I feel like I have been hibernating for a year. It's getting a little tired. More than a little. I have been trying to keep physically, mentally, and artistically active, but as we all know, it's tough. Last Spring I started an in-person workshop at the Griffin Museum of Photography called the Atelier. The world changed after that first meeting. Like most things, from that point it was all on-line. I don't think any of us thought that the workshop would work that way, but I think most of us changed our minds by the end. I blogged about it here ages ago (Alone Together - the show). In the middle of 2020, being at a certain juncture in my life, I decided to stop taking commercial work, which had all but vanished anyway. For that reason, and for the obvious safety concerns of working in the studio during those days, I couldn't justify keeping the studio. So I let it go.
This blog entry is more of a touch-base moment than anything profound. I wanted to let people know that I was still alive and working! I also hope to blog here periodically, as opposed to my more recent habit of just sitting and waiting for something to happen. Take it from me, that doesn't work. I am working on a couple of long-term projects and plan to talk and show some of that work, at least here. It's a work-in-progress.
I was looking at some of my favorite coffee table books the other night and got a little fixated on the Irvin Penn Centennial book created for the Met's show of the same name from a couple of years ago. I realized just how much I miss photographing people, and my studio. I have loved Penn's work since I was in high school. Those perfect quirky poses, the lighting, the contrast of those flawless prints, and the 'drop of poison', that thing that is a little 'off' that makes you linger and think, always inspired me. Photography as an art has certainly changed since his time, and not only in a technological sense. But I still get inspired by his work, as well as Avedon's, Gordon Park's, and many others who were working in those years when I was so artistically impressionable. So while I am doing some work now, mostly outdoors, I do miss the interaction that comes with working with a subject as well as the intimacy of the studio. I don't have plans for a studio any time soon, nor do I plan to take any 'client work', but I do hope to meetup with people outside and make art with them.
