes of never-discarded sli...

As you know, I'm an advocate of using the camera to connect to life. By the looks of it, though (no posting here for far too long, and very little new pix on flickr), it would seem that I've not been following my own advice. And that, perhaps, I've become disconnected. Both are probably correct at this point. But, actually, I make pictures almost every day: at odd moments in-between breaths, on the ferry, before starting to shave in the morning. Really, though, all I'm doing is clicking the shutter. That is, I'm not sure it's truly picture-making because that's as far as the process goes. There's no time for sorting and editing; two thousand latent frames sit unseen in my Lightroom catalog. Do you remember that word? Latent. Once we mystified that state of existence. Between the click of the shutter and the emergence from the D76, we had time to romanticize the unknown, the half-known, and the almost but not quite ready to be known. Today we ...

We're moving through the fall, wondering what the next stage of this small plant's cycle will look like. Watching this Gingko sprout and grow is a metaphor for what I'm doing in my work as a teacher and artist. Autonomy is crucial to this discussion. Did you do that on purpose, with intent? Or was it an accident. Are we free to make things that can exist in and of themselves? Or does everything we make exist only and forever embedded within a vast net of other things. What is the purpose of making? Watching the Gingko, watering it, wondering if its leaves will turn with the season, I ask: what is the purpose of growing? These days I wonder if that's the wrong question. Now the fall brings wonder and expectation that perhaps the green interior light of my budding sprout will turn yellow, orange, and eventually brown. I don't know. There's a dryness on the surface of the small leaves. See my previous posts on this project: click on the topic label ...

We want pictures. We are saturated with this desire. The ad moguls want us to direct that passion towards their clients' commodities. Once in a while, though, we find evidence of another kind of wanting. Delivering some more of the endless paperwork that the educatioal beurocracy demands, I cross paths with a kindred soul, and stumble on a sign of the power of pictures. This way has recently been marked. I am not alone. Out here, in here, through here, picture-makers travel together. This is the gut of what I hope we're doing together this term: photography is a way to pay attention to our lives, our desires. We also want eggs, deviled eggs. At least, I do. Especially at a picnic on a warm day with friends and blankets and folding camp chairs, comfortable in the sun. With sangria, too. And cold white wine. But, summer is over. It's rainy in New York. Time to get to work! See you in class.

Toronto 2010, from our recent vacation. I've been thinking a lot about perception lately, as I always do at the start of the new term. The puzzle comes back when I begin to map a course: how is it possible to picture a round world in a flat rectangle? The projection of one onto one feels miraculous and ordinary. That paradox is thrilling, intoxicating! I want to share it with you. But for you to see it, to do it, first I've got to make the process visible. And yet I'm filled with doubt. How can I do that? That is, what will you (in class) perceive as I waltz through my material, the rant of my lecture, the pictures on screen, the assignments, and my reactions to your assignments? And, how will I perceive that you're seeing anything? Even seeing that you're paying attention is difficult. (Although it's easy to see when you're falling asleep in class...sometimes.) At the start of each new term it comes back to me that, really, the project of learning...