California Poppies – Contemporary Art

That’s what I think; those poppies, flowers in general, are works of art created by nature.  To be clear, this is a secular blog so I’m not suggesting or hinting at anything.  I am pointing out the obvious, is all – nature has always been an amazing artist.  I spent a little time at the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve yesterday.  There were a lot of people.  That was not a lot of fun, but the poppies were worth it.  And I need a lot of flower images for a project I’m working on so I will need to brave some other spots during the anticipated “super bloom”.

MOCA Los Angeles

I am the new director of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles!  Ok, not yet but I should be.  Let me tell you why.  I have leadership experience (over 20 years in the Army – I was a platoon sergeant for crying out loud!); I can handle pressure and stress (did I mention the Army thing – tours to Iraq); I’m educated (a BA in studio art and a minor in business – and I graduated with honors); I love art (see the BA in studio art thing); museums like to have older folks running things – I’ll be 56 within weeks; diversity – I’m black; need to show some love to America – I’m a #vet and you know this (from above sentence); I support the #metoo movement (I’m married to my beautiful wife who is a college professor and we have 4 daughters between us and my mama lives with us – I’m no position not to support women in all of their struggles – and again, I can handle pressure and stress); management potential (see everything above); and I really want to work in the art world – really, really want to.

So, please contact MOCA Los Angeles and let them know I’m the perfect candidate.  Really.

Brick and Mortar

So, I know where I’m going but I can’t work on it at the moment.  I’m on another mission at this time.  But that’s ok – I can still share with you these images from my Victor Valley Project.

Kinetic Ambiguity

So, before I had said, “I want to see more than what we see at the moment because more is going on that what is seen.”  Hey, that was kind of goofy and made little sense but my Kinetic Ambiguity Project is in line with the point I am trying to make.  I’m not after the “Jackson Pollock” photograph but this project works towards where I’m going.  I know, you want to see where I’m going with this, not where it came from.  You want to see that #image I’m alluding to.  Soon, but I need to mull over what I have done to help me focus a little more.

Oh, and I did a lot of this Kinetic Ambiguity Project in Las Vegas – love that place.

A Store

A famous photographer, Andreas Gurski, created an image, "99 Cent II Diptychon", that gained fame outside of the art world because of what it sold for at auction – over 3 million dollars.  Mr. Gurski is still alive.  I have often dreamed of selling an #image for 1 million dollars.  And I have dreamed of winning the lottery too.  I have dreamed about #Halle Berry being my girlfriend.  I have dreamed about a lot of stuff – but that’s cool, dreams.  But I pretty much keep myself planted in reality – go to work, be a father, keep working on my photography.  I work on my photography in an effort to make it better.  But sometimes I just photograph things just to see what it looks like.  This is not Andreas Gursky’s "99 Cent II Diptychon".  It’s just me in the store with my phone looking at colors.  I did no post production on these, no Melisandre, the red woman, magic to make them look like this or that – just taking a picture for the sake of seeing what it looks like.  It’s a snapshot, nothing more.  But, truth be told, I wouldn’t mind it if this “piece” commanded a million dollars at one of those auspicious art events and Halle Berry was there on my arm full of admiration at what I have created.  Now that’s a dream.

Train Depots

Back in 2011 when I was an early photography student at California State University, San Bernardino, (I love saying the whole name like that – go Coyotes!) one of the projects we had for our documentary #photography class was photographing some Inland Empire train stations.  We could capture others but some were on our “have to photograph” list.  I thought it was a good challenging #project that made you think how you would do it different since you knew others would be photographing the same structure.  I have since gone back to some of these train depots to use them as back drops or as the subject of the shoot themselves.  But these images are some of those from Prof. McGovern’s class (he is an incredible teacher and photographer in his own right).  I should make some full size prints of these images.

 Colton

 Pomona

 Redlands

 San Bernardino

 Union Station, Los Angeles

Union Station, Los Angeles

Sentinels

They look like sentinels guarding something.  Or maybe they look like large cranes in the shipyards.  Then again, it could be robots waiting for the menacing dark robot that is advancing on their position.  They are just #mustard and mayo dispensers unless you let your imagination go.

A Street and 7th

  I made this image of downtown Victorville back in August 2014 in the morning.  Photography is really a kind of therapeutic thing for me.  I don’t know if I’m mentally unstable or not (I don’t feel like I am) but I feel really good when I’m creating images.  It’s just something about #photography that challenges me to take what may pass as ordinary and to try to make it extraordinary.  I don’t think this image is that but that is always the goal.  But this image does is a part of my continuing Victor Valley Project and you can look as some older examples of that at my web site if you are so inclined.  Though not extraordinary, I think this is a strong image though.

Happy New Year, 2016

It’s been a long time since I wrote something here.  Well, I have been busy.  I graduated from Cal State San Bernardino in the summer of 2014.  I got a job later that year.  I worked at that job for almost a year before I got the really great job I have now.  And I closed on a house last October and got my kids out of that horrible apartment complex we lived in for too long.  Yes, I would say that I have been a little preoccupied.  But #photography is my thing and I miss it tremendously.  And this blog is a good vehicle to show some of it.  So I need to get back to it.

Thoughts on my Kinetic Ambiguity Project

Regarding the work, the easy answer is that I like it.  Others have told me the same.  But “like” does not make it art.  I am not trying to follow in the footsteps of Jackson Pollock with some sort of abstract expressionist photography.  It is just that I am very intrigued by visible light – especially freezing that moving light in order to observe it for one moment in a sort of stasis.  What you see in a photograph is visible moving light halted forever in that capture.  This Kinetic Ambiguity Project really emphasizes that.  And it has its own certain beauty in doing so with its texture, color and repetition.  The work here is new.  Older examples are on my web site.  I think I will continue to work on this project.  Enjoy.