Liz Kuball Photography | Blog: July 2008

Paul Fusco: RFK

My copy of Paul Fusco: RFK arrived today. These photographs are what I love about photography.

Labels: Bobby Kennedy, books, Paul Fusco, photographers, politics

One reason (today) that I love Shoot! The Blog

via fubiz via Shoot! The Blog

Labels: Barack Obama, blogs, politics, Shoot The Blog

Earthquake country

I have lived in California for seven years, and in that time, I’ve only felt a handful of mild earthquakes—mild enough to really enjoy them. They’ve most often happened when I was in bed, and it felt as though someone was kicking the bed frame.

This—by that I mean the one that happened moments ago—was more like a series of small waves, less jarring than rocking. I was sitting at my desk, editing a book, and I suddenly felt as though my office chair had turned into a rocking chair, moving just barely forward and back at a faster-than-normal pace. “I wonder if I should get up and stand in the doorway,” I thought to myself, and by the time I stood up, it was gone.

When I moved into this apartment, after I signed the lease, the landlord told me that, when she bought the house the month before, she had a geological survey done and discovered that a fault line runs through the property. The earth could open up and swallow me at any moment, and in some strange way I take comfort in that, the way only someone who’s never truly suffered as a result of an earthquake could.

Labels: California, earthquakes

From S.

Two nights ago, S. broke up with me in a dream. Imagine a dream where all the bad habits and annoying traits you know you have come pouring out at once. That was me in this dream, and he finally had enough. “We can’t do this anymore,” he said. I shook myself awake and I was sheepish the whole next day.

When we met up later that afternoon, I told him, “I was doing this, and then I was doing that,” and he said, “Yeah, that sounds about right.” “Hey!” I said. And he laughed. It is indescribably good to be with someone who knows you at your worst and is still surprised to hear he broke up with you.

He sent me this last night. Enjoy.

Labels: S.

Free

via Allison V. Smith

Labels: Barack Obama, politics

Choosing projects

Yesterday, I posted a few pictures from a project I’ve been thinking about for a few months: a series of portraits of kids with their babysitters. Melissa Lyttle commented and said, “But why?” Good question.

The idea for the project came to me in the car with S. (where most ideas come to me). We’d been listening to This American Life (Episode #351: “Return to Childhood 2008”), and in the first segment of the show, Alex Blumberg tries to track down Susan Jordan, who babysat Alex and his sister when Alex was 9 years old. Here’s the bit that grabbed me:

These are the things that I remember about Susan Jordan. . . . Me and Susan flipping through one of those Time-Life books: Rock ’n’ Roll through the Decades: The Sixties. She has long, brown hair. She’s incredibly skinny. It’s 1975. She’s wearing bell-bottom Levis, a faded jean jacket. She points to a picture of a bloated man in a powder-blue rhinestone jumpsuit, sitting cross-legged on a stage, before a crowd of crying women. “That’s my favorite picture of Elvis,” she says. This information seems somehow personal, and important.

This transported me back to the ’70s and ’80s, back to super-skinny Debby Jones standing in front of the full-length mirror in my parents’ bedroom, wearing a bikini, pinching herself, and saying, “Don’t I look fat?” Lisa Piaskowski, who had a crush on the cousin of one of our neighbors, and who gave us a love note to run over and put on his windshield when he was at our neighbors’ house. Suzie Dragoo, sitting on the deck, with the phone cord stretched from the wall in the kitchen, crying to one of her friends about a boy.

The years when you babysit are tumultuous ones. Everything is drama. Feelings are extreme. And you bring that into the lives of the younger kids you’re charged with watching. If a teenager babysits for one family more than a few times, the kids usually feel a connection to her. And she tells them things she might never tell her parents or her peers. Teenagers think kids don’t listen, or don’t understand. But kids are like sponges, especially when this exotic creature called a teenager comes into the house.

I like the idea of trying to look for that connection in a series of portraits. As I said in my response to Melissa, I’m just getting started in this, and I’m not sure whether it’ll go anywhere. But I usually have to try things to see if they’ll work. Maybe the portraits alone won’t do it. Maybe I would need to incorporate words or kids’ drawings. Or maybe I’d need to change it up and, instead of doing more formal portraits, take more candid shots (the way I did with my sister’s wedding). I don’t know yet, but I like posting things that are in progress, not fully formed or defined, because I think there’s something to be gleaned there about the process.

