Andreas Gefeller

Gefeller's images intrigue me. The systematic nature of his work, the commitment to an idea- it's pretty amazing. The floor plan images are so submersive, transporting; the perspective feels like such a gift- to float silently, just above the ground, from room to room, seeing all, examining all, but disturbing nothing.

My reaction is how I imagine a ghost to feel, hovering along, spending time to be absorbed by the surroundings, yet being completely apart from them. Immersive.

It's this combination of systematic and other-worldliness sympathy that I wish to emulate. I would like to have viewers fall into the work, get lost inside for a while... picking through things, having things pick through them.

Artist Biography
By rigging his camera from a height of 6-7 feet and at a 90-degree angle to a surface, he photographs every inch of his chosen environment. He then transforms all the images into a grid, which are stitched together digitally to form the final photograph. Although the details are familiar (lottery tickets scattered over cobblestone streets, baby chickens on a farm, newspapers on the stairs), his technique flattens spaces that are normally 3-dimensional and makes them look foreign.
- Cool Hunting

Working in a digital format, Gefeller painstakingly photographs a large surface inch by inch, then assembles those dozens or even hundreds of images into a large-scale composite (without otherwise doctoring them). The method is not unlike that used to compile the streetscapes on GoogleEarth; as a viewer, you want to both appreciate them for their comprehensiveness and to zoom in on the intricate details they capture.
- ArtInfo

As time and duration interplay with his meticulous imaging of reality, Gefeller creates a new mode of representation. Thus, residing in a place between fact and fantasy, Gefeller simultaneously documents and invents the worlds around him.
- Neiman Storyboard

“Absolutely nothing happens in Gefeller’s pictures, according to the classical criteria of narratology, yet they defy inclusion in the traditional canon of photographic documentation.”
- Gerhard Gluher, “Andreas Gefeller: SOMA”, Hatje Cantz Publishers 2003, 3775712534

“And then you can spend absolutely ages examining the details and you'll always discover something new.”
- Andreas Gefeller, Interview on Euromaxx, Deutsche Welle, 3./5. Dezember 2004 [translated from German]

Watch him do his thing-


Interview with the artist - Conscientious Extended

Gallery representing artist - Hasted Hunt Kraeulter

Artist Website

Artist Blog Post - Rinko Kawauchi

Rinko Kawauchi's photos have a quiet urgency. The work is intimate and sublime, I love that she says she's interested in things that have a short life-span: insects, flowers, clouds, children & elderly faces... It's extremely romantic, and I know that the washed out color palate got huge and now seems cliché, but I'm still drawn to it. She's showing continuously & internationally, just wrapping up a show in Brussels (at the time of this writing). She has a sense of really believing in her work, and following her heart with it. Being personally and deeply invested in her subject. While I'm working through determining my perceived value of art, weighing personal expression vs. political/activist work that seems to have more worth because it "makes a difference", Kawauchi's work is refreshing is detailing the beauty and emotion in every day life. Viewing her work is a quiet and positive experience, with many commenting that her work is "refreshing". While it seems that much of the work I've seen lately is a response to tragedy, repression; or springs from cynicism, I'd like my work to be refreshing.

Rinko Kawauchi was born in 1972 in Shiga, Japan. She discovered photography whilst studying at Seian Junior College of Art and Design. Kawauchi gained international acclaim in 2001 with the simultaneous release of three photography books with Little More publishing : Utatane (catnap), Hanabi (fireworks) and Hanako, for which she was awarded with the 27th Ihei Kimura photography award. In a matter of a few years she published another three significant books : Aila (2004) with Little More publishing; Cui Cui (2005) and The Eyes, The Ears (2005) with Foil Publishing.

