Gregory Halpern

All Images from "Omaha Sketchbook" Sizes Variable. Printed by J&L Books. Edition of 30







Gregory Halpern spent most of his life in Buffalo, New York and shoots most of his photographs there as a result. He received his Bachelor's from Harvard in History and Lit. and then earned his MFA from the California College of the Arts. The photographs I am covering are from his most recent book "Omaha Sketchbook". He has another book on the way about Buffalo, NY and currently lives and teaches in Rochester, NY.

Although his bio is rather limited in what I can find, his work seems to speak for itself. The photographs are a series of contact prints paired together in interesting juxtapositions featuring single photographs to diptychs and triptychs. Although the description of what this series is about remains vague and pretty much unspoken, I find that interesting. I enjoy trying to find meaning through the pairings and subjects that he's captured in this book. Much like my work (although mine has more explanation) he photographs the landscape and social scape of "Omaha". What I like about these is that they present a raw look into this place, its people, community, and its under belly. The conclusions that one must make to try and understand what it is is also interesting. It's a smaller community, relatively spacious in the development of homes, close to the countryside, possibly in the Midwest due to its architecture, and incorporating a rural aesthetic. There's a personal connection you can pick up by looking at these photographs, you can assume that the photographer is trustworthy, and is interested in revealing a story with little dialogue, only visual clues about the people and place. Subtle clues are something that I feel my work may need to incorporate, instead being so blunt.

Website
Gallery (none)
Interview (none) article on older works

Ted Lectures

Edward Burtynsky on Manufactured Landscapes



I chose Edward Burtynsky's lecture because of the fact that he' one of the premier landscape photographers in the world, dealing with the earth being manipulated through machinery, capitalism, progress, and western ideology. By far one of my favorite photographers, I felt that hearing a lecture on his work could open up new avenues in which my work can progress through. His lecture begins dealing with his interest in the landscape and its transformative qualities from human consumption and manipulation. Being from Canada, he's used to great wide open landscapes untouched by civilization and human manufacturing. He began by exploring coal and rock mining areas of America and soon began to realize where the work was headed. Hillsides being carved for consumption, digging into the world's natural splendor to help drive the population seemed to fascinate Burtynsky. His work then entered a new realm when he traveled to China to photograph their blossoming industry and increasingly western mindset. He was shooting factories, ruins of cities, dams, places of commerce, recycling villages, and much more. It was as if the remnants of America moved here, the capitalistic growth that America had thrived on for years moved across the pacific into a growing economy. The tremendous production China was receiving from us in the west, our consumption is being fueled by China as we speak. Much of the work calls for awareness about the carbon footprint that we leave on this planet and the environmental repercussions of just about anything we do, from buying a cotton shirt, to throwing away an obsolete computer, disposing waste, and putting in new concrete at your house. Everything is tied to one another.


Ueli Gegenschatz Soars in a Wingsuit



I chose this to balance my research between the landscape and extreme sports. this was the only lecture to touch on extreme sports in the TED that I saw. It's about an extreme athelete names Ueil Gegenschatz, though relatively brief on his part due to his slightly broken English, it provides a good background into different aspects of extreme sports and odd sports to consider. Ueil Gegenschatz is a world class athlete that has done just about every stunt imaginable to man. From base jumping off of mountains, bridges, building, and even the Eiffel Tower. He's para-sailed down cliffs, jumped out of planes hundreds of times, off of moving vehicles, and even jumped off a hot air balloon over the Alps. He's pretty much done it all in the extreme sports. He goes into the background of why he does this and feels a need to push himself further and further and test the limits of the Earth and himself. He revels that a lot of his inspiration for doing what he does comes from childhood dreams of flight and realizing an unlimited potential when at that age. Another driving factor is having the mental capacity to be able to attempt these feats. There's an exhilarating rush and euphoria that comes with the jumps. Although he didn't say that much, his video reveals many more answers. You can understand that being human, we are born with inherent limitations to what we can and can't do, Ueil Gegenschatz, blurs the line of that. Realizing the human dream of flight and continually pushing himself to the max in order to prove that he is his only limitation.

