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Artist residency at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris

After what I don’t mind saying has been a very tough 2024, my new year will start with a four-month (early January through late April) artist residency at Cité Internationale des Arts, in Paris. Applying back in 2022, I proposed a project that would continue my Woven Portraits series into the realm of photographing portrait busts of significant historical leaders—some of which I have endeavored into with my 2023 commission Unknown (American) for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University. Now, and again with the support of the Sam Fox School, I’ll travel to Paris for this extended stay, to photograph busts of leaders central to the history of France and other European nations. The images I capture there will be used for making Woven Portraits similar to that of Unknown (American) once I return to the United States in May 2025, as well as some related side projects on site in the Paris studio.

For this journey I’ve had to completely rearrange my life. I’ve purchased equipment, in addition to putting some personal concerns on hold, have had to postpone other projects. For example, I have decided to pause my ongoing Winter Solstice Pinhole Photographs series for 2024. Or to be more accurate, I won’t be traveling to a location near the Arctic Circle to shoot pinhole photographs this December. Leaving for Paris for at the very top of January for a four-month stay just doesn’t allow me this. This was a difficult decision to make, as the travel I’ve done every year for the last several Decembers has been so meaningful to me. But I think the hiatus will be worthwhile. I am already forming plans for an epic journey to somewhere I’ve been aiming for for years in 2025. More on that later.

Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to the challenge this residency presents. It’s a change of pace for me; much of 2024 has been devoted to making complex and difficult decisions, mourning losses, feeling disheartened. And, to be honest, it comes at a less-than-convenient time for me (I just began renting a workspace in Manhattan—I’ll post about this once it’s set up, I think), but I think there are places we must go to and opportunities we have to take. I look forward to arriving in the Fourth Arrondissement at the start of the new year and extending my line of work there.

Commissioned editorial art featured "The New York Times Magazine"

A couple weeks ago, I was commissioned by The New York Times Magazine to create an original artwork to accompany Danyel Smith’s article/first-person account of working with the hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs in the late 90’s and early mid aughts, through her then role as Editor-in-Cheif of Vibe. It appears in this week’s issue, available in print and online.

I worked with Deputy Art Director Annie Jen, who explains in a brief behind-the-scenes feature within the contributors page, that she wanted the artwork “to allude to some of the tension the writer felt about her relationship” to the embattled Combs, now charged with sexual assault and trafficking (he’s at least undeniably a perpetrator of domestic violence). “Smith considers how much of her career is tied up in Diddy’s web of power.” And moreover, as an influential female in the entertainment industry, Smith lives with what we, twenty to thirty years later, might expect: his web is not especially expectational.

Indeed, after reading a draft of the article, before diving into the making of this artwork, it struck me that Smith doesn’t make many excuses for herself as a participant in the industry that perpetuated Combs’s and others’ sexist and disturbing behavior. She describes one particularly alarming encounter with Combs that occurred in the late 90’s but then, after a little time passes, seems to a great extent to go back to business as usual, not only working with the rap star, but embracing him in event photos. I remember Combs’s music from those days, I was in high school then. The industry gave us what we wanted: hits we enjoyed and flashy personas. Years later, we get a nuanced peek, if very much in retrospect, into the layers of that milieu.

This artwork is in the vein in which I’ve been working since mid 2022, with some small modifications. In this case, the original photographs were sourced from stock collections and licensed by the magazine, after I made dozens of digital mockups from low-res sample files and, with Jen and the magazine’s editors, decided which of the shortlist would fit best with the writing. I always prefer to work with my own photos, but it’s not always possible to do so given a project’s constraints.

This piece is Version 2; in Version 1, one of the comprising photos the magazine licensed was very low-resolution (the stock collection had advertised it as much higher-res), which substantially limited my print sizes. After Senior Photo Editor Amy Kellner tracked down the high-res file from the original photographer himself, I was somehow able to physically fabricate this second larger and more intricate piece—in two days, right down to the wire—to meet the deadline because I knew it would look better in the magazine.

Interview published in Art Spiel

Etty Yaniv interviewed me for Art Spiel earlier this year, and I’m pleased that my longform answers to her questions have been published in the article David Samuel Stern: Does a portrait need a subject? Etty interviewed me back in 2018, but so much has evolved since then.

