alyse emdur

linda d. cooper
i am a four time lightning survivor. i was first struck in ft. lauderdale, florida on september 15, 1983 while walking toward the post office to mail a package. the second incident occurred on may 27, 1993 at my home in hillsboro beach, florida while talking on the telephone to my daughter. it struck again a year later on july 11, 1994. i had just finished making jell-o for my family and was about to rinse out the cup when lightning came through the water faucets and ran up my arms. then in 2003, i was with my friend susan cooper in a steinway parking lot. lightning hit outside the car, came through the car and blew the cell phone out of her hand to mine.

ed, liz, erin ellickson
we were taking our daughter erin back to school in pensacola, florida on august 21, 2004 when lightning struck a tree, traveled through the ground, up a stair railing and through ed and erin. the blast knocked all three of us to ground. my husband and i suffered no long-term effects but erin suffers from short-term memory loss and has not been able to return to school, yet.

kim grills
i was struck on wed. june 7, 1989 in ingersoil ontaria, canada while golfing.

in an i heart photograph exclusive we get a first look at alyse emdur's new project about people who have survived being struck by lightning. i love the contrast between the sensational subject mater and the banality of these photographs. see more of alyse's work here.

[all alyse emdur. 2007]

trevor shimizu

these are a nice counterpoint to photography that tries to make food look good. according to trevor he made them with the idea that they could make you fat just by looking at them, the way that thinking about exercise is rumoured to make you thin. see more of trevor's varied artistic output here and here.

[all trevor shimizu. 2007.]

jesse aaron cohen

jesse aaron cohen is a photo archivist at a library with a large collection of material from eastern europe. the last friday of each month he sends out an email of carefully curated thematic images. while the emails often draw from the collection he works with, they are sometimes unrelated and bizarre. things like dinosaur art or computer renderings of luxury apartments. check out past collections here and if you want to subscribe send jesse an email at jacohen [at] fastmail [dot] fm

[from top to bottom: cover of i didn't recognize myself, by yudah simhah gros. kiryaas yoel, new york: or simheh, 2000. from: email exhibition 2 -- "contemporary hasidic graphic design" -- february 25, 2005. house of david junior baseball team. benton harbor, michigan. 1927. from: email exhibition 15 -- "spring training" -- march 31, 2006. illustrations from Kulinaria, a 960 page volume on cuisine and food culture, published by a soviet state publishing house in moscow, 1955. from: email exhibition 27 -- "the russian debutante's cookbook" -- march 30, 2007]

shana moulton

i love the way shana moulton's videos engage with new agey spiritualism. they strike a perfect balance between reverence and parody. watch them here.

[all shana moulton. top to bottom: whispering pines 6. 2006. whispering pines 3. 2004. whispering pines 2. 2003.]

wendy red star

wendy red star makes these over-the-top dioramas and photographs herself sitting in them. not much work online but a little more info here.

[all wendy red star. top to bottom: spring. 2005. winter. 2005. fall. 2005. indian summer. 2005]

will rogan

will rogan works in a bunch of different ways, taking pictures, drawing on found photos, folding pictures up on the gallery floor, etc. it all adds up to a mysterious and funny approach to images and how they function. see more work here, and a subscription-based project he is doing here.

[will rogan & bob linder: no title. 2007. will rogan: untitled 2005. will rogan: swans through 2005. will rogan & bob linder: mum 6. 2007. ]

stockholm!

just a quick hello from me. still traveling...in stockholm at the moment...and having an amazingly lovely time. this might just be one of the best vacations ever in the whole history of vacationing.

wanted to say a huge thanks to eric for all the great posts over the last week and to introduce you to a new guest blogger who will be taking over where he left off. asha is perhaps best described as a man of mystery and intrigue. he recently left his post as a photo researcher at the new yorker to spend more time on his own work. he begins ucla's esteemed mfa program photography this fall. give him a big welcome.

xo,

laurel

new york times

has anyone seen the current new york times add campaign? a heavy, smoke laden sky, strong green hues, two perfectly framed soldiers. most of these advertisements are at bus stops, lit from behind in giant light boxes. this seems to me to be a troubling idea about how to sell newspapers. at first glance the advertisements might be confused for a lingering poster for the jeff wall show at the moma, or a sofia coppola film about iraq. for those of you who don't live in new york city, the same thing is going on on the front page of the times. i gathered the above images from 10min of searching through recent front pages on the new york times website. while all of these are documentary photographs, for me their referent is part of a different symbolic economy. their uncanny similarity to recent large-scale photography and film probably has more to do with our reception of images...but letterbox format doesn't help.

