Belle and Ahsoka Tano Pez. 2012

3 Chick Tops. 2012

Dancing Chick. 2012


What does a large bearded child get when you do not care for candy on Easter? Lauren’s solution? A basket of wondrous and surreal toys collected from dollar stores and mercados, of course. See the hatching foam chick, Gazz-It! and more after the jump.

Gazz-It!. 2012

Growing Pet Animal Croissant Study no.1. 2012

Growing Pet Animal Croissant Studies no. 2-7. 2012

Growing Pet Animal Croissant Study no. 8. 2012

Bunny Shades. 2012

Torkil Gudnason. 2011

Happy Birt Jesus. 2011

Whisper It's Sexy. 2010

Today I am pleased to announce that work from my editorial series, Sex Church, and my ongoing project Christmas In America: Happy Birthday, Jesus were published in the American Photography 27 annual. I was notified last year, but recently received my copy. Totally impressed. I had not seen a physical AP annual and was thrilled to see a well thought out design and high-end construction to compliment 341 pages of America’s best photography. The book is sequenced alphabetically, placing my spread after T-Bone’s. I have arrived.


The selection came by way of the discerning eyes of Jodi Peckman: Creative Director for Rolling Stone, Michele McNally: Assisting Managing Editor for The New York Times, Florian Bachleda: Creative Director for Fast Company, Craig Cohen: Executive Publisher of powerhouse Books, Chris Dougherty: Director of Photography for People, Geraldine Hessler: Design Director for Glamour, and Gail Marowitz: Creative Director for Roadrunner Records. The judges were selected by the AI-AP jury chairs Kathy Ryan of the New York Times Magazine, Fred Woodward of GQ and Director, Mark Hefflin. Thank you for the opportunity.

The majority of the work featured blurs the lines of fine-art, editorial, and photojournalism.  The excellent cover choice was shot by Torkil Gudnason and below are my favorite works from AP 27 by photographers Andrea Tese, Peter Rad, Sean J. Sprague, and Timothy Archibald.

Andrea Tease. The Hungry Moon. From the series, The Old Story in a New Way.

Peter Rad. Battle of the Beards.

Sean J. Sprague. Untitled.

Timothy Archibald. Closed System. From the series, Echolilia.

AP has a full slide show of all the winning images and a copy may be purchased here.

Wirschern Sisters' Christmas Dinner. 2011

Light Display. 2011

Happy Birt Jesus. 2011

Beyond the glowing green and red lights, past the shimmering silvery tinsel, around the fragrant pine boughs, another Christmas lingers, a Christmas of contradictions.


This Christmas is complex and at times, uncomfortable. It’s awkward and sometimes bleak. But it is also sincere and celebratory, colorful and creative.


This is the Christmas I capture in this first chapter of a photographic exploration of the biggest event on the American calendar. I grew up in a secular home and at times felt like a Christmas outsider, never connected to the holiday’s religious importance, or its more extreme cultural trappings. But in these photos, I become a Christmas insider, working to discover and reveal what holiday magic, or mania, compels so many to devote thousands of hours to hanging lights, to carving and painting figurines, to building miniature villages, to converting their homes, yards, garages and cars into monuments to merriness.


Initially inspired by the absurdity of a five story inflatable Santa who appeared to be guarding a tree lot, I have launched this survey of uniquely American Christmas traditions. “Christmas in America” is an unvarnished examination of the ways people mark the holiday’s meaning.

My apologies for the lack of news and blog posts. I have been traveling for a six weeks for portfolio events, show openings, and university guest lectures. I am proud to announce that Christmas In America: Happy Birthday, Jesus is a winner in Photolucida’s Critical Mass 2011. As I previously wrote, Critical Mass is an annual juried project competition and always a great source of inspiration. Over 200 international gallery owners, curators, publishers, and editors serve as jurors creating a unique level of exposure.


This year’s is no different.  I am discovering photographers and projects not before seen, inspiring me with new narratives and a fresh aesthetic. Winners come from all corners of the globe and explore a wide variety of subjects with unique opinions and point of view. Below is a brief selection of work from fellow winners who I was unfamiliar with until now.  I feel honored and excited to be in the same company.


