In the Background: The places that we pass through day after day, or even once in a lifetime, leave in their small way, echoes and traces of themselves upon us. But so often when taking self-portraits or pictures of friends, the places themselves become a soft blurred mush of indistinct semi-nothingness, the limelight stolen by our smiling faces. In today’s challenge, let’s turn the tables. Take a picture of yourself or someone else as a shadow, a reflection, or a lesser part of a scene, making the background, or — as in the example above — the foreground, the center of attention.
Weekly Photo Challenge: http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/weekly-photo-challenge-in-the-background/

Chase welcomes author, entrepreneur, and blogger Chris Guillebeau to the studio to discuss building a creative career.

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Image: Robinkore

We’re getting excited about the upcoming exhibition of Live Through This, a series of photographs by Ottawa-based photographer Tony Fouhse. The series is comprised of photo documentation and text following the life of drug addict Stephanie McDonald and her struggle to get clean. But there is a twist. Instead of taking the more expected “hero-photographer’ approach, Fouhse chose to incorporate McDonald into the project, even listing her as a collaborator. This changes the reading of the work; rather than a straightforward documentation conceived to shed light onto a difficult issue, a feeling of mutual support between the two develops. It appears that a large part of Fouhse’s intent in project was McDonald’s survival or rather, her motivation to “live through this.”

Jonathan Blaustein from APhotoEditor wrote a great review of the work in which he said, “The pictures are certainly difficult to look at, but unlike those Meth-head billboards they have up some places, (I mean you, Colorado,) these images are not just meant to scare. They’re intimate and caring, while also representing a vision of reality that we don’t want to see, but should. Powerful stuff.”

The exhibition will open on June 5th, with the opening reception on June 6th at 6pm and the artist talk Saturday, June 8th at 2pm. Fouhse will be present for both events and what’s more, McDonald will be present for the artist talk giving a rare opportunity to get feedback regarding what it was like on the other side of the lens.

To see more photographs head to tonyfoto.com. For questions about the upcoming exhibition, shoot us an email at info@viewpointgallery.ca.

The roses in my backyard have begun to bloom. I want to cut a couple and put them in a vase inside, but with the way my allergies have been this year I’m afraid doing that will make them worse.

One such interesting thing was the Sudbury Mining Heritage Sculpture in Bell Park. it is a large arch, with hands at its base and smaller sculpting of miners going up its length. It is quite beautiful, very detailed.

This is one shot looking quite close upwards of one of the sides. Seemed perfect for a depth of field style example.

The sculpture is by Timothy Schmalz.

Some more info at this link

Along with other luxury items – cutlery, flatware, fine furniture, jewellery, books, musical instruments, beautiful fabrics and carpets – more private individuals owned paintings than ever before.

Pieter Claesz, Still Life with Wine Glass and Silver Bowl, c 1630, Staatliche Museum, Berlin

Since the northern Netherlands had become Protestant, religious art was replaced by other genres of painting — and one of the most recognizable of these is the still life.

These images are remarkable for their accuracy. Artists worked to capture the effects of reflected light, liquids seen through glass, flower petals and textures of cloth. But they’re also endowed with a sort somber moodiness – the images are dark and placed in strange, anonymous settings against dark backgrounds. Because of their beauty and the skill behind them, still life paintings themselves became commodities.

Harmen Steenwyck, Still Life: And Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life, c. 1640. Oil on oak, 39.2 x 50.7 cm, The National Gallery, London

And on some of these images was laid a moralizing tone. Ownership of beautiful objects, after all, does not stave off death or stop the passage of time. People were still mortal. So some still life pictures became known as vanitas pictures. Images that reminded the viewer of the imminence and inevitability of death.

Although the tradition was particularly strong in artists from Leiden, such as Pieter de Ring and Willem Kalf, it quickly spread through Europe to Flanders, France and Spain.

Willem Kalf, Still Life with Aquamanile, Fruit, and a Nautilus Cup, c. 1660. Oil on canvas, 111 x 84 cm
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.

Similar elements show up repeatedly in the vanitas tradition – the skull, representing mortality, the overturned wineglass representing the ease with which life and pleasure can flow away, the blown out candle and the musical instrument, representing the transience of the flame and musical note. However some uncommon examples represented the lives of specific people.

Adriaen van Utrecht, Vanitas Still Life with Bouquet and a Skull, c. 1642. Private Collection.

One such painting, Wialliam Bailly’s Self Portrait with Vanitas Symbols was painted when the artist was an old man. However, it represents him in his youth holding an image of his aged self.

c. 1651, oil on panel. 65 x 97,5 cm.
Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden

Along with the traditional vanitas imagery, the art objects that defined his trade surround him, including the bubbles, the flowers and the glass of wine. But these possessions and artistic accomplishments are as ephemeral as his life.

Today, in the 21^st century in a tiny apartment in London, this blogger tried to make her own vanitas self-portrait.

Here’s the result.

My life in objects

Like the still life artists, I’ve tried to make an image that’s beautiful to look at and I’ve tried to incorporate some memento mori elements – objects that refer to the transience of existence and our accomplishments. And I’ve tried to consider it as a comment on my own life.

Here’s the result of my boyfriend’s efforts – what can you glean about his life?

Edward Spencer’s Life in Objects

How do they differ? What objects act as memento mori in each image? How have possessions changed in the 400 or so years since the Dutch still life masters? And how do these studies work in the photographic medium as opposed to painting? How does the mood differ between the two photos, and how are they both different from the paintings?

And now I encourage you to make your own vanitas picture. After all, the unexamined stuff is not worth having.