I can’t top Greg Wasserstrom’s recent
travel nightmare, but I was stuck in O’Hare for seven hours on Sunday. At some point in the early afternoon, I said to Toni, the woman from Iowa City who became my airport gal pal and who I’ll never see again—I love those kinds of completely circumstance-driven daylong friendships—that I didn’t know why anyone would actually shop for jewelry in an airport terminal. By the fifth hour, I wasn’t buying jewelry, but I was buying a pair of
Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses from the
Sunglass Hut, thereby negating all the money I saved with my frequent-flier plane ticket. Nice.
Chicago itself, pre-O’Hare, was lovely. Saturday afternoon I went to the
Jeff Wall exhibit at the
Art Institute, and then down the street to the
Museum of Contemporary Photography for the
Loaded Landscapes show.
I came away from the Art Institute pleasantly surprised. I can’t claim to have a tremendous appreciation for Wall’s photographs, but I enjoyed the show quite a bit, and the light-box displays were really interesting. I think I actually enjoy Wall’s work better in print than I do in the light boxes, and I’m not sure what that says about me or his work, if anything. My two favorites:
Mimic and
After “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue.
Mimic, 1982. Copyright © Jeff Wall
After “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue, 1999–2000. Copyright © Jeff Wall
Before we left the Art Institute, we headed downstairs to the photography gallery, where I checked out
On the Scene: Kota Ezawa, Sarah Hobbs, Angela Strassheim. I’d seen Kota Ezawa’s work before, and I still can’t figure out where. (
I Heart Photograph, maybe?) Sarah Hobbs’s
Periodic Table of the Traits was a standout for me, as was the rest of her work, especially
Untitled (Indecisiveness) and
Untitled (Perfectionist). (You can tell a lot about me from those three choices, I think.) And Angela Strassheim’s work is haunting;
Untitled (Grandmother) is one I couldn’t get out of my head.
Periodic Table of the Traits, 2006. Copyright © Sarah Hobbs
Untitled (Perfectionist). Copyright © Sarah Hobbs
Untitled (Indecisiveness). Copyright © Sarah Hobbs
Untitled (Grandmother), 2004. Copyright © Angela Strassheim
Then on to MOCP, and the chance to see Joel Sternfeld’s work in person. It’s funny: I’ve spent so much time with Sternfeld’s books (or at least the two I have) that I was sure seeing his photographs in front of me would be even better. The experience confirmed for me a suspicion I’ve had that photo books are where it’s at. The books
are “in person” for me. In my apartment, I can hold the book in my lap, touch the photos with my hands, and come back to them again and again. In a gallery, they seem farther away somehow. The show is worth a visit, though—not just for Sternfeld, but for the ten or so other photographers represented.
No
Hey, Hot Shot! for me this season, but I did get an
Honorable Mention, and I’m pleased with that. The winners are a diverse and interesting bunch, all deserving and worth your attention if you haven’t yet checked them out. As for me, I’m trying to decide whether to try again in the fall or wait it out for a few rounds until I have something really different to submit. Getting my work in front of those jurors is important, but I want to make sure that I’m approaching each competition (and each round of HHS) deliberately, that it’s not like buying lottery tickets and crossing my fingers. If I don’t have anything that improves upon what I submitted this round, I think I’ll just wait.
All the more reason to get out there and photograph.
Labels: Angela Strassheim, artists, Chicago, Greg Wasserstrom, Hey Hot Shot, Jeff Wall, Joel Sternfeld, Kota Ezawa, photographers, Sarah Hobbs
Oh, fuck. Two boxes just arrived from 
