Category: on photographers

Adal, Past Tense

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, about, creativity, on photographersTagged

from the past. He has ended, as I continue. Death is a reminder. To some it calls up life, while to others it calls up fears.

Adál Alberto Maldonado (November 1, 1948 – December 9, 2020), styled as ADÁL, was a photographer who lived and worked in New York City and Puerto Rico. (wikipedia)

Seems so brief. Just a ripple.

making the caption carry meaning across the boundary.

“Draw from your personal experience. Whether it’s a search for an identity, the celebration of beauty, a concern with correcting chaos in the world, or the simple entertainment of a thought experiment, what will set you apart and original will be how you see the world filtered through your personal experience.” Adal

Adal, dropped his last name and his darkroom manipulations after Lisette Modal’s visit to SFAI.

We were, for a few years, known to each other; grad students at San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI). After leaving the art institute I went to Syracuse, to EXS as a teacher. Light Work/ Community Darkroom was still installing equipment; still generating self-awareness; coming to define a role. I brought a mailing list of several hundred names and addresses of mostly West Coast, young unknowns.

I gave the entire list to Tom and Phil. And, the list of my “must show these people” … fewer than ten people. Adal was number three on that list.

Teachers, then:

Jerry Burchard. Linda Connor. Henry Wessel. John Collier. Margery Mann. Fred Martin (his class was one of the few required courses; grad students across all programs attended.)

Some Fellow Students:

Ingeborg Gerdes. Bill Arnold. Harry Bowers. Mike Mandel. Larry Sultan.

Light Work

https://webionaire.com/2017/06/23/getting-here-out-of-art-school/(opens in a new tab)

From my 1971 notebook:

the only thing
left to photograph is air. 
smell.

====
misprints are the key. as key to 
time -- fade -- light
(adal) wessel (difference is time, or space place light)
motion --- light dark
outlier -- misprint.

It has taken me too many delays, too many re-writes to get this posted. While that doesn’t (shouldn’t) matter to you, it does bother me. When good artists die, we miss more than anther life.

Remembering isn’t rebirth. Not even for an optimist like Adal.

Steve Fitch: notecard

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, on photographers, On The Road

Steve Fitch earned a BA from UC Berkeley in 1971, an MFA from the University New Mexico in 1978, and has taught photography at UC Berkeley, the University of Colorado in Boulder, Princeton University, and since 1990, at the College of Santa Fe. He is the recipient of three NEA Fellowships, and his widely exhibited photographs are in permanent collections at institutions including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; Museum San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; and the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, among others. Fitch’s monographs are Diesels and Dinosaurs (1976), Marks in Place: Contemporary Responses to Rock Art (1988), Gone: Photographs of Abandonment on the High Plains (2003), Llano Estacado: Island in the Sky (2011), Motel Signs (2011), and American Motel Signs 1980-2008 (2016).

American Motel Signs II.
Photographs by Steve Fitch.
The Velvet Cell, 2020.   Cat# ZJ561   
Vanishing Vernacular. Western Landmarks.
Photographs by Steve Fitch. Contribution by Toby Jurovics.
George F Thompson Publishing, 2018.   Cat# ZH501    ISBN-13: 978-1938086601
American Motel Signs. 1980-2008.
Photographs by Steve Fitch.
The Velvet Cell, London, 2016.   Cat# ZH054    ISBN-13: 978-1908889379
Steve Schapiro.
Photographs by Steve Schapiro.
Hatje Cantz, 2012.   Cat# DS047    ISBN-13: 978-3775734264
Llano Estacado. An Island in the Sky (Voice in the American West).
Edited by Stephen Bogener. Photographs by Peter Brown, Rick Dingus, Steve Fitch, Miguel Gandert, Tony Gleaton & Andrew John Liccardo.
Texas Tech University Press, 2011.   Cat# ZE965    ISBN-10: 0896726827
Motel Signs. One Picture Book #71.
Photographs by Steve Fitch.
Nazraeli Press, Portland, 2011.   Cat# TR370    ISBN-13: 978-1590053256
Gone. Photographs of Abandonment on the High Plains.
Photographs and text by Steve Fitch.
University Of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2003.   Cat# NM168    ISBN-10: 0826329608
Steve Pyke. Philosophers.
Photographs by Steve Pyke.
Cornerhouse, Manchester, 1994.   Cat# PK146    ISBN-10: 0948797762
Marks in Place. Contemporary Responses to Rock Art.
Photographs by Linda Connor, Rick Dingus, Steve Fitch, John Pfahl, and Charles Roitz. Essays by Polly Schaafsma and Keith Davis.
The University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1987.   Cat# NM035    ISBN-10: 0826309755
Beyond Color.
Photographs by Harry Bowers, Barbra Esher, Stephen Collins, Steve Fitch, Jack Fulton, Richard Misrach, Arthur Ollman, Barbara Thompson, others
Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, 1980.   Cat# SF013    ISBN-10: 0000000000
Diesels and Dinosaurs.
Photographs by Steve Fitch.
Long Run Press, Berkeley, 1976.   Cat# CS002    ISBN-10: 0000000000
a half hour well spent:

Mr. Fitch’s website is at: http://www.stevefitch.com/