Evgenia Arbugaeva

Tiksi is a small village located on a shore of Arctic ocean in Russia. It was built in USSR by people who believed in the future of the Arctic and were coming here from all over the country: scientists, explorers, the military. I was born in here and after fall of Soviet Union my family, as most of the population left Tiksi. But I could never forget this place with it’s vast tundra blown off with winds so strong that if you are a little girl it can easily pick you up and bring to places. My playground with stars during Polar night, lighthouse in a blizzard… This year I came back to my home village for the first time in twenty years. It was a journey to surreal childhood memories. Some people say that Tiksi will be closed in near future because it doesn’t serve a purpose anymore. Before that happened I wanted to capture this special place “in the middle of nowhere.

Jeroen Hofman

Playground #1

Playground#10

Playground#4

My new project is called Playground. The Netherlands have several training facilities where members of the Fire Brigade, the Police Force and the Ministry of Defense are trained and prepared for a wide range of possible scenarios. Within the boundaries of these grounds it’s all just practice or ‘play’. Outside of them however, things are a lot more serious. My aim was to capture these facilities and the people who are trained there. GHOST TOWN Training facilities like these have a very basic and functional design. Factories and houses have been recreated to make training conditions as realistic as possible, but unlike a real town they are completely devoid of any personal decorations or human touch. This makes for a completely surreal atmosphere like that of a ghost town. PROCEDURE I employed quite a static approach using a large format camera, a tripod and a cherrypicker, to position myself over the terrain. My aim was to get the best possible perspective on ‘the game’ inside a broad view of the training facilities. Light conditions were crucial in all of this, which meant I did not always get the desired result right away and in some instances had to return to the same position several times. I originally started out photographing at a training facility for industrial fire fighting in Rotterdam. These first images were framed in such a way as to create the illusion of reality. After gaining access to more and more of these types of facilities I gradually started distancing myself from the exercises that were taking place in front of me. I named my project Playground to emphasize the fact that different services get to practice various scenarios in a controlled environment without any real threat to the safety and lives of their personnel. This project addresses much more than just a few training facilities in The Netherlands. It is about risk-analysis, conformity in groups and my personal view of that hidden world.

Michael Marten

Crosby, Liverpool. 5 and 7 April 2008. High water 12 noon, low water 9am

Harbour, Berwickshire. 22 August 2005. Low water 11am, high water 6pm

Perranporth, Cornwall. 29 and 30 August 2007. Low water 12 noon, high water 8pm

‘Sea Change’ is a study of the tides round the coast of Britain. The views in each diptych are taken from identical positions at low tide and high tide, usually 6 or 18 hours apart. I am interested in showing how landscape changes over time through natural processes and cycles. The camera that observes low and high tide side by side enables us to observe simultaneously two moments in time, two states of nature. Recent landscape photography has often focused on human shaping (and reshaping) of the environment – agriculture, urbanisation, globalisation, pollution. Even when this approach is critical and committed, it also serves to emphasise, even glamorise, humankind’s power over nature. I’m interested in rediscovering nature’s own powers: the elemental forces and processes that underlie and shape the planet. The tides are one of these great natural cycles. I hope these photographs will stimulate people’s awareness of natural change, of landscape as dynamic process rather than static image. Attending to earth’s rhythms can help us to reconnect with the fundamentals of our planet, which we ignore at our peril. ‘Sea Change’ also comments on climate change. The tide floods in and quickly recedes again, but rising sea levels will flood our shores and not recede for thousands or millions of years. Many of the views in these pictures may have disappeared in 100 years’ time. ‘Sea Change’ is an example of ‘comparative photography’, where two or more images show development in time (or other dimensions). The ‘rephotography’ of Mark Klett, and Nicholas Nixon’s portraits of the Brown sisters, are well-known examples.

Rizwan Mirza

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

The series Glow explores the modern landscape we inhabit and the artificial light present within it. This bright, artificial and homogenous environment manages to seduce us with its strange, dream like quality – sheltering and comforting us from the darkness surrounding us. We may have breathed life into it, but for many of us this artificial light has always reassuringly been there, living almost independently of us, powered by a seemingly infinite energy source. It lives and breathes. Constantly consuming and growing, twenty-four hours a day. How can we take its presence for granted when we face increasing certainty within our own lives?

This was my first year to enter Critical Mass and have been very grateful for my recent success in the emerging fine art photography market. Congratulations to the winners who I recently had the privilege to meet and personally review their projects, Marry Ellen Bartley, Chris Cappy, and Mitch Dobrowner.  A special thanks to Mary Virginia Swanson for her guidance, support and eternal enthusiasm.

