© kjm
We had 17 inches of snow in 24 hours yesterday - a real spectacle, and enough to even make Wisconsinites a bit nervous. What looks like grade school theatrical snow, above, is actually morning snow piling up on my front window ledge. Aside from venturing out to shovel (4 times), I watched from a warm, dry seat at my desk most of the day.
Richard, Jason, Courtney, Juliet, Colin and Rory © kjm
After a month of travel, I've enjoyed settling in back home and working on several local projects. I've been designing a small booklet of personal work, which will be available, along with a print, on the blog soon (stay tuned). And I've been photographing participants in the Milwaukee Artist Resource Network's mentor program (a few, above) for an upcoming catalog. I'm a fan of the program, and am also lucky to be the mentor to Mel Trittin of Cigarettes and Purity fame.
decaying lemon © kjm
When I started photographing around my house and studio, it was an exercise to look closer at my immediate surroundings and to try to see the new - as opposed to the old and familiar, which is what I look for in the Early Places pictures. The growing subset series of details of mold and neglect will now be called, In Defense of Bad Housekeeping. The rule: Just be my sloppy self and see what appears under the swipe of a white glove (if I had a white glove). Unfortunately or fortunately, there's lots of material to work with.
© michael nye
I love this photo by the photographer Michael Nye. It comes from his project, Fine Line, a series "voices, stories and portraits" that addresses mental illness through large format black and white photographs and audio interviews. In the exhibit of the work, Nye presented 55 portraits, accompanied by their own audio player, allowing viewers to listen to a 4-6 minute recording of each subject's voice. Nye's projects are humanistic, and he appropriately travels his them widely. Two of his other projects are Children of Children and About Hunger.
© kjm
The Ramada Inn I'm staying at tonight in southwestern Wisconsin apparently used to be called The White House. There's a small dome, and Presidential portraits adorn the lobby. George HW Bush is perched above the coffeemaker, and here's Bill Clinton, looking young, but a bit dejected that I've decided to vote for Obama.
© uncle kjm
While on Maui, I spent a day with Dick and Eiko, old family friends, who I hadn't seen in many years. They were close friends of my parents when they were all in their 20's, and later, our families took vacations together. Dick told me some nice, old stories about my Dad - how he helped them get settled in Minneapolis, about many hours fishing with him, and about his generosity.
It made me think of the picture above, made this past Christmas. The three fathers of these kids, along with myself, all grew up within blocks of eachother in the same neighborhood. We're lifelong friends, and talking with Dick got me wondering if there might be a similar conversation 40 years from now - between one of these kids and one of us - telling old stories about their dad as a younger man...
© kjm
Unfortunately, I spent my last 3 days in Hawaii becoming increasing sick with some type of achy flu bug (and still feeling bad on day 5). I missed out on spending time with the relatives, and didn't even make it to the family store. But it was nice to catch up with cousin Millie and her husband Curt, whose couch became my home. Millie was sorting old photographs from her mother's many albums - the smiling woman in the center photograph, above, is my greatgrandmother Matsu.
© kjm
Manju and mochi from Two Ladies Kitchen (a favorite of my Dad's), left, and cousin Annie with her 3-month old son, Zyan Ha-Ahu.
In an odd and intriguing move, the Library of Congress, sooshers to the nation, have started to post pictures from their collection of photographs on a flickr page. There's no telling if they're also working on a myspace account, but I'm all for wide access to historical pictures. It's fun to poke around in the collection, and a search for "Tule Lake" came up with this quite lovely photo, above. Likely shot with a Speed Graphic, it's appealing graphically, and the washed out color is lovely - but there's also something suggestive about the of body language of the Japanese American internees...
© kjm
Friday: Western coast of Ireland, Atlantic Ocean.
Sunday: Western coast of Maui, Pacific Ocean.
I just arrived tonight and will be shooting tomorrow morning. The photo above is from my last trip here...
© pedro guimaraes
I love this photo by the photographer Pedro Guimaraes. Pedro is a Portuguese photographer and the photo is from a series called, "It's A Fake World." The (straight) picture was shot at The Window Of The World theme park in Shenzhen, China, where some of the world’s wonders are reproduced at smaller scales. Pedro is represented by 4See.
As an aside, what if one were to accidentally step on the President?
© kjm
Another small picture from Ireland - netting in the fishing harbor at Rosses Point, County Sligo.
© kjm
On a trip to Alaska many years ago with Andy, we were preparing for a short jaunt into Denali National Park for some backcountry camping. At the visitor center, where you obtain the frighteningly deeply scratched bear-proof food containers, the park service requires you to watch a safety film. Andy and I snickered at the film's backpacker, who was dressed in a late 1970's outfit, and walked through the tundra yelling, "Hey, bear!" in order to warn of his presence. Funny thing is, once you're actually out there in bear territory, you find yourself shouting the same call (albeit in cooler clothes).
