Absolute Blogmusings from an absolutely blank mind Pandemonium in PortlandStarting Saturday June 1st, and running through June 20th, one of my oldest and most iconic images will be on display at the Black Box Gallery in Portland, Oregon as part of the open juried exhibition: "Field Notes: Landscape and Architecture". Images for this exhibition were selected by Tricia Hoffman, photographer and currently Executive Director of Newspace Center for Photography. The image is Dark House:
It's great to finally have this particular image on exhibition -- and amongst such great company, too! It was taken in Colorado a few years ago and was one of the photographs that encouraged me to pursue photography seriously. If you are in (or near) Portland next month, please drop by and take a look. The Black Box Gallery is located at 811 East Burnside St. Suite 212, Portland Oregon 97214. Tel: (503) 804-5032 (Note: Once the exhibition is open, all the selected images will be available to view on the Black Box Gallery website. There will also be a Blurb books catalog available for purchase.) The opening reception will be held on Friday June 7, 5:00-8:30 pm as part of the "First Friday Arts Walk". In person or online, I hope you enjoy the show!
Fixed blog and email problemsApologies to anyone who was inconvenienced by recent issues with absoluteblog.net and email. I believe these are now resolved and things will be better than ever going forward. After weeks of troubleshooting - ruling out all my personal computers and routers - I figured out that some malware must have got into my remotely hosted Wordpress site. The blog URL would regularly bring up a spam site claiming to be absoluteblog.net instead of my real blog! It was very frustrating and felt like a personal attack. (It seems the virus was poisoning the DNS translation tables, for all you techies out there). I have taken the opportunity to move the whole thing to a new platform which is completely integrated with my website and online gallery. Everything is now in one place! Yay! I think it looks a little nicer, and is easier to read, too. You may be reading it right now! :) You don't need to change your bookmarks (absoluteblog.net or absoluteblank.com/blog - same thing! - or just go to the website and click on "blog"). Let me know what you think. Lastly, if any email to me bounced recently, it's because a spammer was apparently using a server that hosts one of my mail accounts, so everyone who's email was on that server got blocked when the entire server was blacklisted. I believe it's fixed now, but just in case, I'm routing my mail a different way - so hopefully no more bounces. May the technology gods be always on your side... Life AboveIf you know me, or have been following my work, you may be aware that I have a slight obsession with aircraft contrails. As well as the mysterious unpredictability of these signs of the life that is constantly passing over our heads, I always think of the people that these trails represent and the trajectory of their various lives, as they sit in transit from one place to another. I also imagine those people looking down at the landscape below – and the fact that they can’t see me – or any of the many others who watch their passing.  
Clearing Click here to see this image in the gallery: This is another of those images. All those ideas of the lives passing overhead are juxtaposed with the bleak ordinariness of the scene on the ground. As I took this photograph it reminded me a little of an urban version of a jungle clearing. A small opening in the forest where one can see the sky. And in this case, the sky is looking back. Mysterious VisionsI’ve had the good luck to have work selected for several juried exhibitions at the Photoplace Gallery in Vermont over the last 12 months, but this one (opening today) is simply extraordinary. Images for this exhibition were selected by Emma Powell, an award winning photographer and educator, who’s work can be seen in publications and collections around the world. The chosen images were selected to work together as a group – both on the walls of the gallery and in the exhibition catalog. The quality is stunning and I’m left wondering what mine is doing in such august company! They also did a fantastic job of the catalog, click on the cover below to view. This show, MYSTERIOUS VISIONS: Dreams, Fantasies and Mirages, runs from April 23rd to May 18th, 2013 – both in the gallery and online. (Online exhibition, gallery details and hours here).
PHOTOPLACE GALLERY My image, which was selected for gallery exhibition, as well as online, is: “The Patient Spirit”
The Patient Spirit Click here to see the image in my gallery. The exhibition catalog is available from Blurb, and can be seen here (…and as always, you can order your own copy, if you like the show!): 
Mysterious Visions: Exhibition Catalog If you love photography as art, this one is not to be missed. Please take a look. Tree TimeThe new season of Doctor Who has just begun – and that’s got me thinking about time. 
Evening. Winter. San Francisco. See this image in the Gallery. It’s interesting to look at the featured image for April (made on the roof of SMOMA a few weeks ago) with time in mind.. Naturally, a photograph freezes a moment in time, and most photographers are familiar with Cartier-Bresson’s aphorism, “the decisive moment”. In this image, however, the signs of time are less precise – evoking a general feeling rather than capturing split-second action. The shadow is high on the wall, the light is warm and the tree branches are clearly without leaves. That doesn’t tell you everything, but those clues do work in your subconscious to give a sense of when the picture was taken and what it might have felt like to be there on that day – even though what you are looking at is – after all – just a picture of a blank wall! (And in case you wondered, the person who’s shadow you can see is not the photographer …the original image was actually taken at an oblique angle and “corrected” in post-processing to appear face-on.) Feedback and comments welcome, as always. |
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