Review Santa Fe Recovery

Although I love to travel to other cities for portfolio reviews and art festivals, I feel privileged to live in a city that hosts Review Santa Fe, one of the most prestigious reviews in the world. When Review takes place in Santa Fe in June, the air is cool in the evenings and the days are often pleasant even with the unusually small amount of humidity in the air. This year's portfolios and awards were selected by a prominent jury which Elizabeth Avedon details in La Lettre de la Photographie (Avedon also details many of the event's festivities and other info can be found on CENTER's site). Although all the photographers are listed on CENTER's site, I wanted to point out the work of those who I had the pleasure meeting with one-on-one. Here are the links to the artists presented in order of appearance at the table. 

Jared Soares from Martinsville

Donna J. Wan from Promised Lands

Lauren Lancaster from Playing Normal

Jesse & Jason Pearson from Iron Sites in the Round

Ejen Chuang, Cosplay in America

Jesse & Jason Pearson, Iron Sites in the Round

Christopher Capozziello, The Distance Between Us

Laura Noel, Smoke Break

Haruhiko Kawaguchi aka Photographer Hal, Couple Jam

William Rugen, Western Dioramas

Christopher Dawson, Coverage

Laura El-Tantawy, I'll Die For You: suicide in rural India

Ayala Gazit, Was it a Dream

Donna J. Wan, Promised Lands

Jared Soares, On The Block: Hip Hop Culture in Small Town Virginia

Matt Slaby, Black Tide

Yolanda del Amo, Archipelago

Lauren Lancaster, Playing Normal

Michelle Given, Accommodations

Mark Peterman, Masonry: A Way of Life

Aaron Blum, Born and Raised: Reflections of a World Set Aside

Gregg Segal, State of the Union

Review Santa Fe: LaToya Ruby Frazier

all photos, copyright LaToya Ruby Frazier

LaToya Ruby Frazier has been documenting her family in Pittsburgh for over seven years. Her project deals with the mother/daughter relationship that has been stressed by drug abuse and her attempt through collaborative art to strengthen this bond. She photographs her extended family including the grandmother who was her primary caretaker during childhood and J.C. who often acts as surrogate for Frazier as a child. Frazier is knowledgeable of her photo history and clearly draws on documentary photographers like Eugene Richards for motivation.

Review Santa Fe: Jesse Burke

Jesse Burke images from Platform Gallery

Jesse Burke's portraits are mostly of men. Men who normally would seem to be guarded, but Burke is able to make these men appear vulnerable. Vulnerability is often associated with the feminine gender, but wrongly so. Men are forced to give up the public display of this emotion as a child. Usually, the small boy left to his own without cultural influences will have to work through his sensitive phase allowing his parents, if they are so inclined, to coddle and console him. As males reach toward adulthood they often outgrow, or hid, this side. In Burke's earlier series Intertidal, he approaches the average beer-drinking, sport-loving man at a moment of defenselessness. Each is unguarded. Continuing on this them in his newest series, Low, Burke photographs men who are impoverished, homeless or overlooked or unaccepted in some way by society. Each man is exposed in glowing light. The body language that Burke captures in this subjects, including gaze and posture, says much about the photographer and the photographed.

Intertidal is also available as a book of from Decode Books.

Thank you notes are cool

David Godine once told me that his mother used to make him write his thank you notes every evening. Such is the life of the child of a Bostonian mother. I, on the other hand, was not raised that way. My grandma always wrote hers, but did not force me to do so. Although Southern and slightly gentile (or sometimes slightly redneck depending on the day), I always say please, thank you and yes, mam/sir, but can be quiet ungrateful when it comes to handwriting notes. This is not the case with many of the review Santa Fe participants. Please find below the list of names and some scans of lovely gifts of appreciation I received for my time and words. Thanks to you for being thankful!

The back of the card from Keliy Anderson-Staley. ©Keliy Anderson-Staley

A photogravure from Angela Franks Wells. © Angela Franks Wells

A little book on Hurricane Katrina by Andrew Kaufman. ©Andrew Kaufman

Review Santa Fe Reviewees

copyright, Colin Blakley
For the last two years, I have "worked" the Green Room of Review Santa Fe. This year, Center's director, Laura Wrozek invited me to be an official reviewer--much more pressure than before. These reviewees pay a lot of money to get feedback and Center emphasises the need for positive feedback. Center also sponsors, this year with the help of Zane Bennett Gallery, an open portfolio review. At this review, all of the artists get a chance to put work on the table for the reviewers who missed seeing the work and for the general public.

Without offending many of the artists I met at Review, I would like to present just a few that I found interesting.

Colin Blakley
Phillip Toledano
Meg Birnbaum
Colleen Plumb
Evan Baden
Fernando Souto
Thomas Broening
Alejandro Cartagena Gonzalez

Flicker photos from the event for the viewing.