Category: on photographers

taking notice: Ingrid Pollard

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, on photographers, The Why, Theory: narrative, visual mind

in the morning IG feed, from someone I follow but don’t know; didn’t know very much about, even. They posted (ukegirl99 ingy pingy) about being awarded the Hasselblad award for 2024. I looked, but didn’t follow up… I don’t put note to the Hasselblad awards, thinking them commercial achievement.

It is easy to overlook things in a world of many things to look at. We look quickly. I do — even though I restrict how much hits my screen — enters my world of books. I know that if I’ve seen her work, the early work, I wouldn’t have noted it, even though the hand-coloring would have appealed. Work has to sustain the artist longer than is usually possible.

Awards make the work something to re-visit. That is more valuable than the dollar amount. In preparing this note to myself, I dug into the Hasselblad award enough to give it value; value because of the artists they have recognized. In one sense, that is what the company+foundation probably hopes happens.

That was that. In reading my email, intending to delete the Hasselblad cast, I saw more about Ingrid Pollard, and the award. Seeing more, I looked for more. Her site: http://www.ingridpollard.com/ No mention, the news is more recent than the website “news” section.

That will change.

[In the video, she recounts her “notification” story. At first, on the phone, she doubted the veracity. It took the email to convince her. In an eWorld, even the one connected because of the phones, we doubt the voice on the other end of the line. Sound isn’t the eye. We prefer text. That thing we can read, show, share. The sound of the distant other is gone in a click.]

From the email: the Hasselblad Award honours individuals whose work significantly impacts the field and pushes artistic boundaries. Ingrid Pollard, the 44th recipient of the Hasselblad Award, joins an exclusive group of previous Hasselblad Award laureates, including Ansel Adams (1981), Cindy Sherman (1994), Hiroshi Sugimoto (2001), Dayanita Singh (2022), and 2023 laureate, Carrie Mae Weems.

Quite a list. Diverse, brought about by the years of an expanding photography world.

  • 1981, Adams. USD 20,000. “With clarity and precision, he visualized the spectacular vistas and rich native details of the Western United States. In 1942 Ansel Adams developed the “zone system” which employs careful sensitometric control and adjustments of exposure and development. As an artist, a teacher, and a master of photographic technique, Ansel Adams’ influence has been felt by successive generations of photographers from all over the world.”

  • 1999, Sherman. SEK 500,000. “Much of her work has been concerned with the position of women in a consumerist and media-driven society, and with the ironies and contradictions of contemporary women’s lives. She can also be seen as a significant “re-inventor” of two important traditions in photographic art – the photo surrealism of the 1930s and the photo-based conceptual art of the 1960s. Cindy Sherman’s influence on successive generations of artists and photographers has been, and continues to be, immense.“

  • 2001, Sugimoto.  SEK 500,000. “Inspired by Renaissance paintings and early 19th century photography, and using a large format camera, Sugimoto achieves a wide range of tones in a body of work that reflects his great love of detail, his outstanding technical mastery and – above all – his fascination with the paradoxes of time.”

  • 2022, Singh. SEK 2,000,000. ““Through photography she records and shapes the stories told within the structure of the archive before turning it into a new form. Her works are moving in several senses of the word: the audience is both touched by and is encouraged to touch the images. “ https://youtu.be/3tgMr5lnA3c?si=PEWKChMlfqlH_Wkk

  • 2023. Weems. SEK 2,000,000. ” “When Carrie Mae Weems first appeared on the scene four decades ago, her work was instantly iconic, even if it took time for the world to recognize it as such. As her vision has evolved in intuitive, unpredictable ways, it has only become more essential.” –-Jury chair, Joshua Chuang

Roger Minick. notes

Posted on Posted in art school, book shelf, old bones, on photographers1 Comment

Roger Laell Minick (born July 13, 1944) 

The “Sightseer” images were first exhibited at the Grapestake Gallery in San Francisco in 1981 . Minick’s photo project on the rural Ozark Mountains of Arkansas begun in 1969, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972. 

