considering pictures | sean justice > open journal

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...

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...

Walking in the winter with Diana and Brendan; I'm not going to not see the Callahan trees surrounding me. Automatic. Can't help it. I know it's cliche. Sorry about that. But there's history here too. The contrast, the sequence, the rhythm, the simplicity. Those Callahan pictures from the 1950s resonate for me; they come to back to me from my earliest thoughts of pictures and photography. Do an image google if you're not sure what I'm talking about. And do you remember the conversation that's in the background, especially of the series of weeds in snow? The story as I recall it is around Callahan's introduction to photography at a workshop in Detroit by Ansel Adams. Apparently there was a long discussion about how to expose properly for snow — how to keep the detail in the negative but not underexpose, how to compensate in the developing, how to print it just down enough to make it feel bright but not too bright. Even if you've never done ...

Out the door but not quite I'm drawn to an iridescent whisper from the corner. Refraction reflecting my prismatic messenger. My god it's Iris. What color space is this? Below, my friends at the DOT manage the signs of good counsel to insure we pass quietly and don't collide. These are the days of peace and tranquility. The sun wheels across the heavens and brightness reigns, momentarily. Inspired I breathe and take a photograph, and then leave for the ferry to Manhattan. In the basement at ICP we'll dream of rainbows refracting past our screens.

NYSAT this morning: Voice for the future of our city. Before: After: Before: After: Before: Before: After: After each whitewashing we posted a notice of our intent: From the Metropolitan Landscape Control Committee: The MLCC has recently become aware of the fact that NPA City Outdoor is operating over 500 illegal street level billboards in NYC, as well as many illegal wildposting locations. Despite private contracts, and other previous arrangements made between NPA City Outdoor and building owners, the above-mentioned advertising locations have been found to be illegal due to lack of permitting and failure to adhere to New York City zoning regulations. Under the Department of Buildings sign code § 26-256 these advertisements are subject to civil penalties and violations of up to $15,000. The Municipal Landscape Control Committee has organized the whitewashing of all NPA City Outdoor street level advertising locations until further structural removal can be implemented. The continued po...

from "On Visibility," in The Sense of Sight: Look: White transparent curtains across the window. Light coming from the right. Shadows of folds, hanging folds, darker than clouds. Suddenly sunlight. The window frames now cast shadows across the curtains. The shadows are convoluted following the folds: the window frames are straight and rectangular. In Maine this summer with my father I wasn't thinking of Berger when I took this photograph. But I'm reading these essays again lately, and unearthing inspiration from folded memories. This is where ideas come from. Even after the fact of picturing it, understanding returns slowly: then suddenly I'm paying attention to some subtle movement across the creases of my brain and simply responding. I want you to read this essay too. I'm wondering how you'll picture it.

It's the last week of August and I'm neck deep in the monitor, rewriting the syllabus, calculating dates, arranging guest speakers...and dreaming about Tucson and the Center for Creative Photography . Last week on vacation we stopped by to look at pictures in the flesh. During class I'm going to talk a lot about the experience of photography, about paying attention, about getting your feet on the ground and breathing through the shutter release. In our internet lives we often forget about the materiality of what we do. At the CCP there's a viewing room and a print study program that will wake you up and shake you from your doldrums. Far from the glow of yet another screen, Cass Fey, director of education , will get you face-to-face with the physical objects themselves. Of all the amazing resources at the CCP, looking at the pictures up close is the most luxurious, and it's open to anyone. Last Monday we chuckled at Tress' Fish Tank Sonata and riddled the messa...

Hiroshi wrote on his blog today that persimmon seeds are sprouting all over the place. The pictures are inspiring. Wonderful. I'm staring at my terracotta pot on the window sill and keeping my fingers crossed. Not green yet. Moist. Dark. Earth. Too moist? There are many ways to be an artist. As we wrap up the year, prepping for the exhibit and career day, framing and printing and sequencing, with acid stress so deep that you want to scream or cry or kick something...I hope there's time for a breath, someplace, a pause. You don't have to have it figured out right now. You are a work in progress. We all are. I'm writing this as much to myself as I am to you. What can it mean to be a photographer today? An artist? A journalist? A writer? A teacher? Let's try it this way: we're all photographers now. It's something we do. It's a way of knowing the world. Of knowing ourselves. Maybe, if we emphasize the conversation, we can understand both the “pictures” an...

Photographs © NYSAT-Municipal Landscape Control Committee Pictures are part of our modern landscape, and help create it, too. New York City tourists know they're here because their experience matches their image of it — an image formed often and substantially by pictures. Paraphrasing Sontag: our streets are thickened by billboards, animated signs, and advertisements adhered to every surface, an irresistible mental pollution to which we are addicted, and we crowd along the avenues in an image-addled stupor, feeling that our citizenship is more stable than it is. So...wow, that feels kind of negative. But as you've heard me say in class, the best way to recognize their influence on us is to imagine a day without them, entirely off the grid, no pictures of any kind. I know this strikes a nerve somehow because I see you smile as I say it. My friend Jordan knows the power of pictures, especially the advertising pictures that assault us on the sidewalk. His epic struggle against the...

This week in class we mulled over aesthetics. I don't like that word. Actually, I like the way it looks, especially the freaky kerning of the 'a' and the 'e' in some fonts. And I like the way it flutters from my mouth and ends in a crunch. But I definitely don't like the modern connotations of rules and judgment that crowd along beneath the surface every time we use it. I also don't like the way it's become a cliche for saying nothing at all when we talk about pictures. Here's how it rolls for me, but we have to rewind a bit to get there: As a concept with deep roots the word 'aesthetics' can be anchored in the Greek to mean 'perception.' But beginning a few hundred years ago and stretching to today it's evolved to stand at the apex of an entire system of thought that strives to separate what we do from who we are, how we make meaning from how we live meaningfully, and (most notoriously, to my mind), who can access the beautiful f...

The power of the picture-maker that changes the world is that I can see again. Robert Ryman's work knocks me outside myself. Try it: sustain the focus to feel your neural patterns begin to resonate with a particular sympathy. Linger inside a poem and the rhythm of the subway molds towards that form. Stagger from the theatre and the street becomes a drama ripped from that stage. Dwell inside the painting and its warp will shape your walk in Florence, New York, Beijing. When the world refracts through another's words and pictures, at that moment, I know that I'm alive. This wild Ryman clarified me in Philadelphia while I was walking with Diana, talking about history, revolution, and neighborhood transitions. A recent short essay on Robert Ryman by Peter Schjeldahl in the New Yorker: Abstraction Problem .