This latest article/interview, I think, gives the best summation I’m capable of regarding where my work is at right now. It covers my Woven Portraits series, last year’s Unknown (American) commission, my Winter Solstice Pinhole Photographs series, my editorial work, and what I’ve been working on lately—in terms beyond the artist statements and talking points I’ve reiterated in various forms many times. I tried to include thoughts that are not totally resolved as well as occasional frankness. It’s not short, but, in the face of 2024’s so-far disheartening nature, it seemed right to go into depth on some of these things. I hope you’ll give it a read.

Commissioned work on "POLITICO Europe" January 11 issue cover

With a six day deadline, POLITICO Europe asked me to make an editorial artwork presenting a portrait of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for the cover of the January 11, 2024 issue, which was published and hits newsstands in Europe today. While it wasn’t a given that the resulting artwork would be a Woven Portrait—Deputy Production Editor Arnau Busquets Guàrdia and I discussed some other options—it was ultimately the path we agreed on. And so, after I finished some other unlrelated work I happened to be doing last week, I dove into this.

This piece is made in the style of Woven Portrait of Julius Caesar I made for National Geographic in 2021, published 2022 (no comparison intended between the two subjects). While for this project the original photographs were sourced due to time and budgetary constraints, the rest of the process was quite similar. However, in the case of this portrait of von der Leyen, I converted the three comprising photographs into cyan, magenta, and yellow tonal ranges respectively, and cut the prints into 12mm strips. Caesar’s comprising photographs (taken by me) had been converted into red, green, and blue tonal ranges, and its prints were cut into 15mm strips, as had Unknown (American)’s. I backlit the physical woven composite object with 4000K light, as I had with Unknown (American), whereas Caesar had been backlit with 3000K and from a greater distance.

I’m happy that the piece fits the tone of the article (by Barbara Moens, Carlo Martuscelli, Clea Calucutt, and Jacopo Barigazzi), as intended, and that, considering the labor-laden nature of the process, such a short turnaround is not only possible, I think with some tricks learned this time around as well as a slightly clearer schedule, it could be even been produced even more quickly.

You can see a digital version of the January 11 issue of the magazine here. The web version of the article is here.

(I’m waiting on the hardcopies to reach New York from Brussels. When they arrive, I’ll photograph them and update this post with their images.)

Work included in 7th Louisiana Biennial, Louisiana Tech University

I’m very pleased to have a piece included in the 7th Louisiana Biennial: National Juried Exhibition, which is held at the School of Design at Louisiana Tech University. The exhibition, entitled Timelapse, will be on view January 16th–February 20, 2024 in the Visual Arts Center’s Bethea and Moffett Galleries. The 2024 Biennial features about 40 artists working in various media.

The statement of the juror, Laura Blereau, Curator of Exhibitions at Newcomb Art Museum, Tulane University, is as follows:

As juror for the 7th Louisiana Biennial, I felt drawn to artists expressing their temporal connections to landscape and people. These artists are taking on abstract subjects, such as natural phenomena and cultural identity, to address the real and shifting experiences of their daily lives. Several works in the exhibition explore displacement, environmental disaster, and personal relationships in transition. Other pieces focus on the dynamism of bodily presence, pattern, animals, food, decay, and new ways of seeing.

While the topics they address are wide ranging, these works share an intensity that is made evident by each artist’s dedication to their chosen craft and process. The show is organized around seven interrelated themes: life forms/forces, terrains of climate change, weaving, identity, geometric abstraction, architecture, and spaces of emotional care. As a group, the works highlight artistic practices that emphasize reclaimed materials and cyclical considerations of time.

2023 Winter Solstice Pinhole Photographs shoot completed in Northern Canada

Marking the seventh year of my ongoing Winter Solstice Pinhole Photographs series, the 2023 batch of pinhole images was shot at the Pangnirtung Fjord, on Baffin Island, in Nunavut, Canada.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts about this series, each year presents a unique set of challenges to executing the photography; this is part of the series’s framework. Getting from A to B in the Canadian Arctic certainly more than qualifies. On top of the usual seasonal darkness and uncertainty of the rudimentary equipment and materials I use, severe cold, limited travel options, stress, and cultural barriers all played a part this year. It was an arduous but unforgettable experience, an outline of which is available on my Instagram feed’s stories highlights under the “2023 WSPH” heading.

