San Diego Natural History Museum presents Mitch Dobrowner

The landscape photography of Mitch Dobrowner will be exhibited at the Ordover Gallery of the San Diego Natural History Museum from May 17 to August 3, 2008. An opening reception on May 17 will take place from 11 am to 1 pm, and entry will be free of charge. The main feature will be Dobrowner's series "Enraptured," a 28-image collection of black and white landscape photographs from North America. These include varied scenes comprising locations such as the American Southwest and the cityscapes of Los Angeles. The exhibition also includes San Diego-born glass sculptor Dick Ditore, and photographers Richard Garrod and Robert Walter.

During the exhibition, all photography and artwork will be available for sale, with a large portion of the proceeds going to the San Diego Natural History Museum. The high archival quality of Dobrowner's prints, created using traditional methods and materials that encourage simplicity in technique, ensure that your investment will go to a long-lasting piece of art that is abstract in sensibility, yet quintessentially American.

From Mitch Dobrowner's website:

"Dobrowner's printmaking process is performed in a dry darkroom with minimal dodging and burning. Prints are produced using archival quality 100% cotton rag paper with pigment based inks. The results are black and white landscape photographs that are somewhat abstract, yet feature a detailed symmetry and depth that transforms 'everyday' objects into iconic images."

Find out more about the available selection of Mitch Dobrowner's photography here.

Mitch Dobrowner's photographs are available for purchase at galleries around the United States and the world. These have recently been joined by Wall Space gallery in Seattle, WA, and the Bond Street Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. For a full list of locations, go to Dobrowner's website here.

Pictures of the Year International honors Leaders in Photojournalism

The Pictures of the Year International (POYi) competition has conferred a special award this year, bestowing the Distinguished Leadership in PhotoJournalism Award upon Magnum Founders: In Celebration of Sixty Years, a hard-cover, limited edition book of platinum prints celebrating the work of pioneering photographers who have come to help define modern photography. The book was submitted by Verso Limited Editions, and a special award was bestowed. Eleven highly esteemed professionals reviewed more than 46,00 images for the competition, and were all amazed by the presentation and quality of Magnum Founders.

The distinction is shared among Verso Limited Editions, Magnum Photos, and Magnum founders (and photographic legends) Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger, and David Seymour. Verso specializes in hand-crafted books in the traditional style, in an attempt to emulate the rare first editions of the 1900s from artists such as Picasso, Matisse, and Salvador Dali.

From Verso Limited Editions:

"Seventy-five editions of Magnum Founders are being produced, each containing twelve bound, original 14 x 16 inch platinum prints, three by each photographer, as well as one freestanding platinum print by Robert Capa. The images selected for the book are some of the most important of these photographers' careers, and each print bears the stamp of the photographer's estate. The Cartier-Bresson prints in Magnum Founders are the only estate-stamped prints released for sale since his death in 2004.

"Commissioned by Magnum Photos, the book was published in cooperation with the estates of the four photographers and contains a foreword by Elliott Erwitt, renowned photographer and past president of Magnum Photos."

To find out more about Magnum Founders: In Celebration of Sixty Years, click here to visit the Verso Limited Editions website.

WORKSHOP: Precision Digital Negatives

A workshop aimed at advanced photographers, taught by Platinum/Palladium specialist and CameraArts contributor Mark Nelson (December 04/January 05; November/December 2006), will run for four days at Ed Carey Photography in San Francisco, CA, May 5-8, 2008. Mark Nelson will not only guide students in advanced printing techniques, but also will teach techniques of fabricating digital negatives from platinum originals. Precision Digital Negatives is the title of Mark Nelson's e-book and guide to maximizing tonality and smoothness in the final print. Students will learn Nelson's workflow system intimately, and apply it to creating more beautiful prints.

The workshop fee is $750 plus the cost of a student kit.

From Mark Nelson:
All the methods you will learn are part of my basic workflow—each is designed to maximize the tonality in the final print—in some cases these methods will have richer tonality or tonal values than you would get with an inkjet print.

For more details click here. Spaces are going fast!

Juried exhibition: emerging (I) 3

The Creative Center for Photography's gallery space in Los Angeles, CA will be hosting a juried exhibition of silver prints in black and white created by students. The images were selected by Freestyle Photographic Supplies' Educational Steering Committee, a group of photographic educators dedicated to passing darkroom skills and other traditional techniques to future generations. Many institutions from California and beyond, like East LA College, the International Center for Photography, and Montana State University participated in this show. The exhibition will run from April 24 to June 25, 2008.

