Dona Schwartz
I've shared Dona Schwartz's terrific project, In the Kitchen, in my classes for a number of years, so I was happy to see Dona receive an honorable mention for her new project, On the Nest. Dona's work is about space and time; she examines the "interactions among and within the physical, social, and emotional spaces we inhabit". She also recognizes the fleeting and evolving periods of childhood, parenting, and being part of a family. The image below, Christina and Mark, 14 months, from On the Nest was the Third Prize Winner in the 2011 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize competition, awarded by the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Dona lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She earned her PhD at the Annenberg School for Communications is an artist, scholar, and educator. Amongst her many academic publications are two photographic ethnographies, Waucoma Twilight: Generations of the Farm (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992) and Contesting the Super Bowl (Routledge, 1997). Her new photographic monograph, In the Kitchen, was published by Kehrer Verlag.
Her work has been internationally published and exhibited at venues including the National Portrait Gallery, London, Blue Sky Gallery, the Milwaukee Art Museum, The Stephen Bulger Gallery, the Pingyao International Photography Festival, and in numerous juried exhibitions in the United States. Her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, George Eastman House, the Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland, the Harry Ransom Center, the Portland Art Museum, the Kinsey Institute, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago's Midwest Photographers Project.
ON THE NEST: In our lives we experience multiple transitions, and in these moments of change we renegotiate our sense of self. Events like communions, weddings, baby showers, and retirement parties formally mark the new roles and statuses we take on. We cross other thresholds without rituals or celebrations—even though divorce is a momentous life transition there is no script for marking its passage. I am intrigued by the ways in which we move from one life phase to the next, and I am working programmatically to represent complex processes of changing identity.
In On the Nest I use environmental portraiture to examine two moments of change that bookend parents’ lives—the transition to parenthood with a first child’s birth, and the transition to life without day-to-day responsibility for parenting when young adults leave their childhood homes. I photograph expectant parents in nurseries or other spaces they have made ready for their newborns, and I photograph empty nesters in the rooms left vacant by their grown children. The nursery is a canvas on which parents paint in broad strokes their imagined picture of the future. Creating the space is itself a celebratory ritual, and for many parents-to-be the nursery is a showplace—and a sacred space—to be shared.
Teenagers’ abandoned bedrooms tell different stories. The transition to life as an empty nester lacks formal ritual observance. There is no finite gestation period and the new beginning it heralds may be more sobering. In some vacated rooms, abandoned childhood toys compete for shelf space with high school trophies, providing a time-lapse history of nurturance, growth, and development. In others, boxes containing once treasured items await their final disposition. Unused beds become temporary worktables. A sewing room is born. By showing expectant parents alongside their empty nester counterparts I invite viewers to reflect on their own experiences of change and the trajectories we trace in the course of a lifetime.
Sleepless Nights in Paris’ Red Light District
In 1959, Swedish-born photographer Christer Strömholm moved to the Parisian neighborhood of Pigalle. There, during the darkest hours of the night, he would comb the streets, not as a voyeur, but as a participant of the night’s activities. In time he would meet and form intimate relationships with the transsexuals of Place Blanche. At that time, France was ruled by General Charles de Gaulle, the man who led the Free French Forces during World War II, and his wife Yvonne, who were both devout Roman Catholics. Tante Yvonne (Aunt Yvonne), as she was known to the general public, held old-fashioned conservative views that created a puritanical atmosphere. As a result, Strömholm’s “friends of Place Blanche” found solace in each other, most having escaped a life of misconception. These friends, biologically born as men, were forced to flee their hometowns in search of a place where they could be at ease with themselves.
But life in Paris was just as difficult. It is a widespread belief that it was Aunt Yvonne’s influence on her husband that brought forth the reinstatement in of a 330-year-old draconian law that punished landlords who allowed prostitutes to work on their premise with the forfeiture of their property. There was no social security in Paris nor any chance of getting hired if the name on a person’s identification card did not match his appearance. Without the help of society, these ladies of the night had little choice but to sell their bodies in hopes of earning enough money to make it to the hospitals of Casablanca where they could physically be transformed into women.
