The Birth of Coffee -- Right Here in Austin

The Austin Photography Group (APG) will be hosting documentary photographer Daniel Lorenzetti and author Linda Rice Lorenzetti, as they discuss their book The Birth of Coffee, published by Random House. Together, they will address the important steps necessary in bringing creative content to the variety media outlets available today.

Daniel has been advising the ACP Board of Trustees in recent weeks and we're happy to plug his presentation. APG is a well established photography club in Austin founded by two enterprising twenty-somethings: Brian Ferguson and Josh Verduzco.

APG meets every second Sunday of the month at 7pm in the third floor meeting room of BookPeople. Come out Sunday, March 8th, to hear the Birth of Coffee presentation and consider joining APG to be part of their future events. Tell 'em ACP sent ya!

And, tell Daniel we said, "Hi."

The Films of Charles & Ray Eames

Images taken from Wikipedia

Thursday night, AIGA Austin hosted a viewing selection from The Films of Charles and Ray Eames at Domy Books.

The impact the Eames' had on American industrial design is obvious. The Eames' work in photography and film is lesser known - though in no way little known. The motion picture shooting style Eames honed is used, today, in modern documentary and cinematic work ranging from peoples to manufacturing destinations.

Impressed as we may be, it's safe to say the Eames' are all-american creatives, impacting the visions of countless designers, architects, photographers, and movie makers.

Robert Frank

It has been burning goal of ACP to bring Robert Frank to Austin as an Icons of Photography lecturer. Frankly, we don't know if Mr. Frank is interested in giving public presentations these days. Certainly it would be quite a feather in our cap if he accepted an invitation.

Mr. Frank's The Americans is recognized as a watershed moment in the history of photography. Several editions of this marvelous book have been printed since its original (and controversial) first release in 1958. The latest arrived last year from the German publisher Steidl. Mr. Frank himself over saw the printing and even revised the crops on some images making this edition more reflective of his vision of America then any prior publication.

The BBC has published an interesting piece about Mr. Frank and The Americans entitled The Americans in the Frame which explores the development of the book by looking at some of his contact sheets. See the article here.

Beauty Knows No Pain

O. Rufus Lovett's photographic series on Kilgore Rangerettes and Leah Devun's portraits of young Houston girls dressed as Hannah Montana come together in Beauty Knows No Pain opening at the Houston Center for Photography Friday February 27, 2009.

There are two other events scheduled in conjunction with this opening:

Thursday February 26, 2009 at 6:30pm there will be a screening of Elliott Erwitt´s film Beauty Knows No Pain, a lecture by O. Rufus Lovett, and a Kilgore Rangerettes performance at the Museum of Fine Arts Brown Auditorium. O. Rufus will also be available to sign books.

Saturday February 28, 2009, 1:00 PM - 2:00pm there will be an artist talk and discussion on girl culture between Leah DeVun and Tracy Karner at HCP.

Borrowing its title from the 1972 documentary by Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt and the slogan of the Kilgore Rangerettes, this two-person exhibition addresses the perception of femininity in contemporary American culture.

Texas photographer O. Rufus Lovett´s celebrated black and white photographs of the Kilgore Rangerettes dance drill team reveal a long-standing tradition of discipline and teamwork towards the achievement of youthful glamour, uniformity, and synchronicity.

Emerging artist Leah DeVun´s color portraits of young Houston girls dressed up as Hannah Montana depict a subset of popular culture fixated on emulating a young female icon. This juxtaposition probes at the varied performative rituals of young American women and girls who, regardless of their socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, desire to embrace celebrity and femininity.

James Nachtway & the XDR-TB pandemic

"Photographers go to the extreme edges of the human experience to show people what's going on. They believe your opinions and your influence matter. They aim their pictures at your best instincts: generosity, a sense of right and wrong, the ability and the willingness to identify with others, the refusal to accept the unacceptable." -- James Nachtway

James Nachtway is considered by many to be the greatest living photojournalist. His work in recent years with victims of a disease known as XDR-TB (extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis) is stark and cuts deeply into those of us who, simply by the luck of the draw, live far more fortunate lives.

A gallery of his XDR-TB work is on the XDRTB.org web site. Take a deep breath and go directly to the gallery page to see these intense photographs. Click on the contact sheet image to begin a slide show.

Richard Benson: Digital Printing

Still capture from podcast

The Conscientious blog posted a link to a video podcast where photographer Richard Benson speaks on his printing technique with an Epson 4000 printer.

During the discussion, some interesting points were made about the importance of understanding the technical process as an artist. Benson is careful to say that his process isn't necessarily better than an expert technician's; the benefit is his comprehension of the technique, allowing him to be satisfied with the quality of his prints.

Mission Impossible?

Movement is afoot across the Atlantic to resurrect Polaroid instant film -- at least type referred to as "analog integral film" for vintage Polaroid cameras.

No promises yet as it is an ambitious and risky proposition.

Read more and support the project if you wish here.