Hank Willis Thomas

What artwork/proposals did you present?
The work that i presented to Hank Willis Thomas was a combination of new and old work. By putting these two works together, there is a much more cohesive and stronger body of work, my series on the extreme landscape. Photographs of sites of extreme sports, void of humans, but the terrestrial descriptions of the manipulated land that envelopes the environment it inhabits.


What topics did you discuss? What was the nature of this discussion?
Some of the things that we discussed were the possibility of including non extreme sports like golf, baseball, basketball, etc. and see if i can pull a man made space and created space into cohesion. Portraits? Maybe, but focus on landscapes primarily. We talked a lot about the space as a social product in short.


What were the critical reactions/ suggestions to your ideas/artwork?
He felt that a good amount of the images were working and conveying what I wanted to say. He felt that there should be other landscapes represented as in other type of extreme sports. But, he felt that the basis of the project and the concept is definitely one that should be pursued and hasn't been represented much in the art/photography world other than magazine. But they tend to focus on the athlete rather than the landscape that they're in. He wants me to look into motocross and explore the idea of panoramic cameras. He also commented on the idea of portraits, that being that he didn't feel that they were necessary because they would lack complexity, if i could find a way to bring more depth to a portrait of people in their gear then do it, but don't rely on it when the landscapes are working the best.


What was a suggested plan of action?
Keep traveling and photographing the environments. pursue different sports, and possibly don't limit the photography to the extreme landscape, possibly looking into the landscape of sports in this country and their manipulation of land and space. Look into the idea of space being socially produced and how it's a social product.


What insights / new questions / ideas did you take from the meeting?
some new questions i have from this meeting were if i wanted to break into other sports and their manipulation of the landscape or just keep it under extreme sport landscapes? Look into the idea of landscapes being manipulated for our own amusements. Military Training Facilities a possibility? How do you produce backstory to a landscape?


How did this meeting affect how you will proceed with your project / proposal?
It will definitely give me new avenues to pursue towards or ponder upon. Looking into Loretta Lynn's Ranch in Tennessee about motocross and the landscape. I may look into skate parks are look at that as a manipulation of space and analyze the architectural and design elements of man made rather than man made in nature. PANORAMIC ARE A MUST!!!! Read "The Production of Space".

Goals for 2/19 - 2/26

Goals again, here we go:


Go to Charlottesville, Va and photograph Panorama Farm (BMX Course)

Contact a motocross courses in Northern VA

Go back to North Carolina and Find Rocky Road Mountain Bike Course.

Go to High Point, NC and find the Bike part behind the elementary school.

Find more terrain parks in this part of the country

Financially figure out a way to go to Colorado

5-10 Prints for Heide on Tuesday

Research the psychology of adrenaline junkies and people who participate in extreme sports

and finish my research assignments for wednesday

Extreme

"Adolescent males are the most likely subset of the population to partake in risky behaviors. This is because in adolescent males, the brain’s reward system develops long before the inhibitory system, which keeps impulsive, novelty-seeking behaviors in check. The inhibitory system doesn’t catch up with the rewards system until young men hit their early twenties. This leaves some young males who are genetically predisposed to high sensation-seeking susceptible to the lures of risky activities, like using drugs or jumping impulsively into a dangerous sport without thinking through the consequences first."

-Lindsey Konkel ("Extreme Psychology." Health Magazine, July, 2009.)


"One question guided Brymer’s interviews and analyses: “How is the extreme sport experience perceived by participants?” Certain themes emerged, such as courage and humility, which give rise to positive self-transformation. “At the end of the day I had an epiphany because I did not die, but really enjoyed it. A whole environment that I never knew existed was opened to me,” said a BASE jumper in his mid-forties, one of Brymer’s study subjects. “For me, it’s accepting that you’re mortal and that you’re very vulnerable,” said another one of Brymer’s BASE jumpers. The findings are published in the January 2009 issue of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology."

