The Contiguous Collective

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Happy woman crush wednesday, everyone! It's been a busy season for us here at #ContiguousCollective. If you'd stopped us and asked us what was up, we'd have million - very valid - reasons for our absence. But we're back!

This is a photo essay by photojournalist Anna Positano called "The Awakening City", a series based around the growing city of Addis Ababa. In her own words, this is what Positano has to say about her widely-scoped sprawling series: 

"This series of photographs aspires to be a look at the process of modernization of Addis Ababa, along with its traditional features. Most of the images are intentionally from a distance, in order to widen the proportion of urban interventions and provoke a sense of loss. At the same time the presence of people provides a more human proportion. The depiction of the most vernacular of places is more intimate and intends to be juxtaposed with the modern city."

For more on Anna Positano's work, visit her site at theredbird.com.

-Alyssa

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Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video, opens today, Friday, January 24th at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. It is her first major retrospective at a New York museum.

Read more: http://www.artlog.com/2014/1122

[razorshapes]

Joel Tettamanti - Greenland

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Where to begin with this one. Peter Zeglis, a self-taught photographer hailing all the way from Greece, has a packed catalog of works. From pieces reminiscent of Emily Shur to that of Gregory Crewdson; from far away to even farther away places, Zeglis has invested time (well spent) in an amass of soft palettes and accidental intentionality. 

Even with these influences, to me I think what really stands out is the use of geometrics in even the most indistinct of objects and images. It's simple things like this that really make his work very uniquely him.

You can check out more of his published pieces in magazines such as 121 Clicks, Adweek and the AIGA gallery.

-Alyssa

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Christopher Bucklow - Guests (2005)

“Solar pin-hole photographs of luminous silhouettes, for which the technical process is a cross between photography and drawing.

Strongly influenced by Carl Jung’s theory of the Anima and Animus, the idea of the repressed parts of the psyche feature repeatedly throughout Bucklow’s work.” 

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Happy Friday, everyone!

-Alyssa

[2headedsnake]

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2headedsnake:

Eleanor Cunningham

Two works made up of mixed media. Salts, inks and water on photographic prints and negatives, combining analogue with digital technology.

‘Nonna’s Window / Portal’, 2011

‘Somerset House’, 2009

No words, just a reblog for your weekends.

-Alyssa

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Just like the others, I haven't been around much this summer to post on here for you. But I'm making it up to you all.

For the sake of brevity, I'll just introduce you guys. This is Stefan Olah. A Vienna based-photographer, he uses his large format in his travels through places such as the Himalayas and the better part of Europe to capture a range between the distilled little moments and likewise the geometrically sound. 

To be honest, I was initially attracted to his work because, and if only for a split moment, it reminded me of a super clean and peaceful version of a Call of Duty environment. So there's that.

-Alyssa

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First off, i'd also like to apologize for the absence these past weeks. I have moved back down south to Texas and it's been a heavy and stressful process.

That being said, and since it is a Saturday, I am posting some new photographs that I have made since my return to the Lone Star State.

I left Denton, Texas the day after I graduated college, on December 16th, 2012, and moved back to my hometown, Dublin, Ohio. I had not been back since. Seven months doesn't seem like a long time, but during that time a lot changed.

Good change, I would say. The season gave me time to rest, time to spend with friends and family, and time for my heart to mend. This season didn't last as long as I would have hoped, though. Due to certain circumstances, I have returned to Texas for an "extended stay", if you will. It's not that I didn't want to come back, to see people that mean so much to me and the city I spent the majority of the past four years in, but I wasn't jumping for joy either.

Being back in this place has given me mixed emotions. I have felt excited and uncomfortable, overjoyed and lonely, content and awkward. I hope these photographs show that.

-Chris

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apologies for the absence.  I have started a summer internship working with children in the inner-city of Dallas, TX and have had absolutely zero time to even get on the internet, much less research and find new photographers. I promise that my activity will begin again in August. until then, enjoy the silence. -Joseph

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Well it's Selfie Saturday and it just so happens that today I found a bunch of cyanotypes from two years ago that I never documented digitally. I have an ongoing body of work titled "The Calming Shore", which is a series that documents my many trips to Lake Keowee, in South Carolina. These images were printed as cyanotypes because of the connection between the blue of the water and the cyan, as well as the natural texture the brush strokes add. Honestly, I never thought of having these alternative process prints as part of the series due to the fact that they are printed differently. However, after I found them today, I thought to myself, "Why not?".

You can check out the other cyanotypes, as well as the entire series, here: "The Calming Shore".

-Chris

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The New West by Robert Adams

"Many have asked, pointing incredulously toward a sweep of tract homes and billboards, why picture that? The question sounds simple, but it implies a difficult issue—why open our eyes anywhere but in undamaged places like national parks?

One reason is, of course, that we do not live in parks, that we need to improve things at home, and that to do it we have to see the facts without blinking. We need to watch, for example, as an old woman, alone, is forced to carry her groceries in August heat over a fifty acre parking lot; then we know, safe from the comforting lies of profiteers, that we must begin again.

