"Wrong Place, Right Time.," Archival Metallic Inkjet Print, 19.75” x 27.5”, 2017 © Mikayla Whitmore

Photographer Mikayla Whitmore pulls apart the magic, demons, and relics of a loaded landscape.

Some of Nevada's most common clichés are casinos, the grand canyon, and problematic HBO series. Photo-historically, Nevada and California's landscapes often tie to the canon of American photographers set to document and preserve their wild terrain.

For Whitmore, a Las Vegas native, its history is wrapped in b-movies, Hollywood tropes, and all kinds of colorful magic, but is also tainted by our current political climate.

Her recent series There Is No Right Time mixes straightforward topographical scenes with attention to inconsequential details that serve as unexpected monuments. In one image, a strange billboard juts from desert dirt to stark blue sky – the peculiarity of natural and human-made shinning on its own. In another, a rusty metal barrel with the words "Jesus is Coming" sits in the center of the frame. In Whitmore's words, these images "amplify mementos of American values by way of isolation and freedom."

What exactly are these relics of American values? I spoke with Whitmore to learn more.

Interview by Jon Feinstein

PostedMarch 7, 2018

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesArtists, Portfolio

TagsMikayla Whitmore, New Photography, Landscape Photography

Andrew Waits photographs Seattle's evolving landscape as dark, uncomfortable footnotes.

Aporia – a term attributed to the early dialogues of Socrates – is often tied to feelings of doubt, confusion or impasse, and has been associated with meandering, unsuccessful attempts to process trauma. It's also the title of Seattle-born photographer Andrew Waits' recent series and limited edition photobook, which he uses to address the emotional gravity of his native city's rapid economic and architectural boom.

Waits' black and white photographs look at the city's shifting skeleton and its impact on the human psyche. In contrast to his earlier, more traditionally documentary style and day job as a freelance editorial photographer, Waits approaches urban development and gentrification with a brooding, poetic gaze. Buildings battle with light and shadow, foliage juts in where it can, and people, when sparsely represented, bend like branches under increasing weight.

I corresponded with Waits to learn more about the metaphors and new directions in his work.

Interview by Jon Feinstein

PostedMarch 1, 2018

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesArtists, Portfolio, Publications

TagsAndrew Waits, New Photography, black and white photography, situationists, guy debord, gentrification, Seattle photographers

Photographer Antone Dolezal combines his own photographs with found materials to uncover Southwest mythologies. Stay tuned to the end of this interview for some cosmic NASA field recordings.

Nevada and California's deserts are thick with folklore and a history of photographic exploration. While playing host for the "manifestly destined" work of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century photographers like Ansel Adams, Laura Gilpin, and Timothy O' Sullivan, the regions were also home to passing transients and utopian communities. Likely because of their magical topography, these areas are often mythologized as a "gateway to the cosmos."

For the past few years, this has inspired Antone Dolezal's Part of Fortune and Part of Spirit, a series of photographs, texts and found images that play stories from these regions off classic science fiction tropes and contemporary religious tales. Unsettling black and white portraits volley against lush color landscapes and sci-fi movie-stills, and viewing them creates hybrid pangs of disorientation and nostalgia. Itching with confusion, I emailed Dolezal for some clarity.

Interview by Jon Feinstein

PostedFebruary 22, 2018

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesArtists, Portfolio

TagsAntone Dolezal, New Photography, Cosmic Photography, science fiction photography, Fuego Books, A Place Both Wonderful and Strange, Photography Inspired by Twin Peaks, photographs of the American West

If you've been in New York City on Ash Wednesday, you've likely spotted someone with a cross-shaped smudge of ash on their forehead. For some secular individuals, it's a strange sight that turns heads in confusion. Many know little about this religious practice, which marks the first day of Lent in Western Christianity, beyond what they see on the surface.

On Ash Wednesday for the past twenty years, Greg Miller has carried his hulking 8x10 film camera throughout New York City to make street portraits of those who participate in this ritual. In some images, subjects look directly back at the viewer, confronting our inquiry head-on. In others, people pause and gaze off - sunlight or shadows drench them with metaphor.

In advance of his twenty first Ash Wednesday shoot, Miller and I spoke about his work and upcoming book (which you can pre-order HERE.)

Interview by Jon Feinstein

PostedFebruary 13, 2018

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesArtists, Publications, Portfolio

TagsAsh Wednesday, Catholicism, religion and photography, large format photography, contemporary portraiture, Greg Miller, Street Portraits

Photographing disaster is complicated. In her pivotal work, On Photography, Susan Sontag described it as ridden with shock value, numbing and almost touristic. Later in her career, in her final book Regarding the Pain of Others, Sontag revisited these ideas, arguing that war photography, despite its problems, provided a necessary documentation for the world to see. Contemporary photography of natural disasters can be colored by similar problems, often with skepticism around the photographer’s gaze and intents. New York City based photographer Ruben Natal-San Miguel confronted these issues when he flew to Puerto Rico in early December to make pictures of the destruction of his hometown paradise at the hands of Hurricane Maria. He transcends the clichés of disaster photography with his direct connection to those impacted, and his unconventional approach to visualizing it all.

PostedJanuary 8, 2018

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesPortfolio, Artists

TagsPuerto Rico, Hurricane Maria, Ruben Natal-San Miguel, documentary photography, Susan Sontag

Leaving Las Vegas: Mikayla Whitmore's Photographs Reconsider The Desert's History and Romance In A Tense American Landscape

Photographing the Psychological Crush of Urban Growth

Gateway to the Cosmos: Antone Dolezal Unpacks the Spiritual Mythologies of the American West

Unto Dust: Twenty Years of Ash Wednesday Street Portraits

Disaster Under a Sunny Sky: Ruben Natal-San Miguel’s Strangely Electric Photographs of Puerto Rico After Hurricane Maria