‘I want imagination in the photographs,’ she once remarked. ‘A photograph is like a prologue. You wonder, “What's going on?” You feel something is going to happen.’
- Rinko Kawauchi, in interview Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, Sunday 7 May 2006

“It is not accidental that our greatest art is intimate and not monumental.”
- Max Webber, 1864 - 1920, German sociologist and political economist

Link to an interview with the artist or a review

Link to gallery representing artist

Link to artist website (Link to Foil Gallery's website, which seems the be the most current, comprehensive online presence for the artist.

Stephanie Brooks

Stephanie Brooks hits my funny bone, while not going light on the conceptual. Language is something that I've been interested in for a long time, but have shied away from using in my work. Social behaviour begins in language- the halt of work at Tower of Babel due to confused tongues being a classic illustration- and my interest in social perception/awareness is essentially based in word play.

Her formalist approach entices my attraction to clean, orderly design. The humorous side of the work gives it life, air, approachability. Like much humours work, the funny of it allows the viewer to draw near to the work, to let down their guard, and ultimately allows the piece to speak more clearly and effectively. This kind of wit, balanced with depth, is something i'd like to achieve.

An American artist, born 1970, Her work uses written word, stripping down the comedic gesture to linguistic games and turns of phrase, offering subtle infiltrations into the signs and devices that sructure our everyday life as well as language in general.

"[Brooks's] witty representation of an instinctually unconscious thought process as a simple visual equation prompts a unique consideration of how language and socialized behaviour interrelate."
Comedy is not Pretty, Molon & Rooks, Independent Curators International, 2005, ISBN 0916365727

"I'm as concerned with the formal properties of the work, scale especially, that I have to insist that they are both formally and conceptually driven. Formalism is the vehicle that drives the idea home, pardon the auto metaphor. In the academy, there seems to be this notion that the two terms, formal and conceptual, are oppositional. I've been discouraging this way of thinking for years, but recently in my work I've begun to recognize just how important the formal aspects of my work are and I'm trying to pay more attention to them in studio practice and discourse."
-Stephanie Brooks, interview with Beverly Rauenberg, fnews magazine, November 2004






Link to an interview with the artist.

Link to gallery representing artist - Rhona Hoffman Gallery

Link to artist website

6 Books

half awake and half asleep in the water (photography)
- Asako Narahashi
Nazraeli Press, 2007

Partly submerged photos, slightly surreal, both peaceful and tense, suffocating and liberating. This duality intrigues me; my viewing isn't passive. I hope to spark that relationship with my viewers. Execution feels unsafe, and totally committed. No way to partially jump in the water with a camera.




Mark Rothko in New York (painting)
- Diane Waldman
Guggenheim Museum Publications, 1994

I feel my seascapes what the lovechild of Hiroshi Sugitomo and Mark Rothko would look like. But without the suicide. I'm not a fan of his earlier work, but his untitled color fields really get me. What he does with paint, i want to do with light on film. Lay upon compounding layer. And having his own chapel! Awesome. I love his persona, even telling viewers how far to view his paintings from - 18" away to be fully enveloped, and refusing sales because he felt the buyer was insensitive.

"A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore a risky and unfeeling act to send it out into the world. How often it must be permanently impaired by the eyes of the vulgar and the cruelty of the impotent who would extend the affliction universally!"
— Mark Rothko




Bill Viola THE PASSIONS (video)
-John Walsh, editor
Getty Publications, 2003

5 Angels for the Millineum is the Viola piece that really speaks to me. I've never had the pleasure of seeing it in person, but the clips and stills i have seen make me wish I had. Super slow motion, giving me the time to see and soak in all the tiny tiny details. I think that's what photography is for me. Using a device to allow me to see differently than what my eyes can see. That's why i enjoy taking long exposures in the middle of the night. The image returns completely different from how i experienced it while taking it. Indeed, impossibly different. There's no need to resort to super slow speed, or long exposures even. The photograph is an unnatural record; it amazes me every time i see one, much like this Viola piece is an unnatrual recording. I am interested in the stories told in the passing of time.




