Emily Shur

Emily has got to be one of the coolest people I have ever met. I had the pleasure of meeting her in Santa Fe this June at the Reviews.

A commercial photographer by day, her personal work lends itself to her downtime, when she doesn't have to think on her feet. Reacting to her circumstance, giving us who she is, where she is, and that moment of peace, like an exhale, before gearing up to go out and do it again.
Her work is quiet and unassuming. The structure, color and sometimes the light of the images draws me in. I am not sure if it is the anticipation of whats next in the image, or it often feels like something just happened, and I am disappointed that I missed the event. She calls them small moments, but to me, who soaks up as much life as I can absorb, they all seem important. It seems like the yin and yang of the careless nature of what we do to our surroundings, and finding out it is all so deliberate.

ok, ok, enough. Take a look at the work.
Emily's statement about the work -

Some of my earliest memories are of light shining through a row of hospital windows and walking down that long hallway with my father, going to visit my mother who was sick with cancer at the age of twenty-nine. I was three years old. I’ve always found it interesting that I don’t remember seeing her in the hospital. I only remember the light coming through the window and forming bright, glowing rectangles in repetition along the floor. Through the years, I’ve thought a lot about how memory subconsciously manifests itself; how small and seemingly insignificant moments become important and meaningful over time; how a lifetime is slowly constructed out of these moments. There’s no doubt this has impacted my photography.

This body of work represents roughly ten years of picture taking and an examination of my individual experiences. These images were made all over the world, under all sorts of circumstances. Sometimes I was led to a place for work, sometimes for fun, but in every situation I found myself celebrating the supposedly small moments. Photography has allowed me to give due importance to all of the bits and pieces in my life. These images are not idealized views of life experience. Instead, they are representative of a conscious choice I have made regarding how and what I choose as my memories. Births, deaths, milestones, and change are a part of every life. A face or a smile is not required for me to associate imagery with emotion. In my world, the subtle, the natural, and the insignificant are just as powerful as the obviously epic.

Willson Cummer

Wilson's landscapes aren't typical, they take the mundane and peripheral, and force you to look. Sometimes with solidarity, some with silence, and sometimes the paradox and incongruity just gets you.

There is something about his vision, and I am in the process of working it out. I think they are interesting.

He starts with a rooftop garage. How many times have you parked up there on the roof and wish you had the view to yourself? Didn't Joni Mitchell say something about parking lots? Traditional landscape in concrete.
He then moves on to underpasses, and the newest portion of the portfolio is Lake Ontario. A great deal of the work has a sense of irony and silent expanse.

I really find it fascinating what traces we leave of ourselves. I keep thinking planet of the apes, with Lady Liberty coming up out of the sand....having a background in historical geology, studying the rock for clues to our past, I wonder what we will leave behind. In a way, I think Wilson does too. He just visualizes it.

Frank Relle

Frank Relle's work haunts me.
eerily beautiful. These images of New Orleans keep me on edge, and yet are somehow serene. I think it's that push and pull that brings me in to them. I want to see what each image has captured in its frame. For me what shines through most in this work is Frank's love of his city, and the honor he pays to its beauty.
The first exposure to it was last year's Critical Mass, and then I was lucky enough to see it in person last December in New Orleans during PhotoNola, and went to my local Borders and picked up Color magazine, and was treated to the images again.



about Frank -

Frank Relle (b. 1976) is a photographer born and based in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is the recipient of numerous awards including a 2007 International Photography Award and the Photo Lucida Critical Mass top 50 photographers.
His work is represented in major public and private collections, including the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. His photographs have been printed in the New Yorker, the Southern Review and the Oxford American magazines.

Relle continues to document the changing architecture of New Orleans and is working to share his images with an international audience hoping to inspire people around the world to help rebuild the city of New Orleans with the integrity she deserves.

S. Doyle Hammond

I was introduced to Shauna Doyle Hammond last year when she was selected for our New Directions 08 show. I loved the strong structural lines, play with light, and great scale of her architectural work. I have since found a number of artists exploring this topic, and I think she was ahead of the curve and at the top of the class. Take a look.



about Shauna -
Shauna Doyle Hammond is a Seattle-born photographer currently based in New York. She earned her MFA in 2007 at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and has a BA in Art History from UCLA. Her most recent series, Nightfall, encompasses urban landscapes where commonplace subjects gain a heightened sense of mystery at night. Using only available light, trees are quietly illuminated in the darkness and the strange beauty of concrete is transformed into something otherworldly. Her upcoming work builds upon these themes, focusing on urban development and its impact on the neighborhoods of New York’s five boroughs.