Photo l.a. 2016 copyright Douglas Stockdale
I had an opportunity to join Hiroshi Watanabe at the Gala opening of Photo l.a. last night. As a result of preparing to meet-up with Hiroshi for dinner near Little Tokyo in LA before we attended the opening, I became somewhat obsessed with printing as many of the photographs from In Passing – Lest I Forget to discuss with him over dinner. I am essentially creating new images from this project due to the creative controls now available with PhotoShop CC over PhotoShop CS that I used in 2007 – 2008. What an improvement in the tonality and image controls with this latest version. I also tweaked my artist statement and project introduction to bounce off Hiroshi as well, which all went very well.
Walking through a gallery (Fair) exhibition like Photo l.a. provides an interesting snap-shot of some of the current trends in contemporary photography as well as bench mark for the market of earlier photographers work. This is not the time or place to try to button hole a gallery owner about one’s great photographs, but to take note of who is exhibiting like photographs and to follow up with after.
My quick read is that there were few, if any, gallery’s exhibiting contemporary documentary photographs that would I think would be interested in my In Passing- Lest I Forget project. There were a couple of gallery’s who were showing early work by some documentary photographers, but usually limited to a few prints in their collection that were available for sale. The overall exhibition & gallery emphasis seemed to lean towards photographers who were or are now exploring conceptual projects. As a disclaimer, the aisles were crowded, we were an hour late, so we moved through the exhibition hall at a decent pace. There just was not much that drew me back for a longer second viewing. Nevertheless, still a lot of interesting work to look and study.
Cheers!
Singular Images 