“In 1984, Minick entered the graduate art program at the University of California, Davis, where his MFA graduation show in 1986 consisted of both a series of paintings and a series of color photographs. For the next twenty-five years Minick taught photography throughout Northern California, including San Francisco State University, Sacramento State University, San Francisco City College, and the Academy of Art University of San Francisco.”

Dylan Swift is Roger Minick’s nom de plume.

REVIEWS

  • LOS ANGELES TIMES, “Legoland”, April 14, 2000
  • FRIEZE (magazine), “Sightseer Series”, June-July-August, 1997
  • LOS ANGELES TIMES, “Sightseer Series”, March 14, 1997
  •  Katzman, Louise (January 1984). Photography in California, 1945-1980. Hudson Hills.
  • SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, Misc. Reviews, May 19, 1977; March 4, 1981; June 5, 1988; Sept. 16, 1989
  • Albright, Thomas (March 1981). “Photography, From Satire to Biography”. San Francisco Chronicle.
  • ARTFORUM, “Sightseer Series”, Summer 1981
  • ARTWEEK, Misc. Reviews, Nov. 13, 1976; Feb. 15, 1980; March 7, 1981; April 16, 1988; Sept. 17, 1988;
  • CHICAGO SUN TIMES, “Southland Series”, June 15, 1980
  • SMITHSONIAN, “Hills of Home”, December 1975
  • VILLAGE VOICE, “Delta West”, A.D. Coleman. June 25, 1970 [in Light-Readings, p.39]

Last saw his work at the Chandler; the place with the great blind dog.

from Delta West: “I speak about where you get on certain things in life and things confuse you. And when you get confused, you don’t know which way to go — and you take the wrong road in lif, the space is narrowed to the coffin. It’s definitely narrowed to the coffin. You just revert to this. You revert to the wandering shadows of shadows and the space is definitely narrowed to the coffin. And when the space gets narrowed to the coffin, well you know and I know, there’s no more space left for us. It’s all over. It’s all over right there. Now that’s definitely right!” https://www.rogerminick.com/delta-west

  • Born in Ramona, Oklahoma, in 1944, Roger Minick grew up in the Ozarks of Arkansas, moved to Southern California in 1956, and entered the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964, where he graduated in 1969 with a degree in history

  • 1966 he began a black and white photographic project on the land and people of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in California. Three years later, the project became Delta West (Scrimshaw Press, 1969),

  • 1965 and 1975, Minick was on staff at the ASUC Studio, serving as director from 1971 to 1975.

  • In 1970, he began a black and white photographic project on the rural Ozarks of Arkansas, receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972 to complete the series.

  • Minick not only co-designed his own books Delta West and Hills of Home but also books by other photographers, including Margo Davis’s Antigua Black (1973), Richard Misrach’s Telegraph 3 AM (1974), and Steve Fitch’s Diesels and Dinosaurs (1976).

  • 1974 through 1976, Minick worked on Southland, a project in which he photographed freeways, vernacular architecture, and made portraits of people at fast-food outlets and shopping plazas in Southern California.

  • 1977, he was one of five photographers selected to work on a two-year National Endowment for the Arts Photo Survey project on the Mexican American community

  • 1980, Minick began work on Sightseer, his first photographic series in color. Images from this series were included in the hardcover book and major traveling exhibition American Photographers and the National Parks, sponsored by the National Parks Foundation and published by Viking

  • 1981 through 1985, Minick took color photographs in enclosed shopping for a project he called The New Main Street.

  • Between 1987 and 1989, Minick began a color series photographing people on the streets of San Francisco which he called StreetWork

  • 1984, Minick entered the graduate art program at the University of California, Davis, where his MFA graduation show in 1986 consisted of both a series of paintings and a series of color photographs

  • 1998 to 2003, Minick photographed widely with the Holga camera 

  • 2006, Minick switched from analog to digital, and over the next few years experimented extensively making manipulated prints using Photoshop.

  • 2010, Minick founded Perambulation Press