Dad of Three

Family_Friends_Art_Design_Architecture_and the kitchen sink

[dillonmcdaniel-blog-blog]

Haven't looked at Gizmodo in awhile but so glad I did just now because I came across this video and it is awesome. I had stopped posting but I couldn't resist getting back on Tumblr to share this. What more do you want? Gorgeous video, amazing dance and a good song. I had to watch it twice and then find out more about the video and the dancer. The top image is from a video for Dreamin' by Pillar Point. The second image is from Color of My Mind a film by Daisuke Omiya the dancer and choreographer from the first video. He is amazing. The Pillar Point video was directed by Wild Combination, I don't know anything about them except that they make a mean video and are based out of Brooklyn.

[dillonmcdaniel-blog-blog]

All three of these images are from Nadav Kander's Yangtze River work; though everything he does is done amazingly well I think this series is my favorite of his work. Portrait, commercial, fashion, conceptual, digital or documentary-I don't think he knows how to make a bad image.

[dillonmcdaniel-blog-blog]

I came across Dillon Marsh's work a few days ago and have really been enjoying it. He is a South African photographer working in a documentary typological style certainly influenced by Bernd and Hilla Becher. His website contains 15 galleries that he describes as Landmarks, the above image is from his Invasive Species series in which he documents cell phone towers designed to look like trees. I really love this particular shot as it reminds me of 16th century Dutch landscape painting, Meindert Hobbema's Wooded Landscape 1663 is shown for comparison. From Dillon Marsh's Landmarks statement--"The landscapes we occupy are filled with natural and man-made features that reveal curious details about ourselves and about our relationship with the environment. Although clearly visible and tangible, they often remain hidden in our peripheral vision, occupying the margins of our day to day existence. Landmarks uncovers and explores some of these features and offers new ways of seeing them."

[dillonmcdaniel-blog-blog]

Five photographers I mentioned in critique today from top to bottom... The first image is from An Le's story Come Away With Me featured in Elle VM, next is one of my favorite shots from Chris Hannant's surfing portfolio, and the photograph of Tyler, Genevieve and their dog Bella is featured as part of Theron Humphrey's Why We Rescue project. All three of these first photographers are alum of our program here at SCAD. The forth shot is a wet plate collodian image by Robb Kendrick, regular contributor to National Geographic, and the bottom image is one of my favorite Alec Soth images from his book Sleeping by the Mississippi, the image is simply titled Charles, Vasa, Minnesota.

[dillonmcdaniel-blog-blog]

Hmmm, not finding what I was looking for but somehow I stumbled across Adam Magyar's work which I had seen a few years ago and forgot about. This image is from his series Stainless and can be viewed on his site through an interactive loupe that allows you to see it at full size. You need to check out the expression of the guy looking out the subway door just to the left of the American flag in the center of the shot, it's priceless. All the projects on his sight are really great but I think the Stainless video piece is my favorite. No on second thought they are all worth looking at, I can't decide which is my favorite.

[dillonmcdaniel-blog-blog]

Since I was talking about Joel Sartore in class today and yesterday I was discussing a series that National Geographic had done, titled The Last of the Last, this seemed like a pretty logical post to go with today. If you get a chance read the article How We Decide Which Species to Save, I heard some talk about it on NPR and it was pretty interesting.

[dillonmcdaniel-blog-blog]

This was just a random Attraction, I am not a huge The Mars Volta fan but this album cover done by the late Storm Thorgenson made me smile because of its nod to Rene Magrite.

[dillonmcdaniel-blog-blog]

I really wish I could see this in person. Prune Nourry is a contemporary artist from France and her amazing new installation Terracotta Daughters, at Magda Dansysz Gallery in Shanghai, is a wonderful reference to the Terracotta Warriors and to the lower status of daughters in much of china. The girls are all made from only a few casts, so were the warriors, which is not surprising as Nourry is very interested in artificial procreation and bioengineering.

