Holding Missle, Peenemünde, 1940/2019 © Barbara Diener

Photographer Barbara Diener's The Rocket's Red Glare Untangles a Convoluted History

As teenagers in the 1920s, a time when space travel was limited to science fiction novels, Wernher von Braun in Germany and Jack Parsons in Pasadena, CA shared an intercontinental rocket science correspondence. Talking for hours on the phone, they exchanged ideas, tips, and notes from experiments on everything from explosions to home-engineered rocket fuel tests. Into adulthood, they went on separate paths.

In 1932, Braun began working for the German Army just before the country fell under Nazi rule, and Parsons quickly severed ties. Parsons made significant contributions to the development of rocket fuel and was part of the famous rocket building Suicide Squad at CalTech, but was later written out of much of NASA's history because of his involvement with Aleister Crowley's occult religion. Meanwhile, the US government recruited Braun who later developed the Saturn V rocket for NASA

Barbara Diener’s The Rocket’s Red Glare combines found photographs and other archival materials from the period with her own photographs to create a meandering alternative narrative of the two scientists' work and relationship. Aerials of rocket testing sites volley with portraits of male and female actors Diener hired to stand in for Parsons, as well as (glasses required) 3D photographs of martian landscapes. Diener’s nonlinear mix of old and new creates a disjointed yet effective story of a period in history to which most viewers are likely unaware.

Intrigued and confused, I spoke with Diener to dig through her strange historical revision.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Barbara Diener

PostedNovember 26, 2019

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesPortfolio, Artists

TagsBarbara Diener, The Suicide Squad, NASA Photography, Wernher von Braun, Jack Parsons, NASA History, rocket science, found photography

Photographer Jana Sophia Nolle takes a new, collaborative and empathetic approach to photographing and working with San Francisco’s houseless population.

Roughly .17 percent of the United States population is homeless ( source: https://endhomelessness.org/), or, more humanly stated, “unhoused” or “houseless.” San Francisco is witness to the third-highest unhoused population in the country, recently increasing by 17%. (editors note: we originally incorrectly listed this as 12% of the United States + SF population. We apologize for the typo.) Income disparity, sky-high rental rates, limited affordable housing, and a struggling social services network all exacerbate this chronic issue.

No one wants to ignore the most vulnerable among us. Yet, most of us feel overwhelmed in addressing such a challenge and the complex issues that inform it. Artist-activist Jana Sophia Nolle recognizes that collective uncertainty in addressing houselessness, and how to support those for whom this is a lived experience. In 2017, Nolle initiated Living Room, a project in which the temporary structures of people who are unhoused were re-created and photographed in the living rooms of housed San Franciscans.

I met Nolle during a Photo Alliance portfolio review earlier this year. The interview that follows unpacks questions about the participants: how they were approached and the delicate ethical balance she managed in working with people at opposite ends of the wealth spectrum; questioning the assumptions or biases about what leads to houselessness, and what role contemporary art has in addressing these issues.

Roula Seikaly in conversation with Jana Sophia Nolle

PostedOctober 31, 2019

AuthorRoula Seikaly

CategoriesGalleries, Artists, Portfolio

Tagshomelessness, houselessness, photographing the homeless, collaborative art, San Francisco photographers, San Francisco photo alliance portfolio reviews, Roula Seikaly, Jana Sophia Nolle, Conceptual Art, Conceptual Photography

I can’t think of a parent who doesn’t obsessively photograph their kids. Sure, the photos often are out of focus, include the blur of a finger half-covering an iPhone lens or feel so manufactured-ly happy that we just can’t believe the moments are real, but they’re something we can’t quit.

Even more than whatever meal we feel compelled to immortalize.

For many parents, like photographer Ashly Leonard Stohl, it's a form of self-portraiture - a “portrait of parents” that reflect on how we see ourselves, our fears and reflections of our childhood projected on our children. Stohl’s latest book The Days Are Long & The Years Are Short, published by Peanut Press is the culmination of years of Stohl photographing her kids as a mirror to herself. It's also a response to how the challenges of motherhood are often omitted from public conversation. Stohl’s photos balance the cherished moments with the ones not outwardly discussed. Hunting for a Halloween costume while wearing a disdainful frown. How time can move painfully slow, yet evaporates before our eyes. The moments you don’t see in Parents Magazine.

