My latest curated showcase, Photography and Home for Thinking About Photography [dot] com is now live and runs through the end of Summer, September 21st. Many of the artists in this showcase are examining their past, connecting to spaces and places that were formative to who they are as individuals. Often this contains a sense of dislocation and a fight to preserve one’s own personal or political culture in the face of the larger world they must navigate. From PhotoBook Journal we have an excellent group of reviews, with selections from Gerhard Clausing, Douglas Stockdale and their team of contributing editors on books exploring this theme.
Artist’s Projects:
Homeplace, 2005-2013 by Sarah Christianson, Los Angeles Blueprints” by Felix Quintana, What Remains by Krista Svalbonas, Little Black Boy by Rashod Taylor, The Underground House, Las Vegas by Alastair Philip Wiper, Temporarily Censored Home by Guanyu Xu
Book Reviews:
SINK/RISE: The Day May Break - Chapter Three by Nick Brandt, reviewed by Gerhard Clausing, Oceano by Lana Z Caplan, reviewed by Douglas Stockdale, Coming and Going by Jim Goldberg, reviewed by Rudy Vega, Division Street by Robert Gumpert, reviewed by Melanie Chapman, Rotan Switch by Lisa McCord, reviewed by Lee Halvorsen, Nowhere to Go but Everywhere by Dotan Saguy, reviewed by Melanie Chapman
Use this link if you’d like to go directly to the Photography and Home showcase - otherwise, keep reading for more about the featured artists and my curation process.
This is, perhaps, my most personal theme - home has played a role in my life genetically - my people were builders, and architecture is one of my early loves.
One of the changes I’ve made this year has had a big impact on the showcases - I created an “editorial calendar” so I know all the themes I will be working with ahead of time. This makes such a big difference when I start looking for artists and it gives me more mental space to think about where I want to take each theme. This September I’ll be a Reviewer for LACP’s Portfolio Reviews Exposure 2024 (online this year) and it will be interesting to see what new themes speak to me for next year.
The Artists:
Sarah Christianson: I met Sarah over a decade ago at a photo review (maybe Photo Lucida?) and fell in love with Homeplace, the series she was showing. My mother’s family were farmers up in Canada, and I could see many connections between our histories. I especially responded to the tones that she chose to use throughout the series, they have a softness that translates into a quiet stillness.
Felix Quintana: I liked Felix’s work as soon as I saw it at the Center for Photography at Woodstock. He was part of the Parallel Lives exhibition. Originally, I was looking at his collage imagery, but the LA Blueprints series stuck in my brain and felt like a perfect fit for this showcase. His choice to work with cyanotypes (literally blueprints) and then adding his marking into the prints brought an additional dimension to the urban settings.
Kristas Svalbonas: A year or so ago, I had seen Kristas’ work at the Center for Photographic Arts Support Grant finalists and thought it was interesting. I love architecture, so seeing it used so aggressively to stamp out culture is heartbreaking, however she brings that culture back in a very interesting way.
Rashod Taylor: I had originally chosen this body of work for a previous showcase, but we weren’t able to connect in time. Fortunately, because I already knew all of my topics for the year, we were able to make it work for this showcase. What I love about this series is the raw vulnerability of being a parent, the look on his son’s face and then how the work can expand from a personal experience to a much larger one.
Alastair Philip Wiper: Each showcase might start with a few people I know I want to use - and then I start looking at how it can expand. This location had been in the news ages ago and I found Alastair’s series when I started looking for it again. He’s done a great job with imprinting his own “voice” on an extremely unique space. It would be great to see these in person. Several images from this series are in a larger book of his work, Building Stories.
Guanyu Xu: This was a series that I’d first seen during lockdown (virtually at Yancy Richardson) - and it stayed with me. Part of it was he feels so at odds with the space that he’s staged his installations in, which connects for me to part of the experience of growing up. Another connection is that I’d also had an exhibition open mid-March 2020…so I really felt the pain of having the work locked inside a gallery.
PhotoBook Journal Reviews: My big goal with these reviews is to expand what already exists in the showcase and to promote more photographers. The editors and contributing editors come up with a list and it’s often very hard to make the selections because I love photobooks and the work is always very strong.
Check out the showcase - I hope you enjoy their work as much as I do. Here’s the link for the Photography and Home showcase.