I'm in Ireland right now, and it struck me as I left the Shannon airport for points north, that I've been driving on the right side of the road for about, well, 25 years. Driving on the left is an odd sensation, and I've thought about the usefulness of that film in Alaska. So everytime I get into the car, and at odd intervals while driving, I'll shout to myself, "Left!" And because there can be sheep in the road, ocassionally, "Sheep!"
I'm here for an airline magazine, and when on assignment, I'll never post images here prior to their publication. But I'll still shoot pictures for myself, like this one, above, of a random piece of linoleum in the village of Roundstone. If it were a map of Ireland, I'd have started somewhere above the lowermost diamond, and am now out of sight above. Hopefully driving on the left.
© derek stroup
I love this photo by the photographer Derek Stroup. His pictures from this series look a bit like paintings, and remind me of a flatter, photographic Wayne Thiebaud cake. They contain both nostalgic subject matter and an oddly futuristic presentation. Stroup works his mouse on photographs of candy bars and bags of potato chips that he buys at his local convenience store, and I love that. Don't we all have early memories of buying candy bars at some local drugstore counter? And, of course, the all-powerful and recognizable corporate logo is something that intrigues me and influences my own work.
Of the work, Stroup says, "I am curious about this moment of suspended recognition. With labels, we instantly assign these objects to their proper category in our mind. With labels removed, there is a moment when our categorical impulse is suspended. It is similar, but different from, the sensation of encountering a foreign language. These photographs seem like pictures of sculptures—perfect objects that don’t exist anywhere in the world. "
A small, limited edition book of the work is available through Printed Matter.
© kjm
We've had a great winter so far in Wisconsin, the kind I remember from childhood.
Ice crystals in the morning light, as seen through my window shade, above.
© michal czerwonka, via the website The Stumping Grounds
On our way back from Kansas City, Marilu and I stopped in the small Iowa town of Nevada to catch a campaign appearance by Barack Obama. In the week leading up to the caucuses, this was a classic candidate event - held in an elementary school cafeteria and filled with down jacket-clad locals, energetic volunteers, and earpiece-toting secret service men.
I have a soft spot for Iowa during election years. Back in 1988, I was a college student in Des Moines, and spent much of that year photographing candidates rather than attending class. On any given day, for months leading up to the caucuses, you could photograph candidates in living rooms and church halls, and rub elbows with photographers like Steve Liss and Ken Jarecke. This was before I had my first newspaper internship, and I learned a great deal from Dennis Garrels, the local UPI staff photographer. Dennis was kind and patient, and at the time there was a great underdog aspect (to say the least) about stringing for UPI. It was an inspiring time for me, setting in stone the idea that I wanted to make pictures for a living.
The woman seated next to me at the Obama event was serious and thoughtful about the candidates - she had seen all the Democrats in person, and was still undecided. Don't get me started on how flawed our electoral college process is, but I'll say this: If the rest of the country was as knowledgeable about presidential politics as Iowans are, we'd all be better off.
The prettiest Christmas tree I've seen this season is the one above, made by my almost-five-year-old nephew, Kale.
Happy holidays and hopes for a more peaceful new year...
© kjm
As a kid, I don't ever remember a fruitcake finding it's way into our house at Christmas. With a mom from Hawaii, early December brought a series of battered, brown paper-wrapped boxes from across the Pacific. They held wrapped presents (usually super cool, exotic surfing t-shirts for us kids) and a bounty of food items not easily found in the Heartland. Sheets of nori, sticky bags of crack seeds (li hing mui), jars of furikake, takuwan, and small blue cans of macadamia nuts. The most prized item in each of these boxes was the Hawaiian Host chocolate-covered macadamia nuts. Thirty years ago, these were exotic and tasty treats, only to been seen but once a year. Unfortunately, the candy took on a smiliar regifting role as fruitcake, and much to our dismay, the boxes went unopened. Maybe my parents would open one box, but the other five were usually taken to some holiday dinner party or office function. "They'd better enjoy those..." is what we always thought.
My Aunty Lyn still sends a box of Hawaiian goodies each year, and mine arrived today - just in the nick of time. Rivaling the chocolates these days is the homemade jaboticaba jelly, still truly a treat in my Midwestern refrigerator. And in keeping with family tradition, the box of (untouched) chocolates will be heading to Kansas City with me, to be given to Marilu's family. They'd better enjoy them...
© kjm
Christmas came early today, as my letter carrier dropped off a big heavy box (sorry, Jerry), with copies of the American Photography 23 book. It's beautifully designed, with a die cut cover and 300+ pages of pictures.
