Its day 3 of our Photobook Exhibition posts. Today we look at the objects we surround ourselves with. We hope that as we all stay safe at home, we can take some time to hold the objects we care for with reverence and care. Books can transport us to another space, and especially in these times of physical distancing, it is those objects that get us through our days.
Read on to celebrate these talented artists.
Kent Krugh – Speciation: Still a Camera
Where did the idea for the book come from?
I first started using X-rays as a tool to visually explore objects in 2010 when I took a box full of my daughters’ dolls to work. The X-rays were ghost-like and haunting, and I liked them. I could literally see beneath the surface (as the photography cliché goes). The source of X-rays is a linear accelerator– the same machine that is used to treat cancer patients. But treating dolls with cancer killing rays was not the end goal, of course. I continued making X-rays with other objects from diverse sources such as nature (birds, seed pods, skulls), flea markets (vacuum tubes and light meters), and musical instruments.. Five years ago, I started X-raying cameras Actually, I X-ray anything that seems interesting to me and fits on a few pieces of film or the digital imager. I have a small collection of thirty cameras that I started X-raying in 2015. I made a few prints and showed them to my photography friends. Many of them let me borrow their cameras to X-ray. After three years I had made x-rays of 130 cameras. The idea of the book came from a portfolio review of the camera X-rays by Jennifer Yoffy in Atlanta. It was published in December 2018 by Fraction Editions and 500 copies were printed.
What would you like us as viewers to take away from your after seeing your work and words?
This work uses x-rays to explore the micro-evolution of cameras and is a metaphor about the limits of evolution. While form and media may have changed, the camera is still a camera: a tool to create images by capturing photons of light. Today’s sophisticated digital cameras look and operate far differently than the first cameras of the nineteenth century, however the essentials have not changed. The photographer points a contraption with a lens towards the subject to encode its likeness on a storage medium, be it film or digital sensor. And this contraption has been manufactured in many wonderful and clever designs, the complexity usually hidden inside. While making these x-rays, I have been surprised and astonished by what I found inside the cameras. The lens, when imaged from the side, contain a multi-element train of perfectly shaped glass forms whose purpose is to collect and direct light towards the target.
In quite another sense, this project is an homage to the cameras I have owned, used, or handled. The tools of the trade, having faithfully imaged for decades, have themselves been imaged. The resulting images align with an inner desire to probe those unseen spaces and realms I sense exist, but do not observe with my eyes.
What is your next project?
I am now taking X-ray of my grandchildren’s toys.
Anything else you’d like to add about your process or series, feel free to add so I can make a fuller post about your work.
“Speciation” is the process where new species can arise when populations are reproductively isolated. The can be due to random mutations and natural selection, or hybridization between closely related species. This process of speciation has been documented by many and is difficult to deny. Many insist that this is indeed evidence of evolution in action—given enough time this same process has given rise to all forms of life on earth. And many also insist that this process can indeed produce species and variation within species, but this is the limit of evolution—no one has ever seen a dog produce a non-dog. So, to close the loop—a camera is still a camera, though tremendous diversity exists.
Bio: Kent Krugh is a fine art photographer living and working in Cincinnati. He holds a BA in Physics from Ohio Northern University and an MS in Radiological Physics from the University of Cincinnati. His work has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions both national and international and in major festivals including FotoFest in Houston and the Festival de la Luz in Buenos Aires. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors in both national and international print and portfolio competitions. Krugh has been a Photolucida Critical Mass Finalist. His work is held in various collections including the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, and the Cincinnati Art Museum. A book of camera x-rays and essays by A.D. Coleman and Barbara Tannenbaum, Speciation: Still a Camera, is recently published.
To see more of Kent Krugh‘s work log on to his website.
Speciation: Still a Camera
2018
Bree Lamb, Editor
A.D. Coleman, Author
Barbara Tannenbaum, Author
98 pages 69 images
$40
Bootsy Holler -Treasures
Where did the idea for the book come from?
The idea was formed when I started a series called Treasures: 44 objects, about all the things I’ve known for my whole life that live at my mothers house. The end product was a 6 x 8 x 3.5 inch wood box which included all 44 objects on 5 x 7 inch cards, Edition of 3. I decided to start putting all my fine art in book form for my family or anyone to easily enjoy. Treasures: objects I’ve known all my life, was perfect to start with, as I felt like it was already a book, and all the images were ready to go.
What would you like us as viewers to take away from your after seeing your work and words?
Treasures is a short story if you read the back of each card. Each card tells a bit about the life of the object. The images might trigger your emotions about objects you may have grown up with, so I want you to feel a connection to an object and have your own memory.
What is your next project?
My next book project is my Rock’n Roll photographic memoir about my time spent in the Seattle music scene. I photographed the scene between 1995 and 2010. I have so much portraiture and life images that have never been seen outside of Seattle.
Anything else you’d like to add about your process or series, feel free to add so I can make a fuller post about your work.
Treasures is a humorous look at the objects people live with, that we build our lives around, that we give breath to, and how they eventually become part of our lives – and tell our stories.
Artist Statement: These objects we live with, that we build our lives around, that we give breath too, become part of our lives — and tell our stories.
