Lishui Photo - Mary Parisi

Mary Parisi left for China today.

Her work, looking at food is based on the artistic, rather than culinary, allowing us to create an emotional connection of our own to foods so personal to her.

more about Food Pictures -
This body of work is about food. All the pictures resulted from foods, which I cooked and ate. Some of the food, like the chicken soup pictures are reminders of my childhood and my father who made chicken soup every other Monday for many years.
To some extent the pictures are related to my history as a sculptor because I think of food as material for art. I am indebted to the artist Joseph Bueys and his use of fat for its physical properties and metaphorical value.
I have to admit that while I am not a vegetarian, I live with a reluctance to take as food other animals, who like us have blood in their veins. I have no answer for this dilemma. I can only acknowledge the conflict and try to say, it is a chicken or a pig or the fat rendered from the pig’s body and it is delicious and beautiful and horrible.

Lishui Photo - Sarah Hadley

I met Sarah in Portland at PhotoLucida this April. She had a beautiful, romantic and really gorgeous portfolio on Venice. Sarah is also one of the participants of the Lishui Festival. The organizing committee chose a different body of work, Water's Edge. Having spent my youth on a beach, and getting back to it as often as I can, I understand the power the ocean holds over us, the metaphors it can conjure and most often I have the overwhelming urge to plunge in and be surrounded in the silence. Sarah's images lead me to that moment. Her Black and white images showcase that fluid ever changing boundary beautifully.

about "The Water's Edge":

I grew up spending entire summer days by the ocean. These outings were always a special event and the beach was a place of wonderment, fascination and exploration for me. I loved the enormity and freedom the beach provided and the sense that we had entered a space where time was lost and the only rhythm was governed by the tides. As an adult, I have lived close to two great bodies of water--Lake Michigan and now the Pacific Ocean, and I've found myself drawn to beaches wherever I travel, especially when I can be alone in these vast panoramas. The complex and ever-changing landscape feels like stepping into an altered reality and I am interested in how the patterns in sand, sea and sky echo one another, as well as showing the transformative power of the elements. Capturing that point where water meets land feels like entering an infinity at the edge of the world.

Lishui Photo - Charles Rozier

Charles is another participant in the Lishui Photo Festival.
Having met him in Portland, and really enjoying his work, I was pleased to see his inclusion in China.

His family fills the frame of his lens, watching who they are, how they grow and change over time. Broken into segments based on his camera, he defines his world by low and high resolution.

About the series -

“Low-Resolution Diary” is the second of three photographic series that form a 30-year diary of documentary portraits, mostly of my family. This project has driven almost all of my photography and remains a work in process. I can't say just how it got started, but I can say my first exposure as a teenager to Cartier-Bresson was life-changing.

The three series are defined by their media: 35mm monochrome (Tri-X Diary) through 2002; then small format digital (Low-Resolution Diary) 2003-2008; and currently medium format film (High- Resolution Diary) 2008-2009. Although I feel all the photographs emerge from the same point of view, each series is shaped differently by its format.

The Low-Resolution series was photographed digitally with a tiny camera that allowed me to unobtrusively capture fleeting situations that might otherwise have been missed or disrupted. The pictures are printed at a fairly large scale, at which the coarse character of the camera’s output becomes integral with the image, imposing a degree flatness and abstraction. Although some of the images may appear constructed, they are entirely documentary.

The High-Resolution seris is photographed on relatively larger and slower 6x7cm film. The resulting images are more static, formal, and perhaps more classically photographic in character than the earlier series. There are three key things I have been trying to accomplish: to capture a “live” documentary moment within a formal composition; to evoke a real environmental space; and to reveal the subject in a sense that is neither momentary nor expected.

Lishui Photo - Susan Berger

Susan Berger is another Lishui participant. Her focus? She stopped. While the rest of us go whizzing by at 80 miles an hour, she stopped and payed tribute, and helped us focus on those who have left us. Roadside memorials are all something we see, but don't look at. I think Susan has done us a great favor by honoring those who care for those memorials, as well as the individuals they pay homage to.

About Private Memories in Public Places -

My portfolio, “Private Memories in Public Places”, documents the roadside memorials that dot our highways and city streets.Most of us barely notice them as we drive along, but these memorials have become an integral part of the national landscape. Perhaps we don’t notice them because they have become so common that they no longer arrest our attention. And perhaps it’s because they often fit so naturally into the landscape.
As I look at these monuments, I am struck by the obvious care, time and work that went into their creation. They are intended to be permanent and to be visited again and again. The compelling question to me is why the survivors need to memorialize the place the person died. Some have suggested a belief that the soul still hovers at the sight. But I believe it’s because the death was so sudden, violent and unexpected. Perhaps the survivors want to remember that life stopped right here.
I began photographing these memorials in 2005. In 2009, I was awarded a project grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts to travel the country and photograph these little works of art. In 2009, I drove 18,000 miles from coast-to-coast and border-to-border photographing the memorials I found along the way.