From FreeStyle:

"(The Freestyle Educational Steering Committee) offers advice and council to Freestyle Photographic Supplies with regard to supplies, curriculum, and
creative techniques. The Steering Committee also serves as a forum for the educators' thoughts and concerns about photography in the modern classroom."

Click here to find out more about FreeStyle.

Open Shutter Gallery presents Mitch Dobrowner

In Durango, Colorado, Open Shutter Gallery will present the black-and-white work of Mitch Dobrowner, along with the photographs of Thomas Carr. Dobrowner has assembled an impressive collection of stunning outdoor scenes of natural vistas in the United States. His ghostly reprentations of legendary geographic monuments, like New Mexico's Shiprock shrouded in stormclouds, or Merrick Butte in Arizona's famous Monument Valley, are but two examples in the photographer's magnificent catalogue. Dobrowner's images are captured with black-and-white film, and some are processed digitally, making him an impressive example of the "new school" of analog photography, in which a photographer's expertise in color, light and shadow has complemented, rather than hindered, the old school sensibility reminiscent of landscape photographers like Ansel Adams.

The exhibition runs March 14 to April 30, 2008.

From the Open Shutter Gallery:

"(Open Shutter) Gallery owner Margy Dudley carefully selects the finest quality works with an eye on photographers who address humanitarian and conservation issues through their photos. Dobrowner’s surreal photographic landscape images, created by using a mixture of black and white film and digital cameras, reflect the power of nature and the hushed beauty of outdoor scenes in North America. Other great photographers who have exhibited at the Open Shutter Gallery include Pentti Sammallahti, Nick Brandt, Peter Turner and Lois Greenfield. Coincidentally, Mitch, as a young photographer at age 18, assisted Peter Turner at his NY studio."

Dobrowner's work was featured in a 12-page spread in Silvershotz Journal of Fine Art Photography, and he was also featured as a participant in the 2008 Photo LA Festival. To find out more about the artist's works, visit his site here. Open Shutter Gallery's site is here.

The Center for Creative Photography: March Exclusives

The Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona presents a new line-up of events for the month of March 2008. First up is a Gallery Walk on March 9 with Becky Senf, organizer of "Debating Modern Photography: The Triumph of Group f/64." Senf will provide information on selected works and discuss their importance to the wider theme of this exhibition, which runs until May 4. Another Gallery Walk will take place April 24. On March 14, a lecture by Argentine photographer Marcelo Brodsky will discuss his work to remember “The Disappeared" as a result of military dictatorships in Latin America. Next up is a lecture presented by Joan Fontcuberta: "The Photography Paradox: Truth Against Beauty" takes place March 28.

From the Center for Creative Photography:

"Joan Fontcuberta, internationally acclaimed artist, curator, and theoretical writer, will discuss the tension between truth and beauty that has propelled photography's evolution since its origin. The aesthetic and ontological issues present in this tension can be observed in the present CCP exhibition, and in contemporary practice, including Fontcuberta’s own work."

For more information on upcoming events, click here to visit the Center's website.

AUCTION: Daniel Cooney presents photographs, photographic literature

Daniel Cooney's Early Spring Fine Art Auction has only a few more days before its close on Thursday, March 6, 2008. The lots are divided into photography, photographic literature, and painting categories. Daniel Cooney is holding this auction in conjunction with igavel.com, a partnership that occurs three times a year. As always, a preview of available lots is taking place at the exhibition space in New York City. None of the selections in this auction have been solicited from individual artists, thus creating a collection of images that stand fully on their own merit, in which the contest is decided by those at the helm of the auction.

Click here to view some of the selections available for auction, as well as estimated prices and the final selling price (where applicable).

Click here to view igavel's official auction site. Scroll down the list of photographs to see those that will remain available for the duration of the auction.

Image: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bicep Pose © Michael McKenzie

WORKSHOP: Advanced Photography in San Francisco

From May 5 to May 8, 2008, Photographer and Digital Expert Mark Nelson will present advanced workshops on platinum/palladium printing and conversion to precision digital negatives. Taking place at Ed Carey Photography in San Francisco, this workshop will give photographers a chance to go hands-on using Nelson's own workflow techniques. Quality takes precedence over quantity, however, and Nelson will teach participants how to get the most out of their digital negatives. Workshop activities encompass the down-and-dirty process of printmaking, with lectures and demonstrations mixed with, hopefully, time for everyone to wash their hands before they sit down in front of their workstations.

Curve Calculator II will be used for all curve calculation and calibration, and Nelson will teach participants the ins and outs of this and other workflow applications for either Windows users or Mac addicts. A gallery visit will also take place. Gallery 291, in the San Francisco Shopping District, was recently started by workshop hosts Ed and Holly Carey, and is currently exhibiting works by CameraArts cover photographer Beth Moon (CameraArts March/April 2008).