But now back in New York, I’ll process the photographs and go through my BTS footage, all of which I’ll post here and on Instagram in the coming weeks and months.

Work mentioned in "The Art Newspaper"

I went into the experience of showing at Photofairs New York without many expectations, this year’s edition having been the first one to take place in New York. But I was very pleasantly surprised at the overall quality of the event and the caliber of galleries present. So I was pleased to read the article “Photofairs New York shows the promise and peculiarity of an evolving market” by Tim Schneider in The Art Newspaper (September 8, 2023) during the fair that, in addition to mentioning my work and quoting Douglas Marshall of Marshall Gallery, brings up good perspective on the place of contemporary photography in the fine-art world and the art-fair space in the art market among other things.

“The medium is still hindered by the perception of editions, multiplicity and reproducibility,” says Douglas Marshall, the founder of Los Angeles-based Marshall Gallery. […]

The irony in Marshall’s case is that several of his artists produce either unique works or unusually small edition runs. Of the three artists on his stand at the Javits Center, only the sepia-toned photos of Albarrán Cabrera are editioned. The others, by John Brinton Hogan and David Samuel Stern, are one-of-a-kind. Prices across the stand range from $1,500 to $8,000 for a backlit portrait of a Julius Caesar bust woven together from strips of translucent vellum.

Read the full article here.

Solo project-room exhibition “Third Person” at Marshall Gallery, Santa Monica

I’m happy to announce Third Person, my solo project-room exhibition at Marshall Gallery, Santa Monica, will open September 22, and be on display through October 28, 2023. The opening reception will be held September 23, 4–7 pm.

The exhibition will feature approximately ten pieces, including several recent Woven Portraits as well as the the 2022 Untitled Trees Patterns study series, along side a selection of sketches and ephemera that contribute to, guide, or even appear in my work.

The gallery’s front room will display John Brinton Hogan’s solo exhibition Invasive Spectators, opening the same day, and other galleries around Bergamot Station will be holding openings as well.

Solo exhibition "Keeping Time" on display at Weitman Gallery, Washington University in St. Louis

I’m happy to show this small solo exhibition at Weitman Gallery at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Art at Washington University in St. Louis. On display August 28 through October 6, 2023.

This is the statement I wrote for Keeping Time:

Time is nature’s way to keep everything from happening all at once.
—John Archibald Wheeler, Ray Cummings, and other attributions

This exhibition, meant to complement Unknown (American)—commissioned by Washington University and on display in Weil Hall through summer 2024—is made up of a selection of work from the last three years. During this time, I’ve become interested in portraits of historical leaders in the form of busts, especially those of leaders who lived before the invention of photography.

While it’s obvious that these portraits, or portrayals, are manipulated in appearance for various reasons, it is nonetheless portraits that sew together history despite the unknowability they confess to. Photography has always been like this. Its mission is impossible. A photograph isn’t a window into the past—it’s only an object produced by a mechanical process. Portraiture’s mission is also impossible. We can’t know a person by looking at their image. Yet within all this impossibility, to me photographic portraiture is filled with longing.

So I wonder if it even matters whether a portrait has a subject, or whether a photograph was taken at a particular moment. I wonder how this relates to the depiction of historically significant individuals in the days before photography, both back then and now. I want to acknowledge the unknowability of what can be seen and recorded, and the physicality of the object that serves as the record.

Commissioned piece "Unknown (American)" completed and on display at Washington University in St. Louis

Commissioned by Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Art at Washington University in St. Louis (my alma mater), Unknown (American), by far the largest and most complicated piece I’ve ever made, took my work to new places technically, philosophically, and even logistically. Almost every component of this two-part installation, including the eight backlighting panels, had to be basically invented. But I’m fairly certain this represents the direction in which things will go from here.