Lishui Photo - Rita Maas

Rita Maas and curator Paula Tognarelli, from the Griffin Museum in Boston head to the Lishui Photo Festival to showcase Rita's series, Reality TV. I reviewed the work in Portland, at PhotoLucida, and found it fascinating. Reality TV is a world unto its own, creating a culture of reality stars and megastars, elevating the average to iconic status. It spawns some curious creatures, like Balloon Boy's Dad, in its more obvious surreal forms.

But what Rita is looking at is far more subliminal and seductive. Think about the palettes she is showing, from TV shows like Top Chef, The Home shopping Network, even news like Obama's Inaguration and baseball games - Pirates vs. Cardinals. We all know how we are affected by sunshine, and what that warm light does to us, how it lifts our spirits as it washes over us. But think about that light emanating form that big screen tv you have on all the time in that background. How does that affect your mood? Rita's presentation asks a good question, and showcases a perplexing answer.

About her series -

Reality TV was created as a direct response to living in a culture of You Tube and Twit- ter; constantly multitasking on multiple screens and the unending stream of informa- tion, both relevant and banal.

Feeling overwhelmed after the recent political season I felt the need to express my search for relief. The result is “Reality TV”. Each composite photograph represents a television program photographed with the camera directed towards a wall and ceiling or corner of the room where the program is being viewed. The camera takes in the information beamed from the television and reformulates it for the viewer as reflected color. The camera sensor is recording the light over several seconds, blending it as the capture takes place. It is recording the unseeable. The assembled images of saturated color vibrate against each other and are evocative of both field paintings and pixels. They are, in a sense, a reduction of the very notion of a photograph, the recording of light.

This piece is meant to highlight issues of observation and comprehension. How much of the world we inhabit do we really observe? How much do we comprehend of all we take in everyday? To what extent do we create our own reality?

The piece itself hangs on the wall as a kind of spiritual icon, presenting a space of mediation, a transformation of what it was created from.

“Nothing is more abstract than reality” —Giorgio Morandi

Lishui Photo - Stan Raucher

Stan Raucher has been traveling the world, capturing the streets of Paris, Latin America and soon, China. I can't wait. I have been watching Stan grow as a photographer over the last few years, and his newest group of portraits I have found really lovely, engaging and intense.

Stan started as an observer, photographing the life he saw around him, now he is a participant, engaging his subjects, and the change is evident.

Here is Stan's statement about his process.

Using natural light and a bit of serendipity, I strive to create compelling black and white photographs that provide a glimpse into aspects of the human condition.

My candid photography documents ordinary people going about their daily lives in public spaces. These images capture fleeting moments, spontaneous gestures and the ephemeral juxtaposition of people and their surroundings. They depict situations that are unexpected, mysterious, humorous, bizarre or poignant. These photos are neither posed nor staged and I do not interact with my subjects before or after photographing them. Creating these images requires both quick reactions and a great deal of shoe leather since there are no second takes for this type of photography.

My portrait photography conveys a distinctly different sensibility. Portraits from Latin America documents people I have met during my journeys through this region. Although these encounters are brief, I attempt to delve beneath the surface and reveal insights into the lives and character of these individuals. These photographs portray a variety of temperaments and display a range of emotions. Making these portraits involves genuine interpersonal interactions that transcend language and cultural barriers.

Lishui Photo - Carol Isaak

Carol Isaak was a participant of PhotoLucida in April of last year. I got the opportunity to sit down with her for 20 minutes and review her work. Her focus, China, showcased an outsider's view of a foreign landscape. Bright color, beautiful architecture, and a sense of place fill her images with life.

She is headed to Lishui, and will continue her travels and add more dimensions to her visuals. By incorporating sound, she hopes to give us as viewers a transported vision. Not unlike when we head to our own International District, or Chinatown. Documenting a changing culture is difficult, but I applaud her for her efforts. She has done a nice job of showcasing a beautiful culture.

Here is more on Carol's vision -

Core Sample: China

I photograph NOW. My worldview is as a “social documentarian.” I look at societies thru their material culture in order to understand the population primarily by documenting their objects, as well as documenting the lives of women, some men, and some children.

