PIX Feed LA

“Obbsession has its place.” via AAF Dallas

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:40:55 -0800

“Obbsession has its place.” via AAF Dallas

I had a chance to have a chat with photographer James...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:46:46 -0800

I had a chance to have a chat with photographer James Florio about is recent adventures in Chile.

recent

Pixfeedla:How long have you been photographing?

James:Well, I remember as a little kid my father would let me run around on vacations snapping shots with the family camera..I thought it was so cool to hear that ‘click’….and a few of them were pretty good! jaja. However I bought my first ‘real’ camera and began developing/printingwhen I was 15, so I have been shooting for just over 15 years.

PixfeedLA: What is the scariest thing that’s happened on your ventures?

James: That’s tough, a lot of moments here and there, I was in Haiti shooting after the earthquake and was in a motorcycle accident (one of 3 on that trip), and I remember the rain pouring in the dusk and in slow motion seeing myself flying over my guide and the bike head first…and in that moment everything just stopped for a split second. The other moment was in Chihuahua Mexico about 2 years ago traveling to Copper Canyon from Juarez. It was really late in the night and we stopped in a tiny mountain town to get some food. I hopped out of the truck to smoke and stretch a bit. I was talking to my buddy in the drivers seat when a truck with 4 guys pulled up next to us and just stopped, I could feel them looking at us, and could hear the specific music playing that is very popular with “la linea” (one the main drug cartels). Any way the truck continued on and circled around 3 or 4 times and as we left, started to follow us out of town. It was probably my tensest moment being out there with just my buddy, in tiny Mexican town controlled by the cartel, waiting to see what would happen. I could really feel my heart beating then. In the end they followed us to the edge of town and let us pass. Now that I think of it there where a few such ‘cartel’ moments like that in the 7 years I visited the Sierra Madre Region…

PixfeedLA: What one of the more recent projects you have been working on ( include images) James: Lots of projects, which keeps me always busy and always searching…. One project that I have put a lot of energy into and will be Exhibited here in March is called “San Bernardo es Orgullo” which mean that San Bernardo (the largest community in Santiago de Chile) is/has Pride. I have been following 2 families that live in what we would call slums and here is call a ‘campomento’. Illegal squatting, pallet housing, drugs, violence, lack of water, illegal electricity, etc. This particular campomento is being closed down (this month) and destroyed, over the next 1-2 years government housing will be built and they will return to have a real house. It’s really amazing to see whats happening now, in the same moment there is a lot of hope for the future and change, and yet along side this the day to day struggle to make ends meet still exists. I think in Chile even with a very strong economy there is a huge class split. A very large upper/middle class and a very large poor class. In other Latin countries there is generally a much larger percentage of poor than wealthy. Because of this unbalance, or split, the food, clothing, metro, bus etc are all set to the much higher standard of living. In general the cost of these daily necessities are more expensive than in the USA, and when you have a large population in which the family earns 180,000 pesos (about 375 Dollars) a month it can be very difficult raise a family and to rise out of poverty. This unbalance exists all over the world, but it strikes me as much more apparent here, as Chile continues to rise and grow rapidly a lot of people are left behind. I have witnessed some terrible things and yet a mist it all there is so much beauty. Especially the kids, really amazing. I remember shooting one evening and as it was just getting dark when in a second everyone scattered as a man with a gun came running through the campomento looking for another man he had been arguing with in the street. I was waiting, listening, and looking out the window with a little boy (Fabian, 5 years old). I could see and really feel his fear, his eyes on verge of tears. Powerful. But what impressed me the most was about 15 minutes later, after the gunshots passed (we couldn’t see what happened) and with the streets slightly calmer, watching him run around and laugh and play joyfully like nothing had happened. How quickly he could return to his normal terrorizing 5 year old self!