[dillonmcdaniel-blog-blog]

My controlled lighting (studio lighting) class is working on portraits right now and I just saw these images by Toby Dixon. Not only are they beautiful but they are over the top on the styling, this work is all done in makeup and wardrobe, there is no Photoshop involved. At the moment he only has two of them on his blog and it looks as if they are shot for a campaign that has not been published yet so he is pretty hush-hush about the work. Note to all the students out there, I would be hesitant to ever put work up online before a client goes to press with it.

[dillonmcdaniel-blog-blog]

Quoted several things from these books in class this quarter and am just getting around to posting links to them. John Berger's About Looking and Susan Sontag's On Photography are great introductions to critical reading about photography. Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body had a transformative effect on the way I looked at the human body and its relationship to photography. I hate to talk a book or a movie up to much, every time I am on the receiving end of that I am almost always disappointed, but I think this is a great read and it is a very interesting format for a book.

[dillonmcdaniel-blog-blog]

Promised one of the grad students that I would do a post showing some photo installation work. From top to bottom Annette Messager, Carrie Mae Weems, Doug Aitken, Erik Kessels, Gottfried Helnwein, J.R., Christian Boltanski, Lisa Jelliffe and Kirsten Rutherford, Sophie Calle and Michael Garlington.

[dillonmcdaniel-blog-blog]

Okay this appears to be a very strange and unrelated collection but it is a list of the artists I mentioned in Photo 2 critiques last week. They are as follows: Sophie Calle, Ellen Von Unwerth, Theron Humphrey, William Wegman, Nancy Rexroth, Nan Goldin, Shirin Neshat, and Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek

[dillonmcdaniel-blog-blog]

If you are going to be in New York between now and January 19th be sure to go see Vermeer's Girl With a Pearl Earring it is on display starting today at the Frick Collection. There are also works by Rembrandt and Hals on loan from the Mauritshuis.

[dillonmcdaniel-blog-blog]

As my Controlled Lighting class works on their still life project I wanted to post links to a handful of links to artists to reiterate that the project does not need to be commercially oriented. These artists create sculptural sets that are then photographed to become the finished work of art. From top are David Levinthal, James Casebere, Laurie Simmons, Jamie Chung, Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz, Lori Nix, Lorna Simpson, Paolo Ventura, Ruth Thorne-Thomsen, and last but not least Vic Muniz.

[dillonmcdaniel-blog-blog]

Having dinner at a friends house the other night and they had rented one of the Batman movies. There was a car in the movie that I swear was modeled after Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion car from 1933. Hadn't looked that one up in a long time, forgot how funky it was.

[dillonmcdaniel-blog-blog]

Oh Banksy you have done it again. So Banksy has been in New York this month working on a project Better Out Than In and one of the events included setting up a stall in Central Park to sell signed images of his work done on canvas. The stall featured several of his iconic image all for sale for $60 and he had an older gentleman manning the both making the sales. Though people steal his work off the sides of buildings and auction houses try to sell it for hundreds of thousands of dollars the pop up shop didn't manage to break $500. It was a one day event as part of his visit to the Big Apple. You can follow the rest of the events from Better Out Than In on banksyny.com if you are in New York several of the pieces have phone numbers stenciled next to them to provide audio guides to the work.

[dillonmcdaniel-blog-blog]

Wow, this week has gotten away from me. I have so much to post but am really tired right now so I will just post what I am most excited about at the moment. I just watched the documentary Ai Weiwie:Never Sorry with my grad students. As you may have guessed it is a documentary about the Chinese artist and social critic-activist Ai Weiwei. It is the second time I've seen it and I can honestly say I liked it just as much as the first time. If you haven't seen it please do yourself a favor and check it out, if you have Netflix it is available on demand. It is also worth checking out his music video for his song Dumb Ass which deals with his 81 day disappearance/detention. The video is sort of funny and of course features footage of him eating.