FRANK ROTHE : LOST IN WHITE NIGHTS PART 2

Hot Pants

Smoking On Park Bench

Lonely Dog

Closed Eyed Girl

Golden Bridge

Golden Bridge without color

Once again I have manipulated a photograph to illustrate what the colorist were facing.Sometimes their choices show the need to be sort of natural other times they become painterly.Please take the time to go back and read Frank's statement in part one and visit his website.

The Process, how one artist created one project : LOST IN WHITE NIGHTS | Frank Rothe

Sitting here this morning thinking about collecting ,one thought that I return to "collecting maybe a single vision but creating a collection is a collective (no pun) adventure . A collaberation of many efforts the artist his galleries. books ,magazines and now many media alternatives and me.

I am very lucky guy because I have met so many artists and talked to them about what they are doing,in fact I was being shown the beginning of LOST IN WHITE NIGHTS while standing in Frank Rothe's studio late  one Sunday afternoon.

iPhoto manipulated White Hourse

White Horse

House

Submarine Friends

The Wave

White Nights II

To explain the amount of time that went into the creation of these images and the care and detail would exhaust me and I could not do it well .So I will let Frank speak for himself. I will say that the first image was put in iPhoto by me to drain it of color.

Frank Rothe Technically speaking the so-called “White Nights” (Beliye Nochi) are not unique to St Petersburg, but only here the northern nights have received such a poetic acclaim. What could be more romantic than walking along rivers and canals when night is as bright as early evening? It is the worId’s only city where such a phenomenon takes place every summer from mid June to beginning of July. Every year there are days when the downtown St Petersburg is full of people, even at night. It is a great time for those in love and for those who seeking love or just want to enjoy the endless nights. In that period of time people dont sleep as much as they Should. Because the day never ends.
People become a bit lunatic. Therefore I choose to name my project “Lost In White Nights”. I also was attracted by the softness of the light during that time. I shot on 6 by 6 negative color film without additional light. After my return to Berlin, I scanned the images. The digital files where desaturated on the computer and transformed into black and white images. Now the other half of the project had to be done.
Beginning of 2008 my beloved grandmother died. A year before she gave me an old photography. It shows my grandmother as a 4 or 5 year old girl, taken around 1920. Its a hand colored photograph. At this time it was a norma| way to turn a black and white photograph into a colored one. This photograph is the main reason why “Lost In White Nights” became a.
From a trip to India I remembered hand colored images, l’ve seen in peoples houses. Its a dying art used a century ago. Through a friend of a friend I got in contact with Mr. Rajesh Roy. And beginning of december 2008, the same year I shot the images in St. Petersburg, the first print was sent from Kolkata to Berlin. It was shortly after the mumbay terrorist attack and the print was destroyed. Because the custom service checked my package to good. Also crisis hit the world. Luckely my contact in India kept on with his company. In fact I never met the artist who colored my work, because Mr. Rajesh Roy managed the business on my behalf. He actually runned an lnternet company and was only a kind of middleman between me and the artist.
Every two or three months some hand colored images where sent to my studio. Luckely nothing was touched by custome anymore. But it looked like the project will never end, because the quality of the images went up and down. But there where also other emails when I wished Happy New Year to Mr. Roy or felt pitty for him, when he or one of his family member became ill.
The last package should have come end of summer 2010. when I opened it and checked the work I knew that I had to sent it back. Some of the images where great, some not. One print did not had the right size and was smaller then the others. But then end of october 2010 everything was fine. The unique moments I captured in St. Petersburg became not reproducible unique art works.
The best moment in life of an artist is the one when the idea becomes reality. You see and touch what was only in your head before. The dream to catch images of a city and its people during a lunatic time with a lunatic light and transforming it into unique master pieces with the endangered art of hand coloring, became reality.


all images copyright Frank Rothe

Sunday Best : Portraits in Black | Marco Ambrosi

Portraits in Black, is a project commissioned by the Center for Immigration Studies in Verona, the Cities of Verona and Padua  and the Padua University Department of Sociology. Three artists photographed different Pentecostal communities composed of people from Nigeria and Ghana who reside in Verona 


The artists Marco Ambrosi, MatteoDanesin and Aldo Sodoma later had exhibitions in Verona and Padua and many countries

Sunday meant dressing up for church everything a bit too 

tight and shiny.Dressing up was for special occasions .

This work by Marco Ambrosi  involved visiting several churches with his portable studio and taking portraits of people in their best.  

There is almost an explosion of dignity and happiness here for displays of fashion for a joyful Sunday www.marcoambrosi.com

all images copyright Marco Ambrosi Verona Italy

Dogwater Blues : Matt Brown

I met Matt Brown earlier this year while doing portfolio reviews
in Serenbe Georgia. When I saw this work I was reminded of a signature image by Michael Smith.But this work goes beyond that, there is a range of emotions from humor to grief . The thing that made me come back to this work was the unspoken, the gray middle of waiting and frustration, about not knowing what to do
with one's self. I think most of these dogs are chained because they would run off .


