Katie Cooke is featured artist at f295

pinhole self-portrait by Katie Cooke

The mind-bendingly awesome pinhole/lens photographer/camera hacker Katie Cooke of slowlight pinhole blog is currently the featured artist at f295, a pinhole and DIY photography discussion forum.

Katie writes, "…given that I still don’t have my gallery live, it’s a way of seeing 15 of my pinhole photographs without wading through my flickr stream. It’s a mixture of work, including portraits, self-portraits, and some images from Morocco.

"(f295 has recently launched a DIY forum, too, so it’s not just lensless but covers a wider range of camera, lens, and print hacking.)"

I’d go on and on about how amazing her work is, but I’m afraid I wouldn’t know where to stop. I’ll leave it at this: if you aren’t familiar with it, you’re missing out on something special.

Check it out on f295 and Flickr.

(Full disclosure: I know her online.)

Via slowlight pinhole blog

Jon Madison’s Garish Snapshots exhibition in Seattle, WA, US

Flyer for Jon Madisons Garish Snapshots exhibition in Seattle, WA, US

I’ve been following Seattle-based photographer Jon Madison‘s work on Flickr since I opened an account there about a year ago and have been consistently impressed by the quality and diversity of his work—I never know what’s coming next, but I know it’s going to be interesting. He’s also go the rare quality of being a prolific poster, which generally means a few gems buried in a completely unedited swamp of so-so photos (like how most of us shoot), but somehow, almost all of it is good.

While I haven’t seen the show yet, I know it’s bound to please. I’ll be in Seattle while the show is up and am going to make a point of seeing it.

The show runs for the month of April, 2006, at the Starbucks at Met Park North Tower, 1220 Howell St., Seattle, WA, US.

Bitfall: digital imaging with water

Bitfall sample image in water

interactivearchitecture.org writes, "Bitfall is an installation where water is being used to project images taken from the internet. A computer observes various news websites and chooses thereafter the images to be displayed. 128 nozzles are controlled by synchronised magnetic valves, and the water drops falling to the ground shape the images. The visual information is only tangible for a second before the drops merge to become water again."

While not strictly photography, I’d say this counts as cool as experimental imaging.

Visit Web site (Deutsch/German)

Bitfall valves and sample text

Via interactivearchitecture.org via infosthetics

Venus In Hell exhibition at MARS, Melbourne, AU

MARS Art Rooms press release:

VENUS IN HELL at MARS Gallery, Melbourne, from 6th July, 2006

Melbourne Art Rooms is proud to announce VENUS IN HELL, an exhibition of new works on paper by the well-known young Australian painter, Hazel Dooney, along with photography and video by Hazel Dooney and Creed O’Hanlon. The exhibition will open on 6th July, this year, at MARS, 418 Bay Street, Melbourne.

VENUS IN HELL is Hazel Dooney’s first Australian exhibition for nearly two years. It is the culmination of a long, hermitic process of change for an artist best-known for her large, accessible, high gloss enamel paintings of modern women in contexts that both reflect upon and remorselessly parody the objectivisation of women in contemporary advertising and entertainment media.

The new work in VENUS IN HELL is radically different. Raw and intimate, it embraces the primal impulses of primitive art, and reconciles a commitment to the figurative with a freer, more expressionistic exploration of line and texture. Working with watercolour, pencil and ink on cold-pressed paper, Dooney explores chimerical layers of symbolism drawn from African and Carribean voodoo, merging them with diaristic texts, poems and ritual incantations.

There is also in these new paintings Dooney’s interpretation of the indolent, self-destructiveness of living in Los Angeles. She first found inspiration in the Seventies’ essays and fiction of the American writer, Joan Didion – notably her sparse recreation of Hollywood’s insidious corruption in the novel, Play It As It Lays – but later found in LA’s hedonism themes in common with voodoo spirtualism, not least disturbing sense of individual ‘possession’. “In voodoo culture, a zombie is called a ‘give man’, meaning you exert control over the curse victim and can, if you want, just give them away,” Dooney explains. “That pretty much describes what I saw of most people’s relationship with the entertainment business in LA: so many, especially the young and pretty, are just ‘give men’.”

“One part magical realism, one part punk rock,” is how one writer has described Dooney’s new work. It’s probably a good way to describe Dooney herself.

As in nearly all her paintings over the past decade, Dooney’s portrayals of aspects of herself are central to these new works. However, unlike the polished, glamourised Amazonians of her enamel paintings, her self-depiction is now forensic, contorted, and unsettling.

It is the woman beneath the recurring figure of the paintings that is explored in the photography that is also a part of the VENUS IN HELL show. Shot over a period of two years in collaboration with another Australian, Creed O’Hanlon, there is a conflicting sense of naturalism and artifice in the larger colour and black and white images, particularly in the solitary nudes, which are an attempt to strip bare, literally, the psycho-sexual tension that underpins Dooney’s best work. There are also traditional images, as well as video, that are documentary, offering insights into the artist’s everyday and the processes of her creativity.

Within the context of this exhibition, and the exciting, yet unsettling new works on paper that are its focus, Dooney’s photography is an attempt at a stark, unembarrassed honesty unprecedented by any other Australian artist since Brett Whitely.

The exhibition will be opened on the evening of 6th July by the Rt. Hon. Jeff Kennett, the former Premier of Victoria.

Winter ’06 “Hey, Hot Shot!” photo exhibition at jen bekman, NYC

The Winter ’06 edition of jen bekman gallery‘s Hey, Hot Shot! competition is about to open, featuring photography by Noah Addis, Benoit Aquin, Jessica Bruah, Claire Hester, Nicole Jean Hill, Andrew Long, Bob O’Connor, Erin Siegal, Rebecca Smeyne, and Rafil Kroll-Zaidi.

Opening reception on Wednesday, 15 March, 2006, 6–8pm, at jen bekman, 6 Spring St., New York, NY, US.

The show runs Thursday–Sunday, 15–19 March, 2006, Noon–6pm.

Ingo Guenther pinhole/alt process exhibition at NWZ-Galerie im Pressehaus, DE

This exhibition, "Camera obscura – Bilder von Oldenburg", features gelatin silver, cyanotype, and salt prints of pinhole photography by Ingo Guenther.

The show runs 1 April–28 April, 2006, at NWZ-Galerie im Pressehaus, Peterstr. 28–34, 26121 Oldenburg, DE.

Gallery hours are from Monday–Sunday 9am–6pm.

Opening on Friday, 1 April, 2006 at 6pm.

Via the Spitbite Pinhole Discussion List

“StenEAUpe” pinhole photography show at Centre Culturel André Malraux, FR

The "StenEAUpe" exhibition features pinhole photography by Claude Cogny, Christophe Frot, Marie-Noëlle Leroy and Erick Mengual.

The show runs from 13 March–2 May, 2006, at Centre Culturel André Malraux, 10 Av. Francis de Pressense-93350 Le Bourget, FR.

Opening

Friday, 17 March, 2006, 7–9pm

Gallery hours

Monday to Friday: 9–12 and 2–6pm
Tuesday and Thursday: til 8pm
Saturday: 9am–12pm

More information at Actuphoto (en Français)

Via the Spitbite Pinhole Discussion List