Mark Nelson is also the founder of Precision Digital Negatives (not to be confused with the other PDN) and is currently hosting March workshops in Texas for both beginners and advanced photographers.

Workshop fee is $750. Click here to learn more about this workshop.

Exhibition Chronicles Turning Point in American Photography

"Debating Modern Photography: The Triumph of Group f/64" is an exhibition honoring both sides of a debate about the direction and state of photography in the 1930s. Running February 16 to May 4, 2008, at the Center for Creative Photography, the exhibition will present works from the members of Group f/64, including Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Willard Van Dyke, Sonya Noskowiak, Edward Weston, to name a few; and from the practitioners of the pictorial tradition of photography, which was the dominant style at the time that the group was formed. The mechanical nature of Group f64's images, with bold, angular shapes and strong shadows, and the painterly, soft-focus style that came before are presented as 100 works by 16 artists.

Pictorial photographers of the 1930s, like Anne Brigman, William Dassonville, Johan Hagemeyer, William Mortensen, and Karl Struss, represent the lasting tradition, heavily involved in hand-crafting images, dignified portraits, and romantic landscapes. As a result, photographs from the "pictorial" era are closer to individual, painterly visions, both in the method of creation and in the adherence to form and subject matter.

Group f/64 made its first exhibition a reality at de Young Memorial Museum on November 15, 1932, after uniting in San Francisco to celebrate the camera's underappreciated attributes: specifically, the exacting focus and clarity achievable at the aperture setting that made the group's name. Now, this retrospective exhibition comes courtesy of the Center for Creative Photography and the Phoenix Art Museum.

From the Center for Creative Photography:

“Group f/64 photographs include nearly every possible category: industrial, urban and natural landscapes; portraits of friends and fellow group members; isolated objects for sharp-focus still lifes; and details extracted from the visible world. ...To distinguish themselves from the Pictorialists, (Group f/64) wrote, 'Pure photography is defined as possessing no qualities of technic [sic], composition or idea, derivative of any other art-form.'"

Reception speakers include Susan Ehrens, who will examine the photographic legacies of Anne Brigman, Imogen Cunningham, and Alma Lavenson; and Joan Fontcuberta will "discuss the tension between truth and beauty that has propelled photography's evolution since its origin." The reception takes place March 28, 2008, at the Center for Creative Photography Gallery at the University of Arizona.

Click here for details.

WORKSHOP: New Orleans Photo Alliance and New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts

A Wet Plate Collodion Workshop will be hosted over the weekend of March 22-23, 2008 by Ellen Susan, photography instructor and wet plate collodion specialist. Her most recent series, "Soldier Portraits," uses this traditional process to deptict soldiers of the Iraq War in the same sharp detail as in the Civil War photographs taken using the same process more than a century ago. The fruits of this labor-intensive, messy process should be greatly appreciated by fine art photographers and enthusiasts of archival photography preserving American History. Equipment or prior experience with this medium is not required, only an old set of clothes since this medium is a messy one.

Workshop fee is $325 plus a lab fee of $95. Deadline for registration is March 1, 2008. Enrollment is limited to 9 students.

From the New Orleans Photo Alliance website:

"In this workshop, you will learn how to create wet plate collodion positives, making both tintypes and ambrotypes (glass plate positives). Through a combination of discussions, and hands-on group shooting and processing sessions, each participant will have the chance to create several unique plates and will leave the class with sufficient knowledge to start their own wet plate collodion practice if desired."

Ellen Susan's Soldier Portraits exhibition ends February 5, 2008, but you can view a superb gallery of this medium in action here. Read more about the workshop here.

Upcoming updates at Paul Wainwright

Photographer and traditional wet-process expert Paul Wainwright will be holding a solo show at Harvard's Three Columns Gallery in Cambridge, MA. Titled "Empty Spaces," the show will begin with an opening reception on January 10, 2008. "Empty Spaces" will compile Wainwright's work from photographing old New England structures and their interiors, including new work from 2007. If you are unable to attend the show, a virtual tour will be posted on Paulwainwrightphotography.com in the coming week.

From Paul Wainwright's website:

"(Paul's) current portfolio includes interpretive images of landscapes and 19th century architecture. His work evokes a feeling of quietness and contemplation, and has been described as being reminiscent of some of the masters of the mid-20th century."

Visit his website, sign up for the newsletter, and receive ongoing updates about the exhibition.

Also, check out colonialmeetinghouses.com to find out more about Wainwright's ongoing project, to be completed in 2008.