Six images does not show the entire photo essay which made me feel a great sadness, I will admit that this edit is about form and texture therefore I urge you too go http://mmbrown.arloartists.com/ to see the artist's statement and portfolio


all images copyright  Matthew Brown

Now Let Us Try Something Different : Tabula Rasa | Robert Dupree

still from TABULA RASA by Robert Dupree 2011 -  2012

http://vimeo.com/37680515

Robert (Bobby) Dupree was one of three young interns who worked with me when I was curating at Michael Mazzeo Gallery.They were learning while working in the gallery,I know I was learning from them.When we left the gallery we all sort of stayed in touch. Robert has push the envelope for awhile with edgy photographs and videos. It took me a while to understand because of a certain rawness that is essential for the work but not for me.This does not mean I did not like them, in fact we used some of  his videos in an exhibition at the gallery. The something I was planning on doing was to upload his new video Tabula  Rasa ,which means scrapped clean.It did not work/ Click on the red link above to watch,  give yourself about 6 minutes  there is little sound so you can add your own soundtrack or just bask in the quietness of observing the moment .


I saw this at HERE Arts Center last week  and felt so proud of Robert Dupree

Visualizing Place Part 3 - Doggerland | Brian David Stevens

Streaky the Clown

Beware of Trains

I was thinking about calling this post mrbennette is leaving Doggerland at last. It was a bit hard to get out. There are 
other portfolios by Brian David Stevens  that moved me. 
They That are Left and his portraits both human and environments connect. I see his work and want to know more.


It is a wet, dark, oppressive Sunday morning here, a bleak, yellow- greenish grey day with the heavy hum of fans and silence. I know this will not last, there will be storms, still air ,then brightness and blue.


all photographs by Brian David Stevens and used with his permission

Visualizing Place part 2 - Doggerland | Brian David Stevens

The camera is only a part of creating photograph.
The photographer's vision and techinical skill can show us more than just a picture.Sometimes it is art sometime poetry 


When I first saw these images by Brian David Stevens, I felt sad and wanted to know more about this place.


There maybe a lost Doggerland, here is one to contemplate now.


all image Copyrighted Brian David Smith 2012 

Visualizing Place - Doggerland | Brian David Stevens

These images give a sense of place, I intend on adding more tomorrow. The artist Brian David Stevens follows me on twitter. I was surprised, but I looked up his website and became pleased. http://briandavidstevens.com/  There are over 10 tightly edited portfolios. I feel a little bit southern here in Doggerland.


There are no titles that I know of, yet  each images builds on the idea of a sense of place.All images copyright Brian David Stevens 

99 1/ 2 Won't Do , Everything is Necessary : Nikita Gale

One of the great pleasures of my time as art director for the first 9 issues of South x Southeast Photography Magazine was meeting young artists who's work I was not familiar with. One such
artist featured was Nikita Gale whose body of work Code Orange  appeared in the fourth issue. Nikita is an artist who use photography and words as tools to express larger ideas.

One body of her work that I was attracted is Everything Is Necessary, it as hung in my mind until this morning.I was padding around and the song 99 1/2 Won't Do by Timothy Wright was being song by me as I listen to Diana Ross. Diana recorded it in the 80's

I am a Roman Catholic which does not mean I haven't spent a lot of time wallowing in gospel and spiritual music to know when it is done right.

These images by Nikita remind me of Holy book pages that have gold lettering and edges. Put that with the Calvinist idea of the One percents(ers) plus social unrest,the evils of instant gratification  and you can see why I have to say "the devil made me do this post "

Of course I like pretty pictures and shiny direct images,but I really like it when I am given art with meaning that is solid, and most of us can understand.

Nikita is the toast of Atlanta this season and she won't let it go to, her head visit her website,I have fallen in love

New York : GO SEE Arno Rafael Minkkinen

GO + SEE

BARRY FRIEDMAN LTD

ARNO RAFAEL MINKKINEN

Performing for the Camera : Forty Years of Self-Portraits  April 26 - August 3

Barry Friedman Ltd.
515 West 26th Street
New York, New York 10001
T: 212.239.8600 F: 212.239.8670
contact@barryfriedmanltd.com

HIRVENSALMI 1994

BERN 1975

BEAR TREE - DUBLIN, NH 2003

OULUNJARVI AFTERNOON - PALTANIEMI, FINLAND 2009

SELF-PERFORMANCE, PACHAUG, CT 1972

40 years of photography filled with wit and intelligence. There are vintage and contemporary prints, classics and new discoveries

                                      

O BEAUTIFUL FOR SPACIOUS SKIES : ALLISON V.SMITH | MARFA

I  think that one of the best places to experience the feeling of spacious skies is in the American West. The small towns that dot the landscape not only represent mankind in relationship to the environment but also the idea of the American pioneer spirit .These photographs by Allison V. Smith  were taken in Marfa Texas, I became aware of her work while workingr as the art  director for SxSe magazine.

The light in her images conveys not only the heat and shadows of  place but also the calm, the waiting for something to happen. The droning sound of quiet  filling the air.like in an old movie  I became fascinated by the deer head (trophy) hanging by the window,  like a haiku in paleness.,I was willing to accept what I was being shown as the natural order of things.,no questions asked no answers needed . All images copyrighted by AllisonV.Smith and were taken in Marfa Texas .Allison is represented by Barry Whistler Gallery in Dallas Texas