James blog and website are

Fashion photographer Lillian Bassman dead at 94. According to an...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:13:00 -0800

Fashion photographer Lillian Bassman dead at 94. According to an obituary in the New York Times, during her first flourishing, Bassman “became highly sought after for her expressive portraits of slender, long-necked models advertising lingerie, cosmetics and fabrics. Her lingerie work in particular brought lightness and glamour to an arena previously known for heavy, middle-aged women posing in industrial-strength corsets.” via LA TIMES

ARTIST INTERVIEW: RAINER HOSCH “How did Tour de...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:15:04 -0800

ARTIST INTERVIEW: RAINER HOSCH

“How did Tour de Monde start?

Dedon’s marketing director approached me with an idea to travel around the world with their furniture. It wasn’t as literal as it sounded, we didn’t pack it on a truck and drive it around the world, but we did end up picking 8 different countries to visit. But out of that I ended up taking a bunch of personal shots, which became Tour de Monde.” via Daniel Rolnik

“In an ideal world, this question is unlikely to come up,...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:11:48 -0800

“In an ideal world, this question is unlikely to come up, because there should be no difference between your personal work and your brand.”

Personal Work and Art Buyers is it possible? Here is a great article by Ian Summers for Agency Access.

LL Bean re-creates vintage Catalog cover! Read more here via...

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:04:22 -0800

LL Bean re-creates vintage Catalog cover! Read more here via laughing squid

“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed...

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:00:06 -0800

“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.” Faulkner

Long time Pix Customer, ADC Young Gun Winner, LA Female...

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:00:06 -0800

Long time Pix Customer, ADC Young Gun Winner, LA Female photographer Tamar Levine’s New music video!

Click to view more of her work on her photoblog here

And you can also follow her on twitter @tamarlevine

How will you PROMOTE this year? Benjamin Rasmussen does it old...

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:00:05 -0800

How will you PROMOTE this year? Benjamin Rasmussen does it old school to a hand full of Art Directors. Not the masses. To check out his work visit his website here

ADC Young Guns @ Apple Store Santa Monica: Driscoll Reid

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 12:30:23 -0800

Driscoll Reid is a creative director at GOOD/Corps, an affiliate of GOOD, based in Los Angeles. Before working at GOOD/Corps, he worked at Wieden+Kennedy in Portland for 6 years. During two of those years Driscoll was based in Tokyo. He was a member of the inaugural class of WK12 in 2004. He is a writer, art director, designer, artist, thinker and optimist. He is originally from Northern Vermont and strives to use the power of creativity for good.(via)

Driscoll Reid/Good Corps Creative Director

Monday, January 23, 2012
7:30 - 8:30 PM

Apple Store, Third Street Promenade
1248 Third Street Promenade
Santa Monica, CA 90401

New Works by Mark Mawson “Inspired by graffiti, vibrant...

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 14:48:24 -0800

New Works by Mark Mawson

“Inspired by graffiti, vibrant colours, and watching milk being poured into coffee, British photographer Mark Mawson has created a punky mystical ambience where fluid formations of colour have their own breath of life.” via lostateminor.com

Heather Rasmussen

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:00:00 -0800

Heather Rasmussen was born in 1982 in Santa Ana, California. She lives and works in Los Angeles. She has been selected for the 2011-2012 installment of Exposure, a three-person exhibition series showcasing emerging photography at the Art Institute of Chicago. In September 2009, Ms. Rasmussen had a solo exhibition in the Sandroni Rey Container, Los Angeles, a shipping container turned gallery space. In March 2009, Rasmussen had her first solo exhibition, ship happens, with Light & Wire Gallery in Los Angeles. Her work was recently published in the book Unfolded, Paper in Design, Art, Architecture and Industry, alongside artists Olafur Eliasson, Thomas Demand and Frank Gehry. I contacted her this week to talk a bit about her work.

I like your business card…especially where it reads artist, photographer, archivist. The last term is definitely intriguing.

Well, although I do not have a Library Science degree, I have had a few jobs that involve archiving. I like to organize things, especially other peoples things. In this case, I am an archivist of artworks. When I worked at the gallery Blum & Poe I handled their digital archive - scanning in documentation of artwork, entering into a filemaker program and also making sure the images represented the original artworks the best they could. I’ve also done archiving for working artists - like Felipe Dupoy. We documented all his artworks and organized them based on project into a system that was manageable.