I often like to show the simple things in life through my art, and specifically in regards to “Treasures” I want to show how these ordinary objects have purpose and beauty. I hope that by photographing them, I’m getting people to stop and look at the mundane. For me, it’s a meditation on the simple things we can overlook. In my own way I’m listening to what the objects have to say. The mindfulness comes with stopping. Listening. Transcending the objects we collect from “just stuff” to “treasures.”
Bio: Bootsy Holler is an intuitive artist who has been a working photographer for over 25 years in fine art, music, editorial, and advertising. Best known for her remarkably sensitive style of portraiture, she has been noticed and awarded by the Society of Photographic Journalism and Association of Alternative News-media.
Now a fine art photographer her work examines the nature of identity and the reimagined family photo album. Bootsy has exhibited in 17 solo shows and over 30 group exhibitions over the years. Her fine art has been featured in publications including PDN, NPR, Lenscratch, and Rangefinder.
Her Visitor series was selected for Critical Mass Top 50 in 2011. She has been commissioned by commercial companies to design and produce art for their creative advertising spaces and has work in the Grammy Museum permanent collection, as well as in private collections around the United States and Europe.
To see more of Bootsy Holler‘s work log onto her website.
Objects I’ve known all my life
2019
Other contributors: PaperChase, Print & Bind
Sara Morris, Editor
Jason Adam, Designer
6.5 x 4” 94 pages 44 photos
Soft Cover Printer: Paper Chase Press
Price: $55
Linda Morrow – Caught in the Looking Glass
Artist Statement: Caught In The Looking Glass is a handmade artist’s book that celebrates random reflections that appear on a shiny surface. Twelve color images illustrate that, indeed, another world can exist within the frame of a mirror. This lay-flat book contains twelve images that were captured in or around a chateau in the South of France. Inside covers are lined with mirrored paper; the book is enclosed by a soft, paper slip case.
Bio: Linda Morrow is a fine art photographer and book artist who lives in Long Beach, CA. Her childhood played out on a ranch in Arizona where she spent long hours memorizing the landscape and using her imagination to amuse herself. This background combined with years of teaching likely brought about her love of books and her interest in the process of making them.
To see more of Linda Morrow‘s work log onto her website.
Caught in the Looking Glass
2018
Size of book 8×8”
Other contributor:
Jace Graf – binder, consultant
32 pages 12 photographs
Binding: open spine stitching
inside covers: mirrored paper
with handmade slip case
hand-made
Price- $175
Melisa Eder – The Beauty of Bodega Flowers
Artist Statement: As a diehard New Yorker, I have often admired the flowers one may find in her neighborhood bodega. Bodegas are unique and ubiquitous to the various neighborhoods in New York City; of course, pending gentrification. Their locations span from the Bronx to the Lower Eastside and Queens, Staten Island and Brooklyn. They are reliable 24 hour stores where one can purchase a beverage, lottery tickets, smokes or a sandwich. Many are also places where you could buy a colorful bouquet of flowers in a pinch. Wrapped in cellophane, these bouquets are specifically identified as ‘Bodega Flowers’. Some may view these flowers as ‘cheap or less than’ but that’s simply not the case. Roses come in every color, Daisies are pretty, and fluorescent Pom Poms are for the taking. Bodega Flowers are for everyone and they are truly beautiful!
Bio: Melissa Eder’s work has been shown nationally and internationally; venues include: Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York University’s Broadway Windows Gallery, Art in General, the Aperture Foundation, the Humble Arts Foundation, the Whitney Houston Biennial, the Parlor Gallery, the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
She was an artist-in-residence at the Henry Street Settlement in New York City, the Saltonstall Foundation in Ithaca, New York and the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. She has received numerous grants including funding from the Puffin Foundation and two Manhattan Community Arts Fund grants from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Her work has been reviewed by the New York Times, highlighted in Feature Shoot and various other publications. She participated in the Satellite Art Show during Art Basel Miami 2016. Melissa works in Brooklyn as an artist in residence through the chashama studio residency.
To see more of Melissa Eder‘s work log on to her website.
The Beauty of Bodega Flowers
2019
12×12”
20 pages 10 images
Hard Cover
A singular flower photo sticker is adhered to each page opposite the image of a group of flowers
$120
Dan McCormick – Photograms
Where did the idea for the book come from?
The idea for this project came when I found out that the new art teacher in my son’s grade school was teaching the class to color within the lines. I knew that if I confronted her in an argument that she had a bad idea, I would loose the argument. So I choose to undermine her teaching by having my son create photograms in our bedroom – bathroom. I began that series in 1984 with each of my kids taking turns posing and then we developed the photograms in the bathroom. I came back to photograms fifteen years later, in 1999 with professional models. A second time I came back to the photograms with professional models around 2015. This when I came up with the idea of creating a book with these three sets of images.
What would you like us as viewers to take away from your after seeing your work and words?
I am a formalist. I wish the audience to read the symbolism of the juxtaposition with the human body and to enjoy the lights and darks and the lines of the figure with odd shapes of the elements.
What is your next project?
I am doing cell phone grids with images of nudes, 3 x 3 and 3 x 4.
Photograms
2018
Afterword by Lyle Rexer
Edited by James Luciana
12 x 12” 39 pages 41 images
Hard cover Blurb