As a photo-obsessed parent of a one-year-old, I’m drawn to Stohl’s eloquent and honest approach. We spoke to talk parenting and the unfortunate stigma of “Mom Photography".

PostedOctober 18, 2019

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesArtists, Publications, Portfolio, Photobooks

TagsAshly Leonard Stohl, Mom Photography, Documentary Photography, Peanut Press, Days and Years Book, photobooks

© Jane Deschner. From the series Remember Me. — © Jane Deschner. From the series *Remember Me*.

For nearly twenty years, Jane Waggoner Deschner has been accumulating found vernacular photographic snapshots and studio portraits – her archive now exceeds 65,000 – and manipulating them to change how we understand their meaning and imagined histories.

Deschner’s techniques range from digital manipulation to painstaking hand embroidery, often stitching famous, dry or ironic quotes to create what she describes as a “satisfying, meditative intimacy with mechanically captured moments of unknown people’s lives.” Her collages and embroidery range from personal explorations and existential ruminations on death to political commentary and discussions of gender.

Her latest series, Remember me: a Collective Narrative in Found Words and Photographs, includes 700 found photographs embroidered with anecdotes culled from family and friend-written obituaries. For Deschner, this process illustrates a collective narrative that reminds us of how we are all connected.

Longtime fans of her work, we invited snapshot-collector-extraordinaire Robert E. Jackson to speak with Deschner about her process and ideas.

Robert E. Jackson in conversation with Jane Waggoner Deschner

PostedOctober 10, 2019

AuthorRobert E. Jackson

CategoriesArtists, Portfolio

TagsJane Deschner, Jane Waggoner Deschner, Robert E. Jackson, Vernacular Photography, Found Photography, Snapshot Photography, Photography and death, artist interviews, photographer interviews

Photographic typologies can be boring. Serialized to death. A bit too literal or on the nose. (I say this as someone who still loves them, in spite of agreeing with Joerg Colberg’s New Year’s plea to photographers a decade or so ago to "stop making typologies," at least for a while, still can’t get enough of them.) So, when a photographer adds some warmth, digs deeper into the soul of a structure, I want to learn more.

Enter Eirik Johnson, who, since 2010, has been making typologies of seasonal hunting cabins built by the Iñupiat inhabitants of Utqiaġvik (formerly known as Barrow), Alaska through the extremes of the Arctic summer and winter, which culminate in his new book Barrow Cabins, recently published by Ice Fog Press. The cabins rest on the shores of the Chukchi Sea, part of the larger Arctic Ocean, and are built from a variety of makeshift materials – weathered plywood to old shipping pallets collected from the nearby-decommissioned U.S. Navy Base – whatever is on hand.

Rather than comparing structures purely for their architecture or photographing them under a monotonous, non-descript sky, Johnson’s point of comparison is the light and temperature itself. He describes it as a “meditation on the passage of time.” While on the surface, these photographs might appear to focus on the structures, they feel more like explorations of the emotional capacity of weather, seasons, and the metaphoric hunt for light and calm.

I spoke with Johnson earlier this month as he was preparing for the book’s release. BTW, you should get a copy.

PostedSeptember 26, 2019

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesPortfolio, Publications, Artists, Photobooks

TagsEirik Johnson, Barrow Cabins, Ice Fog Press, Alaska Photography, Photographic Typologies, Jon Feinstein

A Strange New Photo Series Retells the Story of Two of Rocket Science's Earliest Pioneers

An Artist Builds (and photographs) Structures for the Houseless in Living Rooms of the Wealthy

Ending the Stigma of "Mom Photography"

Jane Waggoner Deschner Stitches New Narratives Into Found Vernacular Photographs

Eirik Johnson's New Book Captures Arctic Hunting Cabins Through Seasonal Extremes