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Skipping the SPE National Conference in Denver (first national conference I've missed in a decade), I spent March instead at Houston Fotofest International, absorbing this year's concentration of work from mainland China. A very important survey, over 1100 prints, work from 1939 through the present in all modes. I recommend the excellent catalogue highly.
I made numerous connections there useful for my own expanding involvement with mainland China. In the middle of the Houston stint I took a break and flew to Vancouver (my first visit to that gorgeous city) to give a trio of lectures: one at the Vancouver Art Gallery, in conjunction with an extensive survey of vintage pictorial photography mounted there; another at the Emily Carr Institute; and a third at the University of British Columbia. Then I returned to Houston for a second stretch of Fotofest, after which I flew home.
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My wife Anna Lung arrived in the U.S. in early April, making her first visit to the States. We traveled to Norman, OK, for the April 18 world premiere of China: Insights, the cross-section of contemporary Chinese documentary photography that I co-curated with Gu Zheng of Fudan University, and on which Anna worked as my Chinese partner. |
| (The project wouldn't have been possible without her.) The show made its debut at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma, where it will remain on view through August 17). Ghislain d'Humieres, new director of the FJJMA, and his staff did a splendid job of installing the exhibition's 150 prints. |
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They also organized a delightful opening, including a live performance of a recent piece of vocal music by mainland music educator and composer Zhao Fang. Click here for a slideshow of the installation and opening ceremonies.
A report celebrating this event (in Chinese) appeared in the Shenzhen Economic Daily (circulation 500,000) on May 13, 2008. |
| Subsequent scheduled showings of China: Insights already include The Light Factory in Charlotte, NC (mid-January 2009 to the end of March); the Tufts University Art Gallery in Medford, MA (early September to mid-November, 2009); the Harnett Museum of Art, Richmond, VA (January 15 to February 28, 2010); and the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art (October 8 to December 31, 2010), and the Montgomery Art Center/Pomona College Museum of Art (January 18 to April 17, 2011). More venues will get added to this itinerary. The European tour evolves slowly, as does the catalogue. |
From "Young Pros, Oldest Profession,"
by Chen Yuanzhong
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While in China in February, I agreed to a curatorial collaboration with See+ Art Space/Gallery, a new showcase for contemporary work (with an emphasis on photography) in Beijing's red-hot 798 art district. I will curate two shows a year for See+, working with them to introduce western photography to the Beijing scene. They'll mount a 50-print mini-version of Saga: The Journey of Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Photographs 1970-2005, for their debut in May. Details to come.
Somehow I forgot to mention previously that in 2007 I contributed an introduction to a new monograph, self-published by its author exclusively as a pdf file and posted online for free downloading.
The monograph is titled Vanilla Sex: Explicit Fine Art Photographs, and it's by Michael A. Rosen of the Bay Area, issued under his own imprint, Shaynew Press. In Rosen's own words, this is "a reprise of a 2005 show at the Center for Sex & Culture in San Francisco. It's my latest and best work." This commission enabled me to continue my own critical exploration of sexually explicit photography, which now includes broad essays on aspects of this subject and introductions to roughly a dozen monographs by individual photographers and/or and anthologies of such imagery. Eventually I expect to gather and revise those writings into a book of my own.
Per my previous discussion of technological matters affecting my production activity, I have begun working extensively in FileMaker Pro.
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This led, unexpectedly, to my drafting an eccentric piece of tech writing, an account of my retooling of an FMPro freeware "solution" to fill a need not met by anything I could find readymade. I don't think of myself as a tech writer (though clearly I've achieved a certain level of geekhood), and this doesn't resemble your standard product review in any way. But it proved an exciting challenge for me as a writer; I also had fun doing it. See "FileMaker Pro 9 and an Open-Source Freeware Solution Make a Perfect Match for a Professional Writer!" at Mac Edition Radio (posted 2/4/08).
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Upcoming travel: In early May I will head to Shenzhen, China, with Anna, to spend a month there, visiting with family and consulting yet again with the photographers in the "China: Insights" project. I'll also make my first trip to Beijing, to assist in the installation of Saga at the new See+ Gallery/Artspace, as mentioned above, and to participate in the gallery's public debut. I'll return to New York in early June.
In this edition you'll find the text of "Vanilla Is As Vanilla Does: The Sexual Art of Michael Rosen," my introduction to Rosen's 2007 monograph, as mentioned above. (PDF format.) And also the English-language version of the Shenzhen Economic Daily's May 13, 2008 report on the Oklahoma debut of "China: Insights." (PDF format.)
The essays I post here remain on the Writings & Publications menu until I post a new issue and replace them, at which point they move permanently to the Photography Criticism CyberArchive, available thereafter to that repository's subscribers. A small selection of my texts will stay semi-permanently on the Writings & Publications menu here, along with links to other work of mine that appears elsewhere on the web.
For your convenience, we've set up an online store through which you can order my books, with a shopping cart, secure credit-card transactions, and other e-commerce frills.
This section of C: the Speed of Light contains brief synopses of recent, current, and upcoming projects and activities related to my work as a critic, historian, teacher, lecturer, and internet publisher.
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