I am extremely excited and honored to announce that I am part of this year’s class of ADC Young Guns 9. ADC Young Guns® is the only international, cross-disciplinary, portfolio-based awards competition that identifies today’s vanguard of young creative professionals age 30 or younger.  Judged on a body of both professional and personal work by a jury of past YG winners, this year’s class represents an impressive global roster of young talent in the fields of graphic design, illustration, advertising and art direction, photography, environmental design, film, animation & video, interactive design, sound design, product design and typography.  If you are in the New York area on October 13 check out the party.  The gallery show of this year’s winners work will be shown at the ADC Gallery from October 13- November 3, 2011.  Go here to see the winner profiles and for more information check out the official press release.

Tracy Elise. 2010

Whisper It's Sexy. 2010

Grand Wizard Jimmy. 2010

Anonymous. 2010

An update to last year’s photo essay documenting the men and women of the Phoenix Goddess Temple. Opponents of the temple where quick to label it as a “sex church” and nothing more than a new age front operating as a brothel. Last week Phoenix Police, arresting 18, raided the temple making it a national new story.

CNN:

Arizona church is house of prostitution, police say

September 09, 2011 By Michael Martinez, CNN


During a Wednesday search of the Phoenix temple and two church-related sites in nearby Sedona, police seized evidence showing that “male and female ‘practitioners’ working a t the Temple were performing sexual acts in exchange for monetary ‘donations,’ all on the pretense of providing ‘neo tantric’ healing therapies,” Phoenix police said.


The alleged brothel generated tens of thousands of dollars a month, Martos told CNN.


A history of neighbor complaints, a recent Phoenix newspaper article, and the temple’s website were among the factors prompting authorities to conduct the undercover investigation, Martos said.


“What’s unusual is that they were trying to hide behind religion or church, and under the guise of religious freedom, they were committing acts of prostitution,” Martos said.


“We certainly respect First Amendment rights. However, religious freedom does not allow for criminal acts,” Martos said.


Regarding the Goddess Temple’s website, he said: “What they would talk about would seem to be religion. At the same time, they were implying or intimating that they were giving sex therapy.”


The website says at one point: “Sex is a holy, sacred and divine healing force at the core (of) our beings. Once we embrace this force instead of deny it, we become successful, happy and powerful manifestors.”


The website also features unclothed women, listed as residing in several states, under a “Goddesses” section.


The investigation focused on the alleged crimes, said acting Phoenix Police Chief Joe Yahner.


Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery added in a statement: “Freedom of religion does not allow individuals to trade sex for money, no matter how the transaction is portrayed.”


The alleged madam, Tracy Elise, who is in her 50s, was arrested and charged with prostitution, illegal control of an enterprise, pandering, and operating a house of prostitution, police said.

The images were originally published in the March issue of Phoenix Magazine and selected for the American Photography Annual 2011 (AP 27) for the year’s best in editorial photography. All photographs are available for licensing. Click the jump for additional images and original article.  Go here for variations of the final edit.

Faye. 2010

Isis. 2010

Altar Massage. 2010

Hallway. 2010

Isis. 2010

Jeanette In Administration. 2010

Nancy-Grace. 2010

Tracy Elise. 2010

Original article excerpt by Jason Best:

There are no Corinthian columns, no marble steps. Just a double-story, Spanish-style office building straight out of the 1970s, its stucco the same color as the graveled banks of the canal it overlooks, the kind of building that even if you drive this section of 24th Street south of Thomas Road every day, you’ve probably never noticed. Despite a camouflaging coat of paint, the name of the building’s former occupant, Gosnell Development, is far more prominent than the sign on the door announcing the current tenant: Temple of One.

It’s the fifth home for the temple since its founder, Tracy Elise, a former housewife from Alaska turned self-anointed mother goddess and mystic sister, drove to the Valley two years ago in a used Dodge Caravan with $1,200 and what she describes as her spiritual calling: to bring the art of “sacred sexual healing” to Phoenix.

Last year, she got her 15 minutes of fame, though it probably amounted to substantially less if you totaled up the 30-second snippets on the local news chronicling the controversies that surrounded her fledgling church and its move from one rental house to another – two in Scottsdale, then two more in tony Phoenix neighborhoods.

“Reporters would come, and we would talk to them for a long time, explaining our beliefs,” she says. “But we just got dubbed the ‘sex church.’”

The script was more or less the same no matter where the Phoenix Goddess Temple, as it was then called, ended up. First, neighbors would notice all the cars and strangers, mostly men, coming and going. Then someone would stumble across the postings on Craigslist.com or Backpage.com that advertised “Tantric massage,” “erotic pampering” and “full-body bliss” for an “all-inclusive offering of support” – upwards of $200 per hour – to the goddess of your choice.