In early 2023, I photographed a small, pensive 19th-century limestone bust of George Washington in the collection of Washington University’s Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, the artist of which is not known and was therefore assigned the placeholder attribution “Unknown (American)” by the museum. Three of those photos, taken from different angles and in varied lighting, were in the case of the larger piece on the left converted into red, green, and blue tonal scales respectively, before being printed onto translucent plasticized paper and hand cut into 15mm-wide strips. The strips were then hand-woven into a composite image and backlit with the custom-built panels.

Despite his significance in history and American mythos (even serving as the namesake of the university), Washington’s likeness varies somewhat by portraitist and era. In this two-part installation, I wanted to draw attention to the special relationship enjoyed by portraiture and photography, as well as photography’s often-overlooked physical properties and lasting influence on the memory of events and individuals. While my work in general tries to examine fundamental questions about the nature of depiction, such as whether a portrait must have a subject, here this examination is applied to the portrayal, through photography, of an individual who lived before the invention of the medium itself.

To portray seems to be a deeply human need, and there exists in history a collective recollection of individuals and events based on such portrayals, which can be bent and manipulated by motley present-day political forces. As democracy’s potential fragility routinely makes headlines, and as the United States and other nations reconsider their historical legacies, this carries significant contemporary resonance. Given the centrality of portraiture’s role in the telling of history, and despite the unknowability inherent in photography, portraiture, and the passage of time itself, the Kemper Art Museum’s placeholder attribution might be seen as referring to the subject himself. 

I will give an artist talk at the Sam Fox School October 5, 2023. More information on this to follow.

2022 Winter Solstice Pinhole Photographs shoot completed in Iceland

2022 marked the sixth year of my ongoing Winter Solstice Pinhole Photographs series, and I’m happy to report that the shooting of the 2022 batch, shot mostly along Iceland’s southern and western coasts, is complete.

The conditions there were the harshest I’ve experienced in the multi-year series so far. The wind and cold truly pushed the limits of the seeming fragility of photography’s most basic physical mechanics, which, to me, are reflected in the functionality of the pinhole camera itself. It also highlighted the effort this project requires in exercising such fundamental photography principles, in making such simple images.

This has all been part of the Winter Solstice Pinhole Photographs project from the beginning; the possibility that it might not work at all, as every photographer knows, a given of analogue image-making. Even without extreme conditions, this is a possibility. That’s where I want this project, and everything I do, to be—at the edge of not working, or of being not workable.

Arctic darkness, wind, cold, fatigue: Iceland threw these pieces of the Winter Solstice Pinhole Photographs series into relief. I’ll process the results later this winter. I hope this comes through in the results.

Two Woven Portraits on permanent display in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn

I’m delighted to two Woven Portraits—from 2015 and 2016—have been purchased by Avdoo & Partners for permanent display in the first-floor lobby/common area at Saint Marks Place, a somewhat recently completed (though over 90% sold, according to its website) residential development project in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn.

The common area is outfitted with granite flooring, paneled walls, furniture, and other luxury comforts, and has access to St. Marks Place, 4th Avenue, and Bergen Street. The placement of the artwork is at the end of a hallway that runs parallel a lush courtyard.

It’s a nice curation, and I’m thankful to my friends at Arts Gowanus for the connection.

Select Woven Portraits on display at Marshall Gallery, Santa Monica

Concurrent with Robert G. Achtel and Nikolai Ishchuk’s exhibitions at Marshall Gallery, five of my Woven Portraits from recent years are on display in the gallery’s library, through August 20, 2022. As always, Marshall Gallery has more of my work in its collection, available by request. I’ve been working with Marshall Gallery formally for perhaps 18 months now, and I’m still so pleased to be on this roster, among photography’s best envelope-pushers.

"Human+Nature" group exhibition at Blue Spiral 1 Gallery, Asheville

I’m pleased to have three Woven Portraits from 2021 included in “Human+Nature: Photographic Explorations” at another great group exhibition at Blue Spiral 1 Gallery in Asheville, NC. Two of these are smaller pieces that are very special to me: Untitled Woven Portrait 22 and Untitled Woven Portrait 25. These were the first two Woven Portraits assembled from 5mm strips, which represented a step in my process that, along with backlighting some woven pieces (as in the NatGeo and the UCSF Magazine commissions), I didn’t think I’d take—or at least I wasn’t sure how to take until last year. In any case, they hang together and, shown in these photos, perhaps finally provide some sense of scale.