The photographs in Les Amies de Place Blanche, a new re-edited version of the original book published in 1983, demonstrate the photographer’s compassion for these women and the intimate friendships he developed during the time he lived in Paris’ red light district. They do not reflect the cruelty that these women endured, perhaps because in their own world, life was that much brighter and hopeful. After spending all night working the street corners, Strömholm and his friends would gather at the brasserie on the place Blanche and order hot chocolate and walk quietly back to their hotel rooms. The next day Cobra, his next-door neighbor at Hotel Chappe, would knock on the wall to announce that coffee was ready just as dusk was breaking. Crumbs would fall into the creases of the sheets as they shared their thoughts in bed.
Christer Strömholm—Agence VU—Aurora Photos
Christer with Panama, 1968Living side by side with these women, Strömholm perfected taking photographs at night. As these women got ready for work, so too did the photographer. With his Leica, Tri-X films and a pipe in his hand, he would walk down the boulevard from place Pigalle to place Blanche ready to capture fleeting moments of beauty.
Les Amies de Place Blanche, will be published by Dewi Lewis in the United Kingdom this February, and in the United States this March.
Michael George, Hiking Hocking Hills
Michael George
Hiking Hocking Hills, Ohio, 2011
From the Into the Trees series
Website - MichaelGeorgePhoto.com
Michael George (b. 1988) is a freelance photographer living in Brooklyn, New York. During this past year Michael's thesis, This is Not Real, was exhibited in the Gulf + Western Galleries located at 721 Broadway. The images and supplemental book chronicle a cross-country cycling trip that took Michael from Boston, Massachusetts to Santa Barbara, California. This summer Michael embarked on another trip from NYC to Niagara Falls. His work is generated from an insatiable interest in people, their beauty, and their quirks.
THE FISH WON
This week we have been exploring the first in an upcoming series on our biz decision makers and the process of getting published . There are many ways of course, but seems best if I take you into my real world of publishing right now. Not to say “this is the way”. Merely to show you this is one way. Simply an example of a certain kind of creativity. Not the only kind. Just one kind.
Anyway I have taken you with me where I was going anyway. To NatGeo where I had a story coming up for approval. So I had a conversation with NatGeo Editor Chris Johns, and later with Creative Director Bill Marr and yesterday with Senior Photo Editor Sarah Leen. I hope I got all those titles right!! Today Chris approved the layout that Bill, Sarah, and I had been working on all weekend. Nothing is real in my world til my mother has a copy on her coffee table. Yet things look good and things look as above so for those readers who voted for the lead picture, the fish won!! Yet neither the wave shot nor the surfboard picture “lost” for they conclude the piece which makes it more poignant I think.
Yes, I am telling you that the readers of Burn actually had the ears of the editors of NatGeo. For real. How much influence? I will never tell, but you did matter. Anyway, for whatever it is worth , nothing like this ever happened before. NatGeo doing exclusives on another site? Burn Magazine? Not even on their own NatGeo site. So honestly we are honored.
This OBX essay is a very straightforward little slice of old fashioned Americana. Very uncomplicated unobtrusive photos. Probably a fantasy. All documentary photography, yet still a sort of fantasy for me personally. This is NOT a photo essay of the whole outer banks of North Carolina. These pictures were taken just off my front porch. Almost literally. All of these pictures are no more than a 30 minute bike ride from my front door. One even taken FROM my front door!! How cool is that?
I think the appeal for NatGeo readers for a personal story is just that even for me it is interesting, having traveled all over the world with my camera as a brush or pen, that I came back to where I started. Honestly, I could literally live anywhere in the world I choose. I have looked at the menu. I have been to some of the very best countries and cities and places much “better” than OBX. Yet home just pulls. More than all of the other forces. I guess it’s the smells and specific bird songs and the wind and the ever dominant dangerous and peaceful sea. Right now I look out now on a windy cold rainy miserable day. Seems perfect.
This picture above was just taken on my iPhone with lighting assistance from my friends Frank and Dawn (who were previous Comic Book characters, remember?)..Yes, I have left Washington and am at home. OBX. I am supposed to be writing the story to be integrated with the picture spreads above . Yet what am I doing? Yup, avoiding writing. Yes, drinking beer with my friends, sitting by the fire, and posting here on Burn. Is this just getting me in the mood?
See the problem?
dah at home working on OBX text ….photograph by Frank Overton Brown III