Photojournalism Competition on Human Rights

Anthropographia of Montreal, Canada has announced the photographers nominated for the Photojournalism Competition on Human Rights.

More than 5 200 photographs from 61 different countries were received. Selection was based on aesthetics, relevance of the topic, and on how the subject was presented.

In a world where images bombard our day to day lives, Anthropographia has created a new space for photojournalism where people can take a moment to admire photographs that testify about the multiple realities our world faces today.

The above paraphrased from a statement by Matthieu Rytz, Founder of Anthropographia, on their web site. Visit the site to see many more challenging photographs such as Jenn Ackerman's shown above.

Clifford Ross Photography: Outside Realism

Clifford Ross Photography: Outside Realism preview reception is tomorrow night at the Austin Museum of Art in Austin, Texas. The exhibition officially opens to the public on Saturday, Feb. 21. Ross will be giving an artist talk Saturday in the galleries at 3pm.

This is the first significant museum exhibition of Ross's work. The show includes 21 black and white and color photographs ranging in scale from billboard to notebook size images depicting waves and mountains.

Ross photographs scenes from over 7 miles away and is able to produce tack sharp images and clarity not previously achieved. He provides an immerse, you-are-there experience with 10 foot digital panoramic reproductions of the Rocky Mountains.



An artist and businessman, he recently became an inventor - of a camera unusual enough to capture the attention of serious scientists, including the kinds who work for the government, experimenting with nuclear fusion, space travel and spy systems. What grabbed them were photographs Mr. Ross took that allowed them to see with astonishing clarity a tiny footpath on the top of a Colorado mountain seven miles from the camera.

But with this camera that he concocted out of 60-year-old camera parts, mirrors, a microscope and other items - none of them digital - Mr. Ross has taken photographs on 9-by-18-inch negatives that when slowly processed by hand and digitally scanned contain 100 times as much data as the average professional digital camera.

The scientists studied blowups of these photographs, hanging on the walls of Mr. Ross's studio. "This is a different way of interacting with image, moving in until your nose is quite close," said Mr. Diegert, who demonstrated by doing just that.

Excerpt taken from a New York Times article written by Julie Salamon titled, "Tom Swift's New Camera, Ready for Space and Spies: Artist Turns Inventor".

"Dreaming Realities" Lecture and Opening Tonight at Trinity University

There is a wonderful lecture and exhibition opening happening tonight at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Artists Jerry Uelmsann & Maggie Taylor will be lecturing in the Ruth Taylor Concert Hall. The lecture begins at 7pm and is free and open to the public. The lecture will be followed by an opening reception for their exhibition "Dreaming Realities" curated by Trinity Gallery Practicum Students. The exhibition reception begins at 8:00 p.m. in the Art Gallery, Dicke Art Building.

“Taylor’s personal style was developed while earning her master’s degree in photography at the University of Florida in the mid-1980’s. Earlier in her career, Taylor physically laid out her compositions and captured the collage on an old 4-by-5 inch camera. She went digital in 1996 and now lays the objects one at a time on a flatbed scanner, leaving the scanner lid up to prevent damage and to achieve a solid, dark background. Taking anywhere from a few weeks to six months, Taylor constructs her pieces by layering the scanned images, as many as forty per piece, to create a unique digital image. Using Photoshop, she delves into her own mind and brings disparate images and objects together to create fantasies of her own creation.” (from an article at Griffin Museum)

San Antonio is only an hour a way from Austin. If you are interested in photography especially photo-montage this is not a lecture and opening you want to miss.

'Americans': The Book That Changed Photography

There are few single works of art that have changed the direction of their medium. In 1959, one book dramatically altered how photographers looked through their viewfinders and the way Americans saw themselves.

Robert Frank's The Americans showed a different America than the wholesome, non confrontational photo essays offered in some popular magazines. Frank's subjects weren't necessarily living the American dream of the 1950s: They were factory workers in Detroit, transvestites in New York, black passengers on a segregated trolley in New Orleans. Frank didn't even get much support from the art world, he recalls.

"The Museum of Modern Art wouldn't even sell the book," Frank says. "But the younger people caught on."

"I'd never seen anything like it," photographer Ed Ruscha says. "Robert Frank came out here and he just showed that you could see the USA until you spit blood."

Joel Meyerowitz, a pioneer of color photography, was also inspired. "It was the vision that emanated from the book that led not only me, but my whole generation of photographers out into the American landscape in a sense — the lunatic sublime of America," he says.

To hear Frank's own words about his photography and read the entire article written by Tom Cole visit NPR.

Also on NPR's website is a review of the book Looking In: Robert Frank's 'The Americans', Expanded Edition.

If you haven't had the opportunity to see a Robert Frank photograph in person, the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas currently has one image on view as part of the American Concepts and Global Visions/Selections from the AT&T Collection: Masterworks of Photography February 11, 2009 – May 17, 2009.

Image credit: Contact sheet of Robert Frank