The gallery’s curatorial Statement is as follows:

Human+Nature presents photographic explorations of the interconnected relationship between humans and nature. These images reveal not only our individual perception of nature, but also our own nature made manifest through changes inflicted on the environment and the adjustment of humankind within self-created structures. Our primary human instincts drive us to control and dominate while also nurturing and finding connection in our surroundings.

Artists: Ralph Burns, John Dickson, Bill Green, Brian Kelley, Micah Mackenzie, Peter Olson, Susan Patrice, David Samuel Stern

Photos courtesy Blue Spiral 1 Gallery

Commissioned work in Winter 2022 issue of "UCSF Magazine"

Last fall UCSF Magazine commissioned me to make two pieces for Mara Grunbaum's article on University of California, San Francisco researchers' efforts to understand long covid, which affects possibly 14 million people in the US.

The first artwork is a backlit woven portrait, composed of three photographs printed on vellum in which the subject is dressed as, respectively, a front-line medical worker, a medical researcher, and a civilian—and seated in front of differently colored backdrops.

The second piece is a Foursquare artwork, composed of four photographs of the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself, sourced from NIAID.

Commissioned work in February issue of "National Geographic"

Last summer National Geographic Partners commissioned me to make a Woven Portrait of the most famous of ancient Romans. It appears in this month's issue of National Geographic Magazine accompanying Cambridge historian Mary Beard’s article on the mystery of what he really looked like. I worked closely with National Geographic’s production lead Nicole Thompson and photo editor Maura Friedman to refine the artwork’s direction, and, after determining that a bust of Caesar in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, would be the best subject on which to base my “portrait” of him, arrange a shoot there in July 2021.

Executing this piece opened some new avenues for me. For example, backlighting the completed woven portrait object. I had been tinkering with this idea for a few years, but presenting a piece that way never seemed appropriate given my interest in photographs as physical objects. That is, I think that when backlighting is introduced as a presentation mode, the emphasis seems to go toward light itself, rather than the artwork’s objectness. Also, the three photos of the bust that were woven together to make this artwork are photos that were not only taken from different angles, but also that were converted into three tonal ranges: red, green, and blue. When the R, G, and B photos were recombined via hand-weaving them together, they form an image which essentially averages to black and white. This is another idea I had tinkered with over the years, but I felt this was appropriate here because the marble portrait bust of Caesar and the wall in front of which it was sitting, were essentially all monochromatic.

I am planning to execute more Woven Portraits in this manner—including the possibility of photographing statues of individuals (or what those individuallys may have looked like, as is the case here). So, I consider this commissioned project to be a turning point in my work’s overall direction.

In any case, several months later, I’m pleased to highlight the artwork’s publication in the February issue of the magazine, which is out now. The article also appears on National Geographic’s website, linked above.

Registration for my Summer 2022 course at Penland School of Craft is now open

Last spring I was invited to propose a course to teach at Penland School of Craft, in North Carolina, during summer 2022. Months later, registration for “Focused Photography” is now open! Every single person who has commented to me about Penland has had the most positive things to say about the school, its facilities, and Blue Ridge Mountains atmosphere. So, if you’re interested and can make it to NC for a couple weeks this summer (housing options are available through Penland), enroll now.

Course description

I believe that when photography is used as a tool for making art, your results should reflect predetermined, honed ideas. Students will begin by assembling a collection of reference images, preliminary studies, and sketches. Then they will determine technical strategies, equipment, and materials; make mockups; execute three photoshoots; and review and refine the results. We’ll cover a flexible range of technical skills based on each student’s project as it evolves. Demonstration will be based on digital technology, but students comfortable with film cameras and darkroom printing are welcome to use an analog workflow. Each student, whether a beginner or an experienced photographer, will complete a small body of work in which nothing was left to chance. All levels.

The course will run July 3–15. Registration and enrollment information may be found here.