How did you find yourself on this path ? Were you interested in photography as a child or was this something to came out in the later years ?

Photography definitely came later in life. I was always interested in art, but grew up training in classical ballet. It was my passion and my life. I auditioned for the major ballet companies in the US but was injured at the time and did not make it in. My mom made me apply to college, and I ended up going to UC Irvine. I began a double major in Dance and Studio Art, with a minor in Digital art. By Junior year I had taken all the basic photo classes and was completely obsessed. I spent my senior year focusing on Art. I’ve continued making photographs throughout grad school at Calarts and now afterwards.

Tell me about your three favorite images you’ve created.

National Seashore in Wellfleet, Cape Cod, MA, 2011

We were in Cape Cod for a short vacation this summer, and were trying to find a specific fish place in Wellfleet. As we pulled into the parking lot, a very drunken large man was yelling at two policeman down on the beach. The restaurant was up on a large cliff at the top of sand dunes, and the only way for the police to get the man up to the squad car was up a very steep sand hill. The man could barely walk because he was so drunk, and kept falling into the sand, and yelling at onlookers to help him. The cops had everyone step away while they put him into the car. The sky was just beginning to cloud over and get cold and people were packing up their things. I shot a few images with Kodak TriX-400 Black and White film from above. The people look like miniatures and I love the paneling that happens with the clouds, the empty sky and the sand.

buddha’s hand lemons (double), echo park, 2010

I was picking lemons off the tree at my previous place in Echo Park when I spotted these two mutant lemons. They are actually called Buddhas Hand lemons, but these two only had a little bit of the ‘finger’ like parts that Buddhas Hand lemons normally have (you can wiki to see more). I decided I wanted to photograph these, and brought them to my studio. This image is a real (accidental) perfect double exposure shot with a 500 series Hasselblad. There is no photoshop manipulation, which I of course thought was great, and lucky!

Untitled. (New Orleans, Louisiana, September 10, 2005).

2010 I made this photograph in 2010, and it has become one of my most favorite images. I have a few different bodies of work going on, but this series called DestructConstruct is the most structured.

The series DestructConstruct is based on found photographs of shipping container accidents downloaded from the Internet. Each found image is used as a model for a sculpture that is constructed for the production of the photograph. The sculpture then exists as a photographic work, which directly relates to the original photograph, including the name, place, and date the accident happened. I abstract the scenes of the catastrophes, removing the original context and placing the damaged containers, rendered simply out of colored paper, onto a seamless background. This process transforms the containers into pristine patterns of color and shape, thereby confusing scale and altering the perception of the shipping container as an object.

This particular scene was a huge challenge to recreate, as the original found image was from a satellite image of shipping containers floating in water a few days after Hurricane Katrina. I built the sculpture on the floor and then proceeded to set up my 4x5 film camera as high as my tripod would go. I stood on a 10ft ladder and tried for hours to capture the right perspective. After processing the film I realized that I would have to re-make the sculpture and re-shoot it. Normally I just set the paper containers onto the seamless background, but in order to get the camera in the right place, I had to glue each container to a piece of seamless and hang it on the wall. It took forever. I was able to get the shot I wanted and the piece has now become one of my most successful photographs. It is currently hanging in the Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago Museum until March 4, 2012, and it will become a part of their permanent collection in 2012.

You have an exhibition opening this coming Sunday called “HITO: San Pedro/Port of Los Angeles/Port of Long Beach”, can you tell us more about that ?

