Link: AMERICAN SUBURB X

I’ve been photographing the American cultural landscape for the past twenty years. Utilizing different series that I’ve done involving the everyday urban and suburban places we encounter, I’ll strive to make visual and verbal connections between these overlapping territories of American life while sticking to our theme of how sprawl has affected inner city environments.

wired:

Sometime in early November, Florida photographer Chip Litherland will load five 35mm cameras with color film, carefully pack them into shipping cases, and mail them to five different photographers around the globe. Each photographer who receives a camera will be challenged to shoot just one picture before they have to ship the camera on to someone else.

If students were taking Garry’s class to learn photographic techniques and methods, they were sorely disappointed. Garry didn’t teach much technique. That was left to the PJ side of the photography world or to his “TAs”. You have a lifetime to learn technique, he seemed to be saying, but I can teach you what is more important than technique, how to see; learn that and all you have to do afterwards is press the shutter.

Edward Ruscha arrived in Los Angeles in 1956, delivered by the car trip he and high school friend Mason Williams took in Ruscha’s black 1950 Ford from Oklahoma to the suburban-like stretch of a rapidly developing L.A. Over the next seven years, Ruscha drove the distance between L.A. and Oklahoma City several times, often documenting it by taking snapshots of gas stations along U.S. Route 66 that record the experience of the drive. Although many of the photographs were shot from across the road, several of the images are framed by the visual parameters set by a car window. They appear to be taken from the spatial perspective of the dashboard.1

“What’s it like photographing a National Geographic story?” It’s a question frequently asked and to be honest, a rather intriguing one because a National Geographic story — the process from beginning to conclusion — is not always what we might think. For one thing, I tend to get very wet and ruin equipment.

Stephen Mayes, Managing Director of VII Photo and one of my favorite photo thinkers, is presenting a lecture titled, “Restructuring the Photographic Process,” during the Flash Forward Festival today, June 3, at noon EST. If you’d like to see what he has to say but can’t join us in Boston, please check in here, where I’ll liveblog his talk and any subsequent discussion.

Looking at projects based on Google Maps Street View (GSV), particularly large photographs in physical galleries, makes me wonder: Is Street View a camera? Or a repository of source images? Or both?