Archive for the “photo” Category

It’s an incredible time for Boston photo fans. I’ll never blog it all properly, but here’s a passel of updates on photography stuff of the recent past, present and near future.

The DeCordova (sculpture park and) Museum has three (three!) photography shows up right now: a solo exhibition by Lalla Essaydi, a wonderful collection of Jules Aarons‘ work, and an array of portfolios curated by ace photographologist Leslie K. Brown.

The Photographic Resource Center just opened an exhibition of the winners of the Leopold Godowsky, Jr. Color Photography Awards, named in honor of a co-inventor of the recently canceled Kodachrome film.

Also at the PRC, the Fall photography lecture series continues next week with Roger Ballen.  Ballen follows Keith Carter, who last week delivered a charming lecture that conveyed and illustrated “seven mantras” for creativity and life.  Carter observed, “The search for beauty is huge in peoples’ lives. Not so large in graduate schools.” It reminded me of both Arno Minkkinen’s bus station and Andrea Robbins and Max Becher’s travel philosophy, both observed at past PRC lectures.

Gallery Kayafas is showing the work of Caleb Charland right now.  Charland makes beautiful prints that play with concepts from physics using elemental substances like water, ice, fire, and oil. The work reminds me a bit of that of John Chervinsky, whom I first met at the PRC satellite gallery at the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics.

Continuing a line from Charland through Chervinsky, we can’t help but arrive at the MIT Museum’s new Harold “Doc” Edgerton Digital Collections, opening this weekend.

And lastly for the moment but surely not leastly, next week, the MFA opens an exhibit of Harry Callahan’s photographs.

In book club (Halloween edition) – Stephen King’s The Shining.  Hard to read without memories of the film haunting you, but a page-turner nevertheless.  Hard to say if this sort of thing can ever be as scary as it was the first time around.

Picked up in the wake of a reading and book signing – Jonathan Lethem’s Amnesia Moon.  Vintage work riffing on assorted post-apocalyptic memes.  Lethem read from Chronic City at the Coolidge (sponsored by Booksmith) and I’ll buy that eventually, especially because he mentioned the spherical hamburgers of Jackson Hole in the first chapter.

From the remainder pile – The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester.  It took me a chapter to realize what was going on, but after that I laughed out loud more than once.

Picked up at the PRC’s lecture – Keith Carter Photographs, a 25-year retrospective.  A lot of people call photographs (and other things) magical, mystical, lyrical, etc., This guy is the real deal.