The book is laid out in alphabetical order, so my fast food pictures are in ridiculously close proximity to work by Annie Leibovitz, Mary Ellen Mark, Robert Maxwell and Simon Norfolk.
© kjm
I'll continue to champion the visual benefits of bad housekeeping. This stone-like ball of compressed paper was found in the nylon pocket of my 20-year-old Patagonia pile jacket today. It only gets occasional wear, so there's no telling how long the paper was turning in the washing machine like a stone on an ocean beach. Likely, it's a pristine white mass of important business receipts.
© kjm
It seems there's a slightly chainletterish game of tag going on in the photographerblogworld. The first I read of it was at Liz Kuball's blog and, slow runner that I am, I was recently tagged by Susana Raab. Not to worry, no Nigerian banks are involved.
I'll skip posting the actual rules, but basically, the tagette is supposed to list 7 strange/interesting life facts, and then tag 7 other bloggers to do the same. No pressure, but if you pass it along without breaking the chain, our President turns into a lump of coal. (OK, I just made that part up.)
So here goes:
1. A career test in high school told me I should be a park ranger. A guy in college once asked me to be a drug dealer. I chose instead the lucrative world of freelance editorial photography.
2. I was born with the name Jason, but my parents changed their minds, and I left the hospital as Kevin.
3. I was a member of a fictitious German disco tambourine band (but who wasn't?). It was reported in the press, so it must be true.
4. My nickname in high school, Gooch, came from a reoccuring bully character on Different Strokes. Some of the oldest peeps still use it and yes, it was meant to be (highly) ironic.
5. Acting on bad peer advice, the first album I ever bought was Foghat Live. Having evolved somewhat, the last album I bought was Rilo Kiley's Under the Backlight.
6. I have a slightly greater than normal fear of dog poop in the grass of public parks.
7. I am not related to Hayao Miyazaki. Or Kevin Bacon.
I won't take it personally if no one wants to play, but I hereby tag Mel Tritten, John Loomis, Thomas Broening, Claire and Jeremy Weiss, Timothy Briner, Kevin German, and Christian Patterson.
© kjm
A brief Art Basel Miami recap from a much colder location in northern Wisconsin. The photo above is of Mike Brenner's scrappy Hotcakes Gallery setup at the Aqua Hotel, room no. 122.
There are ridiculous amounts of art to be seen at these fairs, and the density can be a bit overwhelming. You get an over-served, post-Thanksgiving dinner feeling, with no Lazy-Boy recliner to come to your rescue. In the 5th hour of looking, another (too large) Thomas Struth picture is like another (too large) spoonful of mashed potatoes that you don't need.
That said, I should never complain about seeing lots of artwork. I took in most of the main fair, and also see the satellite fairs Aqua, Pulse, Red Dot, Bridge, Geisai, APAD, and Photo Miami. And I did get to see some real life photographers as well (wow, someone actually makes this stuff!), including Sonja Thomsen, Amy Stein, and Jeffery Salter. And a treat was meeting up with John Loomis and his fiance for lunch.
A few things that stayed with me were David Almeida's plant photos at Geisai, Mariana Cook's sweet Close to Home series at Lee Marks and some solarized silver prints by a photographer named Anthony Pearson.
© darren hauck
My local coffeetalk pal Darren Hauck has new work, in the form of a multimedia podcast, over at Daylight Magazine. Darren's work couldn't be more different than mine - he's brave and dives right in (he: molotov cocktails; me: just cocktails), and this work is a good example of that. The photographs are from two recent trips covering the elections in Guatemala, and he shares the podcast page with notable photographers Danny Wilcox Frazier and the late Alexandra Boulat.
If Harry Callahan Was, For Some Reason, Helping Me Shovel This Morning © kjm
Did I mention I'm heading to Miami?
© kjm
I'm thrilled to have some work later this week at Aqua, an art fair that's part of the larger Art Basel Miami, the four-day contemporary art epicenter for galleries, collectors and art makers. Mike Brenner, a heavy hitter and heavy lifter on the Milwaukee art scene, will bring his Hotcakes Gallery to warmer climes and the Aqua Hotel. Each gallery at the fair commandeers a single room in the boutique hotel, with art stuffed under beds and a hipster crowd factor of 11.
The work I'll be showing is from the Fast Food series, and this is the first time I've printed or framed any of the work. Each image will be part of an edition of 15, and I chose to make c-prints for the first time, as opposed to inkjet. There are certainly pros and cons each way, but I think c-prints are still more uniform and broadly understood in the art world. Terrance Reimer, a longtime acquaintance and great photographer, who works as a master printer at West Coast Imaging, made the mighty fine prints. I'll speak more about the thought pattern behind the size and presentation of the pictures soon.
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