Rob Haggart posted today about the importance of choosing a subject. He quotes from a Guardian article in which Elisabeth Biondi, visuals editor of The New Yorker, talking about photographer Pieter Hugo, says, “Some people have said to me that Pieter’s subject is so dramatic that it would be hard to take a bad picture . . . but, you know, a photographer chooses his subjects, and that, too, is an important part of having a great eye. Photographers go where their instinct leads them and then try and work out their fascination for the subject through the photographs they take.”

What we don’t often see are the starts and stops, the missteps, the things that don’t go anywhere. I work out what I think by writing. I work out what I feel by photographing. I don’t know yet what I feel about this subject, or whether the depth of my feeling will be substantial enough to take me anywhere. But I’m interested enough to try.

For what it’s worth, I’ve been thinking a lot about my In Store series, about why it doesn’t work for me, why it’s stalled. I think there are two key reasons. One of them is that the idea occurred to me as a concept, a theme, something I could get my hands around. I do think the proliferation of storage facilities says something about our culture. And I think it’s an interesting story. But I have no connection to storage facilities myself. I don’t have stuff in storage. I have a tiny apartment and comparatively little stuff.

This is not to say that all photographers must have a personal connection to their subjects in order to make great photos. It’s just that I think I’m at my best—in writing, in photography—when I make it personal. If I’m not feeling anything, something’s wrong.

Labels: A Photo Editor, Alex Blumberg, blogs, magazines, Melissa Lyttle, photographers, Pieter Hugo, radio, S., This American Life

Blake and Bridget

I’m in the early stages of a series of portraits of kids with their babysitters. These are three images from today.

I’m not sure if this’ll go anywhere, but I’m going to try a few more shoots with a variety of people, and see if anything crystallizes.

Labels: portraits

Fork

Oh, what a joy it is to watch the future president of the United States meet with world leaders, meet with soldiers overseas, talk and listen and be willing to learn. What a joy it is to imagine a day when we will be represented by someone who represents the best of us instead of our mediocrity.

It is easy, even for those who care deeply about the political process, about our history, about what we will leave behind, to grow tired of seeing the same politicians’ faces on the TV screen, to get sick of talking heads talking about things that don’t matter but are supposedly connected in some way to the candidates, to think, “Screw it—I won’t give you any more of my money because you voted for x.” It is easy to think that way. But easy is not the answer. The answer is to read more and watch less TV. The answer is to pay attention to the things that matter, not the fluff. The answer is to look at the big picture, not individual issues or individual votes.

We are at a fork in the road. We can’t afford to get distracted. We can’t afford to not care.

Labels: Barack Obama, politics

Jack Radcliffe

Via photo-teacher extraordinaire Aline Smithson’s blog, I came upon the work of Jack Radcliffe, who, since his daughter Alison’s birth in 1975, has documented her life. (The July 13, 2008, article by Radcliffe in the Los Angeles Times explains the project.) This is the kind of project I’m into right now. Something about a relationship, something deeply personal, something where the photographer and subject are connected in a way that makes all the difference. Below are some of my favorites; you can find more of it here.

Labels: Aline Smithson, Jack Radcliffe, photographers, teachers

T.A.

In case you didn’t know it, Timothy Archibald rocks.

Labels: photographers, Timothy Archibald

First Person Impressions: A competition for writers, videographers, and photographers

Maggie Saia, of First Person Arts, contacted me this morning to let me know about an upcoming documentary contest called First Person Impressions.

According to the Web site,

First Person Arts transforms the drama of real life into memoir and documentary art to foster appreciation for our unique and shared experience.

Sounds good to me. Plus, the judge for the photography competition is Katherine Ware, curator of photography at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The competition has three categories: film (up to five minutes), essay (up to 1,500 words), and photography (up to five images). Short ’n’ sweet. The deadline is August 15, 2008.

The cart and the horse

Reading Heather Morton’s blog last week, in the 30-square-foot “business center” of the Comfort Inn in Guilford, Connecticut, I came across this, from Sandi Gidluck (associate creative director at Young & Rubicam in Toronto):

fine art = solving personal challenges and issues in a creative way. Expressing personal ideas. And the public sees the final complete piece. Then they critique it.

commercial art = solving business challenges and issues in a creative way. Expressing targeted ideas. And everyone sees the birth, process and final piece, the whole time critiquing it all the way through. And then again when it goes public.

And I realized that, in beginning the pursuit of editorial work, I have been putting the cart before the horse.

