New England Survey exhibition now on display at Fruitlands Museum

Last week, I traveled out beautiful Route 2 to Harvard, MA and the Fruitlands Museum to lay out the PRC's warmly received landscape exhibition, New England Survey.

The exhibition will run August 23 – December 21, 2008 with an opening reception on Sunday, September 14, 4 – 6pm. I am proud as a peach, as it's the first show that I curated that has traveled.

As you can see above, it is right at home in their Picture Gallery. Take a sneak peek at the installation and their beautiful grounds in this flickr set!

I am thrilled at how it turned out, as are they. The work is in their Picture Gallery, right next to Hudson River School paintings and right outside are incredible views and nature trails. The juxtapositions created are stunning. Re-experience work by Barbara Bosworth, Tanja Alexia Hollander, Janet Pritchard, Thad Russell, Jonathan Sharlin, and Paul Taylor.

A little history - This past spring, we were approached by the Fruitlands Museum to show a version of the PRC exhibition New England Survey in fall 2008. Fruitlands, a former Transcendentalist, Utopian center founded by Bronson Alcott, is increasingly considering exhibitions that complement their interpretive themes (Inhabiting Nature, Encounters on a Changing Landscape, and Traditions that Bind) as well as intersect with their mission. New England Survey was a perfect fit and joins a special exhibition of Joe Wheelwright’s trees sculptures currently on their grounds.

I am thrilled that Fruitlands loved the exhibition so much and that it will live on and be shown at such a beautiful location during New England’s peak fall season. I invite you to see it again in this unique setting, or for the first time. Take a whole day, have lunch, walk the trails, and explore their collections, it's that amazing!

Visit www.fruitlands.org for more information and directions. See you at the opening!

ABOUT FRUITLANDS: Fruitlands Museum is one of the first outdoor museums in America and boasts over 200+ acres of pastoral landscape and several period buildings. This national landmark shares the unique ideas, stories, objects, and landscape of New England’s most original thinkers, movers, and reformers. Enjoy nature trails and four unique galleries of Native American, Shaker, and American art collections, including Hudson River School landscapes and nineteenth-century vernacular portraits.

Air Guitar meet Air Camera

Justin James Reed had an inspired moment. While ruminating on another's post on an air guitar contest in Germany on his most excellent blog, he noted the following:

Dagmar professed that, "(a)ir guitar looks much more spectacular than air camera."...I am here to differ, as I think that we can make "Air Camera" rock way harder than air guitar. So, in an effort (and on a whim) to get this going, I am sharing my first attempt at Air Camera here (see above)... Also on a whim, and as an encouragement for all of you out there to share your attempts at Air Camera, I have started a new blog named, what else, AIR CAMERA. I am looking for Air Camera of any format, be it Air 35mm, Air Medium Format, Air Large Format, etc., show me what you've got!

Two submissions are now up on the newly launched blog, three if you count his above. Surf on in and check out aircamera.blogspot.com and submit one of your own!!

Below is the submission information. Now, go get your shoot on!

Submit all images to: Justin@JustinJamesReed.com Image Requirements: All images should be 72 dpi. Sized to 10 inches on the longest side. Saved as a .jpg file and labeled as your name with no spaces or punctuation: your_name_1.jpg. Please feel free to submit a link to your personal site which will be included with your best "Air Camera," along with a title (i.e. camera format), where your from, and any other relevant information.

"I Was There. Just Ask Photoshop"

Last week, the New York Times ran a very interesting piece about Photoshop titled the above. Instead of the usual trickery and celebrity air brushed talk, the author focused on regular people and the increasing practice of erasing unwanted people or adding others not originally present to family photos.

I am not one to alter or harm a photo, although I am a HUGE fan of artwork that does. (Ask those that know me, I can't even delete a digital image and fill up and save all of my cards. Yes, I know I can save them to the computer, which I do, several times, and reformat, which I never do.) The only time I ever destroyed a photograph was when I broke up with an ex. Gathering all of the photos with him in them, I burned them all over a raging fire. I did cut up one, but it looked silly, so I think that too went into the flames.

Oddly enough, the essay talks starts out talking about a woman from Rochester! I'll share a quote from Alex Williams' piece, as it's that good and intriguing:

REMOVING her ex-husband from more than a decade of memories may take a lifetime for Laura Horn, a police emergency dispatcher in Rochester. But removing him from a dozen years of vacation photographs took only hours, with some deft mouse work from a willing friend who was proficient in Photoshop, the popular digital-image editing program.

Like a Stalin-era technician in the Kremlin removing all traces of an out-of-favor official from state photos, the friend erased the husband from numerous cherished pictures taken on cruises and at Caribbean cottages, where he had been standing alongside Ms. Horn, now 50, and other traveling companions.

“In my own reality, I know that these things did happen,” Ms. Horn said. But “without him in them, I can display them. I can look at those pictures and think of the laughter we were sharing, the places we went to.”

“This new reality,” she added, “is a lot more pleasant.”

... Read more here.

Thanks to Keith Johnson for keying me in to this!

ABOVE IMAGE: BACK IN THE U.S.S.R. Grandpa always wanted to visit the Soviet Union (circa May Day, 1937), and with some digital help, it’s almost as if he’s there. Illustration by The New York Times; photographs by Bettmann/Corbis (historical image) and John Henley/Corbis (man waving)

Bruce Myren featured on Teachingphoto.com

I mention my partner Bruce Myren occasionally in my posts, but usually it's in reference to our adventures and not his work (save a grad school update). Currently, he is featured on Teachingphoto.com, which deserves a special mention!

For those who don't know know about this wonderful Web site, it is the effort of the great Henry Horenstein and includes insightful and useful articles from photographers, teachers, and industry leaders. Henry asked Bruce to meditate on his experiences as an older student deciding to go to graduate school and then enrolling in an MFA program. Click here or above to read it. He starts his second, and last, year in a few weeks at UConn. I will miss him a lot, but he is almost done!

Bruce also has a busy schedule of upcoming exhibitions in 2008/2009, see below. Hope to see you there!

Danforth Museum of Art
"New England Currents series
Markers: Memory, Solo exhibition
October 22 – December 7, 2008
Framingham, MA
Artist Reception, November 22, 2008

Gallery Kayafas
The View Home, Solo exhibition
October 16 – November 22, 2008
450 Harrison Avenue, Boston, MA
Opening Reception, First Friday, November 7, 2008

Hallmark Museum of Contemporary Photography
The Fortieth Parallel and Other Adventures, Solo exhibition
July 2 – September 20, 2009
Turner's Falls, MA
Artist Reception and Talk, September 19, 2009

And now for something completely discipline specific...

Y'all know how I love art about museums or museum humor. The museum staff at SFMOMA recently hung their own artwork on 4 floors of the museum's offices in an exhibition titled ART : WORK. 25% of the staff participated, isn't that great?

Above is the wall text from my favorite piece with a sample of the installation below. Brilliant! What would your office do? You can read more about the show on their blog Open Space and check out the pictures on their flickr stream.

Solar Eclipse Photos

Check out these cool images of the total eclipse of the heart, sorry sun. It can be seen today, August 1st, in parts of Canada, Greenland, Russia, Mongolia, and China. Here is a link to a gallery on Yahoo. Enjoy!

Above image: A man using a special filter observes a partial solar eclipse in Riga, August 1, 2008 (Ints Kalnins/Reuters)