The exciting thing about this show is the ability to experiment. Normally I show very finished photographs, drawings or sculptures. This exhibition brings together many bodies of work from the my practice, tied to one location: The Port of Los Angeles. I have pinpointed locations in San Pedro, The Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach that have either greatly influenced her practice or are exact sites of a project. Located on a large scale map in the gallery, small tags with my logo HITO match to numbers on the walls, as well as a key with descriptions of each project. I’m hoping this will inspire viewers to visit these sites - to seek out the objects displayed from the Museum on the Lane Victory or recreate the views seen in my photographs for themselves. During the planning process I kept adding things in, more photographs, drawings, maps, an archive of 4x6 images, personal books that relate to the project, and lastly, string to tie it all together. It was very exciting installing the show and seeing my vision come together on the walls. I also have a map I created online that is constantly growing: http://g.co/maps/n64ey The opening is this Sunday from 1-5pm !

Opening Reception Sunday Jan 22, 2012 1-5 pm

Angeles Gate Cultural Center
3601 South Gaffey Street
San Pedro, CA 90731-6969

“I see no reason to not make a self-portrait each day,” the...

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:00:05 -0800

“I see no reason to not make a self-portrait each day,” the photographer says. “I’m always around and always free. It’s kind of like going to the gym—it flexes your muscles and keeps you in shape.”

via Time Lightbox

michellealexisnewman: See you there! allvisual: We’re excited...

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:00:29 -0800

michellealexisnewman:

See you there!

allvisual:

We’re excited to announce that our next slideshow event will take place on Friday, January 20, 2011!

ALL VISUAL LA January 2012 Contributors:

Askew II, Mikey Baratta, A. Dola Baroni, Dan Busta, Megan J. Carroll, Eddie Chacon, Sam Comen, Rahad Coulter-Stevenson, Caitlin G. Dennis, Henry Diltz, Andrea Dominack, Sam Friedman, Kathryna Hancock, Jon Walter Mocey Hanton, Tyler Harrison, William Haswell, Michael Hernandez, Tattiya Kliengklom, Ashley MacLean, Sissy Sainte Marie, Paige Mazurek, SMoss, Michelle Alexis Newman, Poppy Orphanides, Trevor Powers, Adam Robinson, Michael Rotondi, Esteban Schimpf, Collins Schude, Ryan Schude, Ginevra Shay, George Simian, Tamara Suskic, Sumeja Tulic, Nathaneal Turner, Graham Walzer, Jenna Westra, Derek Wood, Olivia Wright

To GoPro? or not to GoPro? That is the question. Apocalypse...

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:45:05 -0800

To GoPro? or not to GoPro? That is the question.

Apocalypse Later, Surf Now : Shot on a GoPro

The music is “The Whales” by The MERMEN on the album Krill Slippin’.

The effects were done in Maya, motion tracking in Mocha, and compositing in After Effects. And all on an iMac.

“All photos are good you just have to change your...

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:29:30 -0800

“All photos are good you just have to change your mind.”

via Ari Marcopoulos interview from post-new

“Wherever he shows his work, this French-born artist, with...

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:00:05 -0800

“Wherever he shows his work, this French-born artist, with his kitschy neo-pop photo-and-Scotch-tape creations, seems primed to join the ranks of the cynical self-merchandising artists like Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami.” via Flavorpill.com

Photograffiti Via K-NARF

“It’s hard to stand out as a collage artist these days....

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 09:38:00 -0800

“It’s hard to stand out as a collage artist these days. But Brooklyn-based Pierre Botardo is so good at what he does that his wonderfully composed , vibrant works have no trouble ‘standing out’.” via Beatutiful Decay

To Read More Visit http://beautifuldecay.com

“Thika” photographed by Jonathan May, aims to bring...

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 16:38:58 -0800

“Thika” photographed by Jonathan May, aims to bring awareness to the daily struggles that some children endure, by trying to give you their respective visual impairment.

To see more of the THIKA project visit http://jonathanmayphotography.com/

Eve Arnold (Magnum) Eve Arnold was a pioneering female...

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 13:52:00 -0800

Eve Arnold (Magnum)

Eve Arnold was a pioneering female photographer. When she joined Magnum Photo in the 50’s the industry was primarily run by men. She was a great female industry leader and role model for many young women. You can see some of her work HERE

“What drove me and kept me going over the decades?” Arnold wrote in her memoir. “If I had to use a single word, it would be ‘curiosity.’ ” via LA Times