Posts Tagged “PRC”

Tonight I had the privilege of hearing (and seeing) Photographer Arno Minkkinen speak at the Photographic Resource Center’s Polaroid Spotlight Lecture. If you haven’t experienced Minkkinen’s photographs, please immediately go outside and prance around naked in the snow. Or buy one of his books right away. Your choice.

Plenty of others have analyzed and praised his photographs better than I can, and I’m sure many will for years to come. I’m going to try and reproduce an anecdote that came from Arno the teacher, something I’m calling the Minkkinen Helsinki Bus Station Theory. It goes a bit like this:

When you’re a student or otherwise starting out, your work - be it photographic or otherwise - will probably resemble that of an influential practitioner who came before you. Wanting to be original, you’re likely to try and break away from that influence. And you’ll probably end up showing some other influence.

Ready for the heady metaphor? Good. Here it comes.

Pretty much every bus line in Helsinki starts at the central bus station. And many bus lines travel the same route for some distance from the central station before eventually diverging. If every time you see that your bus is traveling along another line’s route, you go back to the central station and get on a different bus, you’ll never get out of town.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but at dinner after the lecture, I found myself seated across from Adam Marcinek, a local photographer. I recognized the name because I had bought one of his prints at an auction a couple of years ago, a piece that reminded me a lot of the work of Aaron Siskind. Of course it’s not fair to either artist to dwell too much on one phase or type from their varied bodies of work. I certainly can’t afford a Siskind, but I wonder what my Marcinek will be worth when Adam finds his bus’ final destination. I’m enjoying it right now in any case.

<->

Adam Marcinek, Untitled 2004 <-> Aaron Siskind, Kentucky 5

I’m not sure if I’ve done justice to Arno’s anecdote or his philosophy, but I hope the germ of the idea gets through to those who need it. If you happen to stop by the PRC’s Student Show, you can try and figure out what bus lines those kids are on, and also marvel at how far out of town some are already. When you’re done making nekkid snow angels, get over there - the show closes March 16.

More synchronicities and reveries.

Last week, I joined some good folks from two of my favorite TLAs, PRC and MIT for a reception at the new gallery space at MIT’s Center for Theoretical Physics, which was created in collaboration with the Photographic Resource Center. I found my way to building 6 and eventually to the spiffy new space where there would be an exhibition of photographs by John Chervinsky.

I had seen some of Chervinsky’s work that featured chalkboards and allusions to scientific principles, so I knew it would be right at home in an MIT physics setting, but I did not expect that the space would include several large chalkboards in the common area, full of, sure enough, fancy physics equations. Actual chalk and slate boards, not glossy whiteboards, not fancy interactive printing wallboards from the MIT Media Lab. How quaintly low-tech for MIT.

Below, Time Machine by Chervinsky, Chervinsky (not me!) in front of a board of physics stuff at the MIT CTP, and Blackboard #11 by Meggan Gould, an artist featured in PRC’s Northeast Exposure Online (NEO) this month. Click for more on each.

Physics and art, arguably poetry - where was Alan Lightman? PRC/CTP, please invite Prof. Lightman to the next event!

Back to black. Boards, that is. Talking with photographer and professor Robert Jaffe, I learned that these were no ordinary blackboards - MIT had these boards specially made with sound baffling to make the constant clacking of chalk less bothersome - and further, that physicists have a violent disdain for whiteboards, exactly why I’m not sure.

Myself, I have a different kind of MIT backgroud and a different feeling about whiteboards. When I went to business school at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, I entered a world where would-be consultants and other future masters of the universe could barely hold a conversation without using either powerpoint or a whiteboard. I drank heavily of the kool-aid and inhaled deeply of the marker fumes and was converted. I can barely function in the office without my board and markers, and often think about installing some at home, possibly even in the smallest room. Plus, as someone who wears black a lot, I am always apprehensive around chalk and chalk dust.

Last night I attended an excellent photo lecture by Andrea Robbins and Max Becher sponsored by the Photographic Resource Center in affiliation with the New Center for Arts and Culture at the BU Photonics Center. (Photonics Center?? What goes on at such a place?) And after, I was able to join some PRC people for dinner with Max and Andrea. (Yes, he’s the child of Bernd & Hilla Becher, but we weren’t there to talk about them.)

A married couple, Andrea Robbins and Max Becher work individually as well as collaboratively using photography, film, video, and digital media, to create highly conceptual and critically acclaimed images. The primary focus of their work is, what they call, “the transportation of place” — situations in which one limited or isolated place strongly resembles another distant one. Whether the subject is Germany in Africa, Germans dressing as Native Americans, American towns dressed as Germany, New York in Las Vegas, New York in Cuba, or Cuba in exile, their interest tends to be a place out of place with its various causes and consequences. They will discuss examples of this work from their two recent books Transportation of Place and Brooklyn Abroad .

I won’t go on at length about their work, you can check it out yourself (buy the book buy the book) but I will mention what was a somewhat offhand comment - Becher or Robbins said, “In order not to go blind, you have to travel” (it’s characteristic of them that which one said what is not entirely clear after the fact, and they have no interest in helping you figure it out) Meaning that if you stay in one place too long, you cease to really see it, and that only by traveling to new places and returning can you maintain real vision of your own place.

You can see that this idea appeals to me.

Among other great topics of conversation and presentation, Robbins & Becher showed photos and short film about St. Pierre & Miquelon, a small island part of France that’s located in North America just off Newfoundland. Let’s be clear, I’m not talking about American islands or towns that dress up as French or have French heritage, this place is in fact part of France (see how they voted in the recent French election!) just 800 miles Northeast of Boston. I must visit.

And finally, I found this on Becher’s web site. Early work, but I must cite it here because it speaks to so many limeduckian themes: Chocolate Broadway.  I can see the block where I grew up.

It’s that season again, my favorite Autumn time. And among other wonderful things comes the photography auction season. Last week was the annual benefit at the Center for Photography at Woodstock and just two weeks away is the parallel event at the Photographic Resource Center in Boston.

The Woodstock event was different this year, with only 62 lots, down from 200+ in past years, and the quality was way up. I was almost priced out but I got this beautiful Keith Carter for a good price.

The PRC will have a much larger selection split between a smaller live auction and an extensive silent one, but some of the juicy stuff has already been sold with their ebay-like “buy it now” option. 

Both of these organizations depend heavily on benefit auction revenue for their program budgets, and both are some distance from New York City, the center of photo galleries and collectors. So how to proceed? Move the event to be closer to the market? Go online? Go upmarket, go down? 

It’ll be interesting to see what happens next.