Erwin Wurm, I love my time I don't like my time (sculpture)
-Berin Golonu, editor
Hatje Cantz, 2004

I love the humor that graces these pieces, and i love even more that these aren't just silly pranks or goof-offs, but well thought out pieces with intent and communication. Work that can be chuckled at, but that gives the viewer pause to ask themselves, "Now, what the heck am i looking at?" The absurdity, irony and wit hold the viewer. The sculptures of people holding objects have so much energy to them. This is an artist i'd like to imitate to learn from.



Intersections between Feminist and Queer Theory (non-fiction)
-Richardson, McLaughlin, Casey, editors
Palgrave Macmillan, 2006


Gender and identity politics have recently been introduced to me, and I find that i'm very interested. I also find that I'm pretty "late in the game" as these were HUGE issues in the 50-80s. I do believe that they are still pressing issues, but perhaps for a different reason, and I also think that every generation will have to wrestle with gender and identity in its own way. I'm interested in understanding more and historical and contemporary feminist theory, as well as queer theory. This book seems to address both, as well as where they meet. An aside- have straight white males become marginalized?

Also, I skimmed through the book; no pictures?!




The Mezzanine (fiction)
-Nicholson Baker
Vintage Contemporaries, 1990

I LOVE stories, especially those that detail the mundane. I like photos that do that as well... spinning grand stories out of vivid minutiae. This book comes highly recommended, both from friends and from reviewers. The bulk of the story takes place on an escalator in an office building. That caught me. I'm so interested in the wealth of detail and material A place can hold, and how often most of it is overlooked and easily passed by. I hope that my photos celebrate the place, and the value of being carefully aware, sensitive. I hope to experience more, to notice more; I hope that my work encourages that.

Artist Blog Post - Asako Narahashi

Asako Narahashi

Narahashi's "Half Awake, Half Asleep..." series caught my eye- the painterly quality of light, the physicality (weight, texture, movement) of the water, the sense calm coexisting with a feeling of danger. I want to know what equipment she uses, I'm sure some sort of water-proof device. I'm drawn to the idea of purposefully plunging my camera into the water. Underwater housing? Holga in a ziplock bag?

At times the half in/half out begins to feel like a gimmick, something I want to be careful to stay away form in my own work. In the afterward to her book by the same title, reviewer Martin Parr writes "What I really admire about these images is that this juxtaposition has been explored so thoroughly. It feels resolved; everything that could have been explored, has been achieved. It is now a closed mystery". (last page) I hope it's not a "closed mystery". Narahashi's work since the "Half Awake/Half Asleep" series builds on the same foundation.

This work makes me miss the beach, my hometown, and makes me want to jump in to the water with my camera. The idea of presenting a half in-half out moment resonates with my cultural & personal identity. And though the work shows the half-half moment, I'm attracted to it because it has the sense that it could only be done with complete conviction. Narahashi couldn't take these pictures standing on the shore stretching her arms towards the sea and pointing the camera back towards land. She couldn't partially jump in. All or nothing. I hope that my work can convey that as well.

Artist Biography
1959 Born Tokyo, Japan
1998 Newcomer’s Award from the Photographic Society of Japan
2003 Society of Photography Award

2 Quotes - provide quotes with MLA citations commenting on ideas you are interested in the artist you are highlighting
1. "Not in the water, but the water´s edge. The resulting photographs were of a sort that I couldn’t tell whether they were not wanting to go over to the other side (= other world), but standing on this side (= this world) and peeping over a the other side, or looking over at this side from the other side."
A. Narahashi: Kiss in the Dark. Tokyo 2001

2. "Her works [...] somehow make visible as a shared recognition the image of the sea that people embrace. Therein, an uncomfortable felling like seasickness and a pleasurable feeling of floating and entrusting yourself to the sea lodge side by side.[...] They call forth an ambivalent feeling.
Michiko Kasahara: Kiss in the Dark. Tokyo 2001






- link to reviews

- link to gallery representing artist

- link to artist website