If it seemed obvious to angry residents that they had a not-so-cleverly disguised brothel in their midst, the case wasn’t so clear-cut to the police who investigated. Unable to bring charges, officials instead chose to run the goddesses out on a raft of code violations that included inadequate parking and exceeding occupancy limits for a home-based church.

The process culminated last May with a public forum hosted at the Camelback Bible Church by Phoenix Councilman Sal DiCiccio, after the temple relocated to a house in his district. DiCiccio seemed eager to get in front of a moral issue that didn’t have anything to do with the banes of most local politicians (budget cuts, traffic abatement), and after glad-handing nearly every one of the 30 or so people who showed up – mostly retirees or those on the cusp – he stood in front flanked by a vice-squad detective and city attorney and explained: “The law says that churches can operate in neighborhoods, but they have to comply with certain codes. I’m just asking you all to be very vigilant, and to let my office know if you spot anything.”

It wasn’t hard to pick Elise out of the crowd of women in Ann Taylor separates and men with tucked-in golf shirts. A placid presence in a sky-blue summer dress, of the sort she tends to favor – loose-fitting, flowing – with a faux sapphire in the middle of her forehead, her benevolent smile never seemed to waver, even as it became obvious that most everyone there thought she was a madam.

To continue reading the full article click here.

I am happy to announce that Christmas In America: Happy Birthday, Jesus is a finalist in Photolucida’s Critical Mass 2011. Critical Mass is an annual juried project competition and always a great source of inspiration. Over 200 international gallery owners, curators, publishers, and editors serve as jurors creating a unique level of exposure. Best of luck to the finalists and their projects whom I have had the pleasure of getting to know this year:

Jane Fulton Alt, Susan A. Barnett, Rachel Barrett, Mary Ellen Bartley, Christopher Capozziello, John Faier, Ayala Gazit, Kevin Kunishi, Dina Litovsky, Paccarik Orue, Alexis Pike, Christopher Rauschenberg, Justin James Reed, and Ian van Coller.

In addition to Photolucida’s annual competition they also hold a biannual five day portfolio review in Portland’s historic Benson Hotel. This has been one of my favorite events for establishing relationships in the fine art photo community. Below are images of the 2011 review taken by friend and Prison Photography’s / Wired’s Pete Brook.

The Illiad is the first image in my latest advertising project, Perfect Ending for Procter & Gamble’s Charmin division. The French held and New York managed, Publicis USA was the agency behind the concept and who commissioned me for the campaign. To illustrate the Charmin slogan, “The Perfect Ending To Every Story,” the agency came up with the clever idea of contextually transposing the subject into the historical setting where our classic novels took place. Showing that the age-old practice of reading on the toilet is best accompanied by Charmin, the campaign is direct, funny, simple, and smart.


To go one step further in tying this all together, it wasn’t till the 1880’s in which proper toilet paper replaced the commonly used pages of magazines, newspapers, books and catalogues. At the turn of the century, the Sears catalogue was commonly referred to as “Rears and Sorebutt.” No joke.


To execute and successfully complete our project I again worked closely with my Frankfurt based digital team, Mainworks. Stay tuned in the coming months for additional concepts transporting our reader to the place of their favorite literary masterpiece.

I am excited to share a sample of my latest advertising assignment for the Las Vegas based agency,  RR Partners. RR was the creative force behind the widely recognizable and memorable campaign, What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas. For their Cox Communications client, the campaign is to promote their business solutions product by showcasing current clients ranging from large to small, medical to factory. The project has grown to around 30 images and has been a blast. The architectural and abstract nature of the job is a nice change of pace and has been extremely wonderful to have a trusting client whose direction per location is “do your thing.”

The goal of the campaign is to showcase the photography with little copy on top of the image. Aside from the aforementioned direction, below is a sample of the job description provided by the advertising agency.

The images themselves will showcase the business but in an abstract way. None of the shots will be straight on. Angles, colors, patterns and anything that allows the image to be questioned to catch a reader’s eye should be considered.

Jeanne

Tamie

This month my photo essay on the public library in Parker, AZ will be published in Conde Nast’s Sunday Magazine, Parade. The library is considered one of the nation’s best despite scarce state and federal funding. The story explores the volunteers who keep the library up to award winning status. View more to see additional images and outtakes.

Ruthie

Tamie