-Lindsey Konkel ("Extreme Psychology." Health Magazine, July, 2009.)

“The fear is what keeps you focused.”


I wanted to get into the psychology of extreme sports, why do people do what they do? Why do they risk their own lives just for sport? This article was very informative about they ways and whys of people doing what they do, being extreme and why they do it. At first it begins to talk about the obvious stereotype, that being the average male teen, but they say that the adolescent slightly skew the readings, because when people are young, it is proven that they'll have a much greater chance of doing more risky activities and putting their lives in more jeopardy than that of a 4o year old. The article attempts to find why they want to do this, is it because these people have a gland in their brain that releses more dopamine than usual? Maybe. Some say that these people are like drug addicts or gamblers, that they can't experience the everyday without getting a kick from their own personal "highs." That is also a possibility. But people believe that it is something else, something inside of them drives them to be out their in the the elements struggling to survive against themselves and the forces of nature that they toy with. The research eventually wnet into the field and had started asking the extreme athletes themselves to describe what they were feeling at the time and why they were feeling it. There comes a moment of clarity, an epiphany. Where emotions get so high, they transcend so to speak. People also feel that they shouldn't be looked at as crazy, they feel that nothing they do is crazy it's just that they can do it, while the spectators can't therefore it becomes crazy to them. The extreme athletes don't want to get hurt, that's the last thing they want, they just have higher skill sets and therefore are able to do these things at much higher levels than the average person.

Ed Templeton

Bam and Michelle. 1998. Gelatin Silver. variable size


Kids Kiss, England. Gelatin Silver. variable size





Liz Rice - RVCA parking lot. Gelatin Silver. variable size


Exhibition Detail


Ed Templeton is a prominent skateboarder, but is also becoming known as a prominent photographer, designer, and artist. Born in 1972 in Orange County, California. He started Skateboarding in 1985. In 1993, Ed founded his own skateboard company, Toy Machine, and begane making the graphics for the skateboards. Around this time he began growing an affinity for art, with each deck he would make. He is a self taught artist, his work reflects upon the ideas of street and urban culture in America, focusing on what he knows best, skateboarding and its periphery. He has been featured in the hit documentary film, "Beautiful Losers", (also a touring art exhibition and collected book) a film about contemporary artists dealing with their surrounding urban environments. He has shown his work world and nationwide and is becoming a known figure in the underground art scene. He's been featured in the Art Street Culture magazine Juxtapoz (who also produced an Art Exhibition in 2002 called "The Essential Disturbance", in Paris at the Palais de Tokyo), his book of photographs, "Teenage Smokers", in 2000 won $50,000 in the Search For Art competition in Italy.

I chose Ed Templeton to talk about because of his intimate look at his life and the people he's met through owning a company, skateboarding, touring, and basically just living life. He takes a very raw, uncut, journalistic approach using 35mm to increase the drama and add to the grittiness of what he does. He focuses on the urban, skate, and street culture of where he goes. I enjoy the aesthetic that he brings to the table, and the element of DIY and zine culture presented and inherit into his work. Although self taught (in which i have a few reservations) he seems to make and capture the most intimate of moments.

quotes:

"to stimulate discussion, thought, and general interest in the contemporary landscape. Neither an environmental group nor an industry affiliated organization...integrates the many approaches to land use - the many perspectives of the landscape - into a single vision that illustrates the common ground in “land use” debates. At the very least, the Center attempts to emphasize the multiplicity of points of view regarding the utilization of terrestrial and geographic resources."
-Center for Land Use Interpretation



Interview
Official Website
No Official Gallery

Goals have changed due to weather

Asheville, NC Trip to the Mellowdrome got snowed and iced out.

Instead, I will be going to North Central North Carolina to trails in Raleigh, Cary, Durham, Clayton, High Point, and maybe Roanoke Rapids. All the trails vary in technical expertise, but the majority of them are very advanced. Focusing on Mountain Biking (bikers) and the trails they ride on. Weather Permitting, but it seems it will be a nice time to go south tomorrow.

A list of North Carolina Trails