don't miss it: in the city

© kjm

In NYC for a few days as Marilu does studio visits and takes in the latest Whitney Biennial. Some highlights:

At MOMA, geek that I am, my first stop was a show called 50 Years of Helvetica. It was very small, though, just a corner of one of the design galleries. In Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today, there were all kinds of good things. John Baldessari's photograph called Common Memory Colors, a beautiful Jennifer Bartlett, David Batchelor's Found Monochromes of London, and Jim Lambie's vinyl tape floor (iPhone self portrait, above.) I've always loved On Kawara's date paintings, but never had the chance to see the corresponding color chart journal, so that was a treat. The link above for the show is a nice online exhibit, where you can see everything I've just mentioned.

The Archive Fever show at ICP had beautiful photographs from Afghanistan by Fazal Sheikh. I'm not sure what I think of Sherrie Levine's straight appropriation of Walker Evans photos, but I'll need to read more about her in the catalog.

In Chelsea, Bruce Yonemoto's pictures at Alexander Gray - portraits of Asian American men dressed in Civil War uniforms; Marcel Dzama at David Zwirner - drawings, along with journal pages of sketches, sculptural dioramas, and even a scratchy film.

Lastly, Thomas Holten's show, The Lams of Ludlow Street at Sasha Wolf. The most memorable photo in the show (the third in the online gallery link) could tell the whole story on its own.

Whew. OK, today, it's on to the Whitney...

i love this photo, #18

Oil Self Portrait (2), 2007 © sonja thomsen

I love this photo by the photographer Sonja Thomsen. Sonja has been photographing ever-changing water surfaces for some time, and more recently began photographing oil. Of the oil pictures that include her own reflection, she notes that "photographing oil has been a challenge as it is essentially a black mirror. I decided to stop fighting my reflection and work with it. I have been interested in how the form mirrors the oil and how the shadow allows a look into the oil rather than the reflection of the sky."

within reach: unbleached

Coffee Filter © kjm

great leap backwards

© stretch

It's a Leap Year day today, and the anniversary of a legendary swansong performance by the band, The Rawls. The year was 2000, and they had what it took: guts, fierce determination, and most importantly, a quality ink jet printer. The band got some good press on the strength of their debut, Fictitious, but in the end - dropped by their label, Wink Wink, and unpopular with most audiences - they faded to black. The final (some would argue their first) performance, the band's Last Waltz as it were, was at The Comet, a sleepy Cincinnati bar best known for raucous Kiwanis Club meetings. If you were there that night, and were one of the lucky ones to get a copy of Fictitious, hang onto it - I've seen signed copies on eBay going for small fortunes.

back of the fridge

Lunar Surface or Mold on Vegetarian Chili - You Be The Judge © kjm

above and below

© kjm

A while ago, trying to figure out if there were pictures to be made while waiting to catch planes, I started shooting detail photos of bad airport carpet beneath my feet. I'm not quite sure in what manner I'd present these pictures - maybe in some kind of quilt-like pattern, or morphed together to create a travelogue pattern. The bad carpet is much easier to find in the U.S., as the European airports seem to have lots of granite or tile. In the Mexico City airport, the carpet was quite gorgeous, as were the walls and ceilings, all round porthole-style shapes (above, reflected in a pane of glass), allowing beautiful light into the space.

as seen: nine

Nine Bugs In (About) Nine Minutes © kjm

It's been a good few days here in Mexico City - shooting food of all types, from street vendor tacos to high end restaurant fare. Not too many personal pictures made, though, so I spent a few minutes shooting on the street in the Zona Rosa neighborhood this morning.

comida rápida

Paseo de La Reforma Location © kjm

I'm in Mexico City this week, shooting a food and travel story for a European magazine, Saisonkuche. While walking to the metro this morning, I came across an abandoned Kentucky Fried Chicken. Ironically, it's the first KFC I've shot for my series, but I'm not sure if this qualifies for inclusion, since it's abroad. On the authentic Mexican fast food side, I had a delicious, hot shrimp empanada today, with avacado, onions and salsa - for breakfast, no less.

don't miss it: their take

© brown cannon III

Deb Pang Davis and Mike Davis have started a new blog of photographer interviews called Raw Take. Between the two of them, they're connected to some of the best photographers working, so this promises to be a good site to bookmark. One of the nice things about an archive-type site (like The Photographs Not Taken) is that it's easy to revisit when time permits.

I shot a story in France for Deb when she was at Virtuoso Life, and she writes the blog Coco Ink. When I was in Portland this past fall, I had the chance to meet up with the two for a quick coffee.

The first interview posted is with Brown Cannon III. I'm particularly excited, since Cannon has been a mainstay in my Rock Stars bookmarks folder for quite a while. I'm not as interested in his fine art water images, but his editorial travel work is among the best there is, and it always inspires me.

within reach: morning

© kjm

The days are starting to get noticeably longer.

happy...

© kjm

valentines day.

his and hers

Highway 66 Location, #1 and #2 © kjm

Marilu and I traveled to Winslow, Arizona on Saturday, where we resisted the urge to photograph each other standing on a corner, and spent the night at the La Posada hotel. It's a charming old railroad hotel, designed by the architect Mary Colter, and recently refurbished. On the way to the hotel, though, we had two great finds - one for her and one for me. For her (being from a family of geologists), a big hole in the ground - in the form of a 4,000 ft. wide meteor crater. And for me, a nearly equally dramatic closed-down Burger King (this one was fantastic!) on the outskirts of town.

don't miss it: why walk?

© margarita cabrera

Marilu's Car Culture show opened this weekend, one of the last she curated for SMoCA before leaving for her new job. The show is fantastic, of course, with photography by Robert Frank and photos from Amy Stein's Stranded series, as well this life-size soft sculpture of a Hummer (so very Phoenix) by Margarita Cabrera.

within reach: white

© 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.

local

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.

within reach: lemony

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.

i love this photo, #17

© 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.

as seen: west wingish

© 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.

tell me about

© 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...

matsu, smiling

© 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.

as seen: hilo, hawaii

© 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.

we the pictures

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...

as seen: above and below

© kjm

A banyan tree looms above, Cook Pines, below.

sea to sea

© 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...

I love this photo, #16

© 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?

as seen: lines

© kjm

Another small picture from Ireland - netting in the fishing harbor at Rosses Point, County Sligo.

as seen: many alive, one dead

Sheep Carcass, Achill Island, Ireland © kjm

left

© 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.

i love this photo, #15

© 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.

within reach: the color of cold

© 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.