Landscape – Page 650 – Woody Campbell

Tuesday November 15, 2011

BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS – I spent most of the day in meetings with a client in Boston – a client that has a genuinely interesting art collection. One of the issues with photography, particularly digital photography, is that it’s cheap and easy. These are not good characteristics for a fine art medium. Some photographers approach this problem by creating unique prints that can’t be reproduced, infusing them with “objecthood”. Here’s a work by William Hamlin, one of his Window Series. Each print (they are old school chromogenic prints) is woven into a unique object. Interesting and quite beautiful. But they are hanging in a tiny, obscure visitors office in the conference center. Too bad for Hamlin. Taken with my Rocoh GRD IV. I guess you could say that I’ve appropriated Hamlin’s work, with a cheap and easy shot.

I’ve also included an image from a walk before my meetings.

While I was in Boston I missed the opening of an exhibition of portraits by Jemina Kirke (who is actually better known as an actress) at the Skylight Gallery. Here’s a portrait by Jemima of Francesca (our daughter), photographed by Francesca. Jemima clearly owes a debt to Egon Schiele.

On this day one year ago: Helmsley Building straight up. One of my favorite images from the past year.

Formerly the New York Central Building — November 15, 2010

Thursday November 10, 2011

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I took a break between meetings today to get out into the street with my Ricoh GRD IV. This is a stitch of three images.

Let’s continue the ongoing saga of variations on self. It’s 24 slivers just as in yesterday’s image but I’ve blended them into a continuous image and trimmed off the stuff on the top and the bottom that didn’t blend well. the scale on the bottom is a continuous 24-hour scale – as you read from left to right you get me later and later. The single shot with glasses on results in a sliver of glasses on my nose.

Wednesday November 9, 2011

NEW YORK NEW YORK – A pair of Bryan Hunt sculptures, Flume I and Flume II, have been installed on the island on Park Avenue between the Seagrams Building and the Racquet and Tennis Club. The look like gigantic gnarly metal cobras. Here’s one of them, captured with my ever-resent Ricoh GRD !V.

Continuing on the theme of variations on the 24 hour self portrait series here’s one where I sliced the images into 24 slivers, and built a composite with a sliver from the earliest time starting on the left and reading hour by hour as you move to the right.

Monday November 7, 2011

NEW YORK NEW YORK – On the street with my miniature camera. I’m slowly gaining confidence in it – getting a better feeling for its capabilities and limitations. I’m not really good a street photography and street photography generally doesn’t move me. A lot of the work that I see by other photographers is colorful looking people (often from the rear) in colorful setting, lacks dynanism and is wildly derivative of Robert Frank. There are exceptions. For example the energetic body of work being produced by Daido Moriyama (who shoots by the way with a Ricoh GRD). There’s an argument that the Ricoh is to this generation what the Leica M3 was to an earlier generation. Anyway here’s an image from Third Avenue caught with my Ricoh GRD IV. Of course my shadow in the picture is derivative of . . . Robert Frank.

I mentioned several times in the last month that the 1999 self portraits were taken in my Connecticut studio with an 8X10 camera. Here’s what it looked like. That’s me holding the cable release for the lens (whatever it was) on the Arca-Swiss view camera.

Saturday November 5, 2011

NEW YORK NEW YORK – I’m taking a break from my new Rikoh GRD IV – in good light I find the Alpa, 35mm Schneider and Phase One IQ 180 back irresistible.

This from East 72nd Street. It’s a bit surprising that this building’s coop board permitted air conditioning vents to be cut through the decorative limestone facade.

Here’s number 23. This is the penultimate image from my series of 24 hourly photos of myself taken on February 13 and 14, 1994. This one is from m12:00 noon on February 14. Once I’ve presented all 24 of these, over the next week or so I’ll show you some composites and collages assembled from them, starting Monday.

Friday November 4, 2011

NEW YORK NEW YORK – More time in the trenches on may day job, and fussing around with my new Ricoh GRD IV. This thing lets you get really, really close.

More me. This is number 23 out of the series of 24. We’re getting close to the end.

Wednesday November 2, 2011

NEW YORK NEW YORK – More blahs. Today I had lunch at Harry Cipriani with Michele Parmigiani, a remarkable watchmaker who has a show of mechanical wonders that he has restored for the Sandoz foundation at A La Vieille Russie. Lunch was excellent and we were surrounded by fashionable Italians. Somehow out of all of this I couldn’t make a plausible photograph. Tonight was our James Beard Foundation annual Gala at Gustavino, a genuinely interesting space built into one of the approach ramps to the 59th Street Bridge. No photos worth taking up hard drive space. The best I could do for today is this safe view of a Manhattan facade. One of my objectives in my photo a day work is to capture the visual part of life from a privileged (in an artistic rather than economic sense) point of view. It may be that I’m just too wound up in practicing law and the Gala to relax and see the world around me. Still, one photo every day . . . .

Let’s see here, it’s Mr. Curley Hair again. Looking a little fresher at 9:00 after a night of fitful sleep interrupted by my hourly photo regime.