Collections and Sojourns

In the fall of 2007, I had the pleasure of helping David Coleman, curator of photography at the Harry Ransom Center, prepare for the upcoming exhibition: Dress Up: Portrait and Performance in Victorian Photography. Here's the press release.
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/press/releases/2007/dressup.html

In conjunction with the exhibit, a portrait studio was set up, and the digital images are
viewable online.
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/photobooth/

At the time I was writing a screenplay based in 1848 Ireland and was able to observe David's scholarly application of performance and identity concepts to curated images, while having a close look at the clothing of the era. David's show is an additional chapter
in the critical history of photography.

The Ransom Center has recently acquired a portion of the Magnum Photo Collection. David expresses his enthusiasm for the new acquisition in the following video interview by
Will van Overbeek.
http://vimeo.com/9830948

Recently, several Magnum photographers have embarked on a sojourn, Postcards from America, which is chronicled via tumblr.

http://postcardsfromamerica.tumblr.com/

Check out the route here, with cursor as magnifying glass.

http://postcards.magnumphotos.com/

Safe travels!

Looking around in Wiki Commons

I found this image while looking to see what is available on Wiki Commons. Even though it is a highly scientific image made through photomicrography, I was drawn to it for unscientific reasons. It illustrates histopathologic features of aspergillosis. I see it as a dandelion-like micro-organism in a field of pink and magenta. I'm not a painter per se, but it makes me want to paint. It allows me to see the scientific - medical attraction to understanding the language of health and disease of the human body.

Still perusing through Wiki Commons led to this photograph of the fundus, or interior of the eye. Its an abstraction derived from the details of the human body, though an opthomologist may look at it as wonderfully detailed. I see visual parallels to this image and NASA and Hubble telescope images.

Wet Collodion for Today, Jody Ake

http://www.jodyake.com/

Cultural Fusion Through a Camera

Cultural Fusion Through a Camera

Rare Photos Reveal Tibet 100 Years Ago - NPR

http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2010/10/04/130328968/tibet

Anatomy of a Wave

Intertwangleism of Butch Anthony

Artist-collector Butch Anthony is a contemporary adherent to an art form once dubbed assemblage/collage/montage or just plain dada. Yet he has renamed the collecting of flotsam and jetsam to form his own movement of intertwangleism. As a long term collector of stuff, he has imbued his objects with meaning from his own mind, whether humorous, satirical, of the spirit, or as scientific evidence.

What is intertwangleism? Part deception, part simplicity, part mystery, part everyday object reworked or rethought, part cultural anthropology and part geological find.

In the words of Fred C. Fussell, it is:
"an artistic style, appears to be part cubism, part da-da, part expressionism, part science, part spirit, and, not at all least, part tongue-in-cheek. Intertwangleism takes a thing, any thing, and breaks it apart into its basic elements, elements not of science, but of another scheme, a scheme found only in Butch Anthony’s mind. Butch discovered the rudimentary rules of intertwangleism many years ago, when as child he collected stuff. But back then he didn’t know what to call it."

Visit the work of Butch Anthony at:
http://www.museumofwonder.com/Art/Intertwangleism.htm

Notes:
http://www.museumofwonder.com/Art/Intertwangleism4.htm