At this point, let’s be blunt: Why would a magazine hire me, when there are a thousand other already experienced editorial photographers out there and/or up-and-coming photographers who are committed to the concept of shooting editorially? Don’t get me wrong—I fully appreciate the professional editorial photographers, the ones who can take an assignment and turn it into something miraculous, or at least something worthy of tearing out and taping to the wall. But I spend 40+ hours a week executing someone else’s vision in my day job; I don’t want to be doing that in my photography. The photographers I look up to are everyone from (oh, you know I’m going to say it) Alec Soth to Nick Waplington to Jessica Dimmock, along with a whole slew of others.

I loved seeing Alec’s photos in the Telegraph (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4).

via Colin Pantall

And I loved Nick Waplington’s work and Jessica Dimmock’s work in Wired.

But take Alec as a case study: He was shooting portraits of sheep in Minnesota before he started working on Sleeping by the Mississippi. The bulk of his first book project was made in 2002, a decade after he graduated from Sarah Lawrence. That means he spent 10 years working at projects that didn’t go anywhere before the Mississippi project really took off for him. He wasn’t shooting editorially during this time; he was working on his own projects (and at a day job). Now, having achieved remarkable success with his art, he’s doing some editorial and commercial work.

I’m not suggesting that there’s one right path, or that those like Kate Hutchinson (who supports herself with her editorial work and teaching, and does her personal projects, too) aren’t just as admirable. I’m just saying that I want to focus on my personal projects first, before I try to do anything editorially or commercially.

Labels: Alec Soth, blogs, day job, editorial, Heather Morton, Jessica Dimmock, Kate Hutchinson, Nick Waplington, photographers

Longest blog post ever

It was a long, long weekend in Connecticut. Cara and Damon’s wedding was the best I’ve ever been to, from the forgetting of the bouquet to the “By the power vested in me by the state of Connecticut and www.getordained.com. . . .” Family drama, yelling, tears, denial of tears, drunkenness, laughter. I don’t know if I came away with the photo project I was hoping for, and maybe it was asking too much of myself to produce such a thing in one weekend. But here’s some of what I have and like so far (not a final edit).

I had never seen the cultural definition of family so clearly laid out.

Chris is playing a saw in this picture.

And in this one, my brother-in-law Ben wanted to get a picture of Jacob with the saw being played.

These were the cake toppers (vegan cupcakes were served in lieu of wedding cake). Cara is the shark; Damon, the unicorn. (Cara has loved sharks ever since we were little kids. In the shark-attack scenes in Jaws, she laughed while we all screamed.)

On the way to the beach for swimming after the wedding.

Arm wrestling after the swimming.

At the airport in Hartford, the American Airlines employee who checked me in looked at my flight information and saw I was going to Santa Barbara. He said, “My favorite city.” I asked if he’d vacationed there, and he said, “No, I lived there for a while in the ’70s. I should’ve never left.” When my plane landed, the sun was setting over the mountains, and I could smell the ocean, and I knew he was right.

Labels: family

Connect-i-cut

Heading to Connecticut for the weekend for my little sister’s wedding. I’m hoping to do a whirlwind photo project while I’m gone, and maybe even have a few things to post on Monday or Tuesday. Stay tuned.

Labels: family

Rachel Barrett

Photographer Rachel Barrett’s project on NYC newsstands was featured in The New York Times yesterday, and there’s a lovely little slide show worth checking out. Also take a look at Barrett’s work on her site; I got lost in it, particularly the color stuff.

Labels: photographers, Rachel Barrett

Found and not yet found

In writing, people talk about voice. In photography, maybe it’s vision, but voice works just as well, because they both get at the point: what you have that no one else does. I think about this a lot, both in terms of writing and photography.

Recently, I decided to start adding labels to my blog posts, and so I went back through my blog, from the beginning to the present, and I copyedited it and labeled it, and in the process, I saw that somewhere along the way I had found my writing voice. I had become myself. I haven’t done that yet with photography. (Maybe I should get back to photographic sluttery—it’s only through the repetition that it happens, that a voice, a vision, emerges.)

If you’re in that same position, if you ever wonder what you bring to the table, how you’ll ever stand out from the crowd by finding your own way, check out S.’s post today. Definitely worth a read.

Labels: S.

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Thursday, July 31, 2008

Paul Fusco: RFK

One reason (today) that I love Shoot! The Blog

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Earthquake country

Friday, July 25, 2008

From S.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Free

Choosing projects

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Blake and Bridget

Monday, July 21, 2008

Fork

Jack Radcliffe

Friday, July 18, 2008

T.A.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

First Person Impressions: A competition for writers, videographers, and photographers

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

The cart and the horse

Monday, July 14, 2008

Longest blog post ever

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Connect-i-cut

Monday, July 07, 2008

Rachel Barrett

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Found and not yet found

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