[all from the front page of The New York Times. 2007]

isa genzken

it's hard to decide how to categorize isa genzken's work. is she a sculptor, a photographer, or an experimental architect? after studying at the kunstakademie düsseldorf, she began her career making elongated neo-minimalist sculptures. in the late-80s she made a project on the german newspaper, der spiegel, isolating images away from their captions, forcing the viewer to reengage with history visually. in the late-90s she worked on a series of sculptures (that may or may not be architectural models, it's hard to tell) in reaction to the international style entitled fuck the bauhaus. the work i've selected is from a series called empire/vampire and while only some of these tabletop works include photographs, they are all about the world of film and images. the work deals with the way that cinematic narratives can be displaced to promote imperialist wars. however one decides to characterize isa's work (an intuitive reaction to post-fordist capitalism?) it seems to embody the way the world feels now. see more of her work here.

[all isa genzken. from empire/vampire. 2004]

joachim schmid

during the 1980s joachim schmid lived next to one of the largest flea markets in berlin, allowing him to amass a vast archive of post cards and found photographs. he then spent the next decade assembling collages with this material: series of poodle photographs, concentrations camps, airplanes, and commodity objects. together these collages provide a window into the popular conscious of germany during the 80s and 90s. the project also critiques the archive as a structure that establishes a horizon of possible actions in the present. in terms of photography, joachim looks at how the image can inform and limit human experience. the advent of sites like flickr, google, and myspace, make this work seem particularly relevant today. see more images from the project here. and more of joachim's work here.

[all joachim schmid. from archiv. 1986-1999.]

seth lower

seth lower is hard at work documenting the anthropomorphic qualities of the new zealand christmas trees found everywhere on the streets of san francisco. as he notes: "in order for buses to pass safely, the trees have to be constantly maintained; limbs are cropped off and hauled away, leaving constantly changing sculptures behind." take a peek at more of seth's stuff here.

[all seth lower. from the project street trees. 2007.]

mathias poledna

i like art that points out the limitations and fallacies of its own medium, so i was excited to see mathias poledna's video installation crystal palace at the hammer museum earlier this year. mathias flew half way across the world to papua new guinea and took two static 30min shots of the jungle, then got on a plane and flew home. drawing its name from the glass building in london that housed the great exhibition of 1851, mathias' project examines the way in which the west attempts to neatly bracket off other cultures for intellectual consumption. more broadly, his work questions the ability of film to exist as anything more than fiction. speaking on the project mathias said, this record "is not an authentic document of anything but the conditions of its own making." this seems to me to be an important concept for film and photography alike. read more about the project here

[all mathias poledna. 2007. stills from crystal palace]

5 things • paul graves

paul graves makes some of the loveliest commercial work i've ever seen. all these delightfully playful anthropomorphic things, often in collaboration with bela borsodi. rumor has it that he is currently in a big house in spain working on a personal project which i can't wait to see. when i inquired about 5 of paul's all time favorite things in the whole world this is what he shared. you can see a previous post about him here and take a peek at his website here.

1/ jethro haynes

shoe sculptures/photography from a graphic designer. they work with my sense of humor. see more here.

2/lisa reinermann

excellent work. "type the sky" uses building silhouettes to spell out the abc's. see more here.

3/ khan of finland

i have been listening to his music for years. and he's a dear friend. i can spend nights on end crawling from bar to bar with him acting like we don't have a care in the world except where the next place to get a drink is. have a listen here.

4/adalberto abbate

micro sculptures are dioramas of the macabre and disturbing (like scenes of accidents, riots, shootings, and more). see more here.

5/ thriller (in jail)

100's of inmates perform to michael jackson's "thriller" in the prison court yard. wow. you have to respect that. watch till the end.

berlin!

just arrived last night in berlin. my favorite city in the world! i will be posting only sporadically while i'm traveling (kassel, stockholm, reykjavík) through the end of the month. but no worries for those of you who require your daily dose of i heart photograph, i've invited eric (the face behind the front desk of the gladstone gallery in nyc) to do some guest blogging for the next week.

if anyone in berlin, stockholm or reykjavík would like to meet up or has tips about where to see interesting photo stuff while i'm here please do drop me a note: iheartphotograph@gmail.com

xo,
laurel

cameron wittig

such beautiful photos of lens flare by cameron wittig. though this isn't the good old fashioned analog kind of lens flare...it's all done in photoshop. cameron's got some very nice stuff up on his site. take a peek at it here.

[all cameron wittig. from the series lens flare.]

frank schumacher

some nice portraits by german photographer frank schumacher from the series neubeauty. see more of frank's stuff here. and once again, big thanks to max for the great link.

[all frank schumacher. from the series neubeauty. hair and make up by thorsten weiss.]

jillian mcdonald

canadian artist jillian mcdonald thinks of her zombie portraits as interactive photographic animations. she was inspired by "the rising cult of zombies in popular culture, where zombie gatherings and zombie lore flourish." hmmmm. see more of these here.

[both jillian mcdonald. from the series zombie portraits. 2007.]

julia hechtman

with this series artist julia hechtman shows us where the tops of trees meet the sky. she starts by taking photographs of the landscape and then digitally removes the foreground and background so all that is left is, as julia puts it, a "photographic line drawing on a white field." take a peek at more of her work right here.

[all julia hechtman. from the series tree lines. 2005.]