My photographs are not timeless; quite the opposite. Markers anchor us to a specific time, especially images of material culture. We recognize the time-signs by historical references, garments, vehicles, architecture, juxtapositions, or by something in process that inevitably gets completed.

My goal is to present bodies of work that tell the backside, or the inside of the story, the private side, the small picture, not the global, general big picture. I search for the intimate, which reveals something larger. Core Sample: China describes certain visual conventions (like the pierced spaces in window coverings), and the contrast and tensions between the different realities that are lived and aspired to. But it is a country in flux, and that movement is vital to its wellbeing as the population explores long suppressed traditions and newly government-encouraged innovations.

Lishui Photo - Alejandro Cartagena

Alejandro Cartagena's name is everywhere these days. Just announced yesterday, he is on the list for PhotoLucida's Critical Mass top 50. Today he was slated as a book finalist from CM50. An International Discovery at FotoFest in Houston , Alejandro has been highlighted on Joerg Colberg's blog, Conscientious, PDN online, Lenscratch, a participant in Review Santa Fe, and the list goes on and on. He is also joining Taj Forer in Lishui China to showcase his work on Suburbia. I am excited to see how is work is viewed there. What will be the response to the social and economic similarities of expansion and population growth, how it affects their surroundings, and how fundamentally changed the environment becomes....

Here is Taj Forer's statement about Alejandro -

Alejandro Cartagena's 'Suburbia Mexicana' is both aesthetically beautiful and politically, socially and environmentally poignant. The work is timely, deeply personal yet globally relevant. Cartagena's engagement of the real challenges the viewer to contemplate the timeless theme of how we dwell as a society (or collection thereof) with the natural environment. The fast-paced development examined by Cartagena through his photographs is not unlike many blossoming urban and suburban development projects currently found throughout China. The cultural challenges facing communities affected by such government-sponsored development initiatives is uncannily similar throughout the world. By focusing on his hometown of Monterrey, Mexico, Cartagena turns his lens on the complex and nuanced global phenomenon most commonly referred to as "progress." His vivid, straightforward, large-scale color photographs afford the viewer a moment to pause, experience and reflect upon the complicated and far-reaching implications of development. From issues of resource management to changing cultural values, Cartagena's photographs delve into the newness and unknown realities of Mexico's suburban expansion.

Lishui Photo - Mark Tompkins

Mark Tompkins work, Dialogues, will be on view in China this month as part of the Lishui Festival. Strong black and white images with text, Tompkins images tell stories and keep us engaged in the images.

about the series DIALOGUES -

By creating dialogues between image and text, this body of work takes on the age-old challenge of depicting multiple perspectives on a subject in a single composition. These conversations address the mystery and irony of the strong story lines that scribe through our lives, often uninvited; story lines on time and death, love and fear, work and play, god and meaning. Each composition organically expands the storyline of the image with the text, and so generates an unusually multifaceted narrative while still leaving plenty of room for the viewer to personalize it – to experience it from their own set of evoked memories, dreams and ideas.

Lishui Photo - Steven Strom

Steve Strom has had some great success this year, between shows, his new book, and now a trip to showcase his beautiful work in China. His day job as an astronomer keeps him a visionary, finding needles in haystacks, looking at broad perspectives to find the tiniest fragment of being. HIs work takes on the stunning desert landscape, finding life and patterns in the empty space most pass over as desolate and void. His work will be a colorful open discussion of landscape and abstraction. I am looking forward to having a bit of the desert with me in China.

here is more on his series -

Images in the portfolio, Earth Forms attempt to capture what is nearly beyond the camera’s grasp: a desert land

shaped by millennial forces and yesterday’s cloudburst into undulations of color and form – its history reimagined in light that at once penetrates and sculpts.

For the poet Joy Harjo, “the(se) photographs are not separate from the land or larger than it. Rather, they

gracefully and respectfully exist inside it. Breathe with it. The camera is used to see with a circular viewpoint which becomes apparent even though the borders of the images remain rectangular. The land in these photographs is a beautiful force, in the way the Navajo mean the word beautiful, an all-encompassing word, like those for land and sky, that has to do with living well, dreaming well, in a way that is complementary to all life.”

I bring to this landscape the sensibilities of an astronomer who has lived in the desert for almost 20 years, and in whom the desert has lived for more than 30. My tools are simple: a 35mm SLR or 4x5 view camera, and long focal length lenses whose power to compress vast desert spaces can create an illusion of intimacy, of comprehension: inviting viewers to look deeply into what light and earth together form.