Thanks to my friend Scott for the tip on John Chiara.

I’ve recently been attracted to the Mordançage process, and Elizabeth Opalenik has some absolutely wonderful photographs done in that process.

Check out Elizabeth’s website here.

I’ve missed two posts here at 52Photographers.com, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been looking at other photographers. Quite the contrary. I’ve been looking at many photographers and artists working in other media, but school has made it a little harder to actually put together a post about any of those artists, however short they may be.

One artist I have been looking at, and who wrote quite prolifically, is the late Robert Smithson. As the creator of the Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake, he is quite well known. Along with looking at his own photographs and photographs of his environmental sculptures, I have been reading a lot of his essays that he wrote and were published in several art magazines in the late Sixties and early Seventies before his untimely death in 1973.

Smithsons work and theories of art are completely fascinating to me, and are rapidly becoming quite influential in my own work.

Here are my most favorite sculptures:

Spiral Jetty

Broken Circle

Amarillo Ramp

And some of his own photographs:

Mirror Displacement

Chalk Mirror Displacement

Oolite Island

Links

Official Site

Robert Smithson on Wikipedia.

Andy Goldsworthy is more of a sculptor than a photographer, though without the camera much of his art work wouldn’t be seen by many people or any at all. Much of his work deals with the ephemeral and the transient, and the more I see his work and the more I read about him and his art the more I love it.

I am totally amazed at how sensitive Goldsworthy is to the environment he works in, and how out of place and alien he feels when he is in a new environment.

All his sculptures are made with materials found locally in the environment in which the sculpture is made. All the tools he uses are mostly other rocks, sticks, his mouth, his hands.

Check out one of his many books; my favorite so far is “Time.” Also there is a documentary titled “Rivers and Tides” that is well worth watching.

Rona Chang has a lot of nice work. Her website can be found here.

Take a look at Liz Kuball’s website. You’ll be glad you did.

Also, check out her blog.

I came across Alan George’s photography this week. I enjoyed the “Domesticated” and “Immediate Vicinity” portfolios the most, though all of it, both the photography and his statements, is quite interesting.

From “Domesticated:”

With this series of images, I examine domesticated urban plants and people’s attempts to control and manipulate them in sometimes trivial and inconsequential ways. My hope is that these at times humorous and tragic examples echo conditions within the larger context of the relationship between humanity and nature.

The images from the “Immediate Vicinity” body of work are along George’s 12 minute walk to the subway and 10 minute ride. He began making these photographs along his commute after the birth of his daughter, and the resulting lack of time to go out and photograph. I’ve always liked the idea of photographing along the route of one’s commute, and there are some good photographs in George’s portfolio.

Useful Links:

Artist’s Website

I came across many good photographers this week, and it was really hard to decide who to feature this week. I finally decided on Ken Rosenthal. He’s the Chair for the South West Region of the Society for Photographic Education, and I’m pretty sure I’ve met him.

But that’s not the reason I’m featuring his work.

Rosenthals work explores memory, dreams, anxiety, fear.

Useful Links:

Artist Website

Curtis Mann finds photographs from flickr, eBay, estate sales, etc…which were originally made in places such as Israel, Pakistan, Libya, and Iraq. He then applies varnish, which acts as a resist, to areas of enlarged C-prints, then uses household clorox bleach to bleach areas out. Additionally, prints are crumpled, and other elements (think Pop Art) are applied.

A new, fictional and more abstract understanding is sought in these snapshots, travel photographs and casual documentations.

The photograph is physically and contextually altered to produce a reading that oscillates between image and object, photography and painting, real and imagined. This new interpretation attempts to disrupt how we normally perceive, understand and connect with the fragmented world in which these photographs attempt to represent.

Useful Links

Artist Website

Personal Blog

I came across German photographer Peter Wildangers work this week, and liked it quite a bit, though some of what I assume are artist statements don’t pertain very well to the work.

Useful Links:

Artist Website