Paradoxically, however, we also need to see the whole geography, natural and man-made, to experience a peace; all land, no matter what has happened to it, has over it a grace, an absolutely persistent beauty."

For this week's Throwback Thursday I wanted to focus on a specific series by a photographic forefather, and not just an overview of his work. Known for his documentation of the westward-expanding artificial landscape in the 1960s, and being a part of the "New Topographics" movement, Adams' photographs in "The New West" shed light on this unexplored terrain, and the mixture of hope and grief that it holds. What attracts me more to his work, however, is how he speaks of it. Adam's short, but weighty, statements about his photographs have helped me personally understand the path contemporary photography has taken from then to now, and the connections between the two.

You can see this full series, and many others, online at the Yale University Art Gallery.

-Chris

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There has been quite a lot of buzz regarding Arne Svenson's latest project, The Neighbors. When the residents of the New York City apartment building opposite Svenson's studio found that they were the subjects of his recent exhibit, they were shocked.  The open windows allowed Svenson enough access to capture the quiet and ordinary moments of his neighbors. Despite the questions of legality, the series still maintains a level of mystery and anonymity.  Is it an invasion of privacy? I guess it's up to the courts. Personally, I find the images beautiful and organic.  You can find more on Arne Svenson's website. 

-Taylor

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I missed selfie saturday due to me not having any internet access, but I wanted to share what I have been up to this weekend. I was out in Poetry, TX at my grandparents house taking care of their animals. I have always wanted to photograph their property, things, and landscape surrounding, but have never had the chance to be out there on my own for so long with my camera. The hat I am wearing in the first photograph belonged to my great grandfather, Gwin, when he worked at Minyards as a bag boy after he served in WWII under General Patton. I found it in an old breifcase filled with old documents. It was better than finding gold. I was torn whether to focus on the landscape or create a narrative, and decided I would just take pictures and see what happens. I will definitely have to go back to continue this project. Have a wonderful Sunday! - Joseph

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Meet Philip Lorca-diCorcia. Having only been born in 1951 in Hartford, Connecticut makes this #throwbackthursday a little less of our usual throwback. A former Yale student and MoMA exhibitor, diCorcia treads a line I desire to follow in my own work. 

With a cinematic feel, diCorcia takes some photos as simple snapshots in the moment while others are intricately staged. But never does he veer away from the desire to present them as very placid and untouchable moments in time- as if they were taken in the moment without hesitation.

They each seem to carry with them their own little universes that for the viewer feel as if they could see the emotion and the scenery so clearly and palpably, that they could just be stepped into. Because of this, diCorcia's pieces have been considered "Rorschach-like" by viewers and critics alike; each photo bearing it's own ecosystem to easily fall into and become a necessary part of. 

diCorcia currently resides in New York. His work can be seen at the MoMa as well as Carnegie Mellon's Carnegie International Exhibition.

-Alyssa

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I've been crushing on the work of Melissa Kaseman this week.

She received her BFA in photography from the California College of the Arts, Oakland, California in 2005, and now lives and works in San Francisco.

"Melissa utilizes her photographs as a way to understand her life experience and create a sense of personal history. Her work deals with issues of longing, loss, and dislocation; and aims to find the delicate balance between the intensity of loss and the beauty of the mundane."

We have been invited into a personal space, a space where maybe death, or sickness, or grief is occurring or has already occurred. These images remind me of my own personal experiences of loss and dislocation. It is a great and wonderful thing for anyone, including Kaseman, to be able to see beauty in places that can be so emotionally ugly and dark.

-Chris

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I missed #selfiesaturday, but I'm making it up to you all with a little #selfiesunday. These are pretty rough screencaps, but on top of a few other concepts, I'm working on a rather expansive project that started January 1st of this year and will end December 31st. The basic goal is to capture a one second clip from each day. Best parts of the day. Worst parts of the day, (but hopefully not...) and also the mundane parts. Everything. I want it all taped down. It will compile each day together into a 6-minute video. I want to be as honest in my portrayal as possible, journalistically-speaking, but also in an effort to remain as true to myself as possible and what life means for me.

So far, it starts in the middle of India. There are a lot of shots of the cityscape from my drivers seat, feet kicking with boredom at the doctors office or at home or at work, and concert shots. We'll see where it all ends up in roughly 210 days. I know I'm looking forward to it.

-Alyssa

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For this week's Throwback Thursday, I'm exploring the eccentric world of Jacques-Henri Lartigue (1894-1986). Interestingly enough, this French photographer's work was relatively unknown to the public until its presentation at the Museum of Modern Art in 1963.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, technology had advanced to a level of accessibility and ease that even a child was able to operate smaller hand cameras.  Lartigue is a perfect example, having taken his first photo at age seven.  From then on he began creating a visual diary of the affluent world around him, which often included a strong attention to speed and motion, heavily influenced by the inventions of automobiles and airplanes.  Having no training in photography, Lartigue learned to master timing and composition at an early age.  He was very concerned with capturing the peak of an action or motion in the clearest way possible, loving the way people and things move through time.

His images have a purity about them that I find so beautiful. Check out more on Jacques-Henri Lartigue here!

-Taylor