California Über Alles

I've just been homesick for California all summer- and finally got a visit in over last weekend. I have not been in Southern California for a long time, and it was the perfect antidote for a relentlessly hot, humid and claustrophobic New York summer. I didn't do a lick of work, and barely managed to fire off a few snapshots. It was great. Above is a giant Aloe.

Teacup Final

My favorite aspect of this one is also how the gesture seems to animate the negative space- and of course, the absurdity.

Lipstick final

As far as this one goes- I hope it is obvious what this image is about.

Necklace final

Last weekend I forced myself not to shoot, but to instead spend my studio time going through old test shots, placing them into a book, and generally making a stab at organizing my studio. This weekend I'm doing more of the same- this time working on color balancing and dust removing from some newly scanned work. Above is a final from a three image series shot last summer. I've never printed this work, but I really want to. Not sure I'm getting the skin tones right- I don't have a lot of skin in my work and it is always difficult for me to get it looking right.
This is one of my favorites from the past year- I think what I like the most about it is the way the shape of the necklace seems to draw a body into the negative space.

My Eye

Yesterday at the McBurney YMCA I was swimming along minding my own business when a giant muscle bound guy decided for whatever reason to swim against the pattern and ran right into me- knocking my goggles off and cutting the skin right under my eye and on my eyelid. Bleeding and stunned, I made my way to the side of the pool and filled out a useless "accident report" and applied an ice pack. During all this the dude (not a very good swimmer, of course) continued to swim as if nothing had happened. Before leaving I went over and stopped him. This was the conversation:

Me: "You got me pretty good.."
Dude: "What do you want me to do about it?"
Me: "How about an apology?"
Dude: "That has happened to me dozens of times and no one has ever apologized to me."
Me: "So everyone else has bad manners so it's OK for you to have bad manners too?"
Dude: "I'm born and raised in NY, this is the way we do it, baby."
Me: "Well, that's something to be proud of."
Dude: swims off

Sigh.
Sometimes I just hate New York.

Room of Her Own

At ICP last week I met photographer Wenjie Yang who is working on a project titled "A Room of Her Own." Yang is making intimate portraits of single women alone at home- the "rooms" or lives they have created for themselves. She is also looking for more women to participate, so if anyone out there is interested- Wenjie is currently based in NYC and you can reach her through her website.

Bloody Good Stuff at the ICP Review

A favorite project of mine this year was by a young woman named Tara Cronin who is making images using her own blood, chlorophyll, and other materials. This image above is a scan of her blood between two transparent surfaces. I'm hoping to use it in Discover magazine or Visual Science coming up soon.

Milk Test

This image is really proving to be very challenging. Will try again this weekend.