Approaching half way

We’re all busy. I guess when you’ve spent 10 years looking at things so closely it is difficult to step back for a moment. This annual project is all I can focus on right now, it is all I’ve been thinking about for months and every detail is precisely considered. Friends are often surprised that I also consider the narrative of the works important. How the story unfolds as relationships between elements in the sequence of photographs develop. I’m often asked why I started with 20 images and until now I’ve always just said that 20 images felt right. Then shrugged my shoulders. I can see now that I need 20 images to complete a good story arc. Too few images and the story would become choppy or disconnected, too many (at least this early on) would become rambling or too repetitive. Though I’ve also been accused of that by friends and family.

Evolution

But evolution is slow, and by nature I generally don’t change that much from year to year. The same things interest me and I struggle with similar conflicts. The story presented is on the surface an expression of emotion and a reflection of self. Yet I strive for something more, I hope that I’m able to discover universal truths about humanity and philosophy. Things we all struggle to understand or discover about ourselves and the life we lead. If it doesn’t make sense or feels repetitive I guess all I can really say is: “Yeah. I know. Don’t you feel it too?”

How to participate

Buy a print of this image. Leave a comment on Flickr or Facebook. Follow me on Twitter and share your thoughts about the image below.

Win stuff!

Those that participate the most will win stuff! Up for grabs: a signed copy of Phoenix 22, a Tyson Crosbie Photography Tshirt (morse code), and several signed 5×8 prints.

Questions

I’m not getting quite the response I’d hoped for. I chose to release the work one day at a time to have an opportunity to talk about some of the things I never really get to say about the work. I know there are a bunch of lurkers out there viewing the posts and the work, so I have a few questions.

• What would you prefer, as a blog reader, to facilitate more participation from you?
• Do you feel I have a certain expectation for comments?
• Are you bored?
• Are you confused?
• Is the Disqus comment system too hard? (Jamie doesn’t like it.)

Opinion

First, I sincerely appreciate all the comments, retweets, first tweets, sharing and views. I know that an artist cannot eat without an engaged audience and honestly that is how much I love you for sharing and commenting. Your participation is equal to my love of food and shelter.

Freedom of speech

I do not believe that there are right or wrong answers. If you don’t like it is just as valid as liking it. I only find fault in apathy. By not saying anything you’ll only allow me to flounder, unable to gauge how effective I’m being nor able to find any way to improve my work. Your words may also challenge my assumptions and either validate my work with much needed support or provide me a clear path to a new question and exploration.

How to participate

Buy a print of this image. Leave a comment on Flickr or Facebook. Follow me on Twitter and share your thoughts about the image below.

Win stuff!

Those that participate the most will win stuff! Up for grabs: a signed copy of Phoenix 22, a Tyson Crosbie Photography Tshirt (morse code), and several signed 5×8 prints.

Determination

One of the things that keeps coming up for me lately is the role of the artist. Lately it is my obsession to think about what exactly the identity of an artist really is, and more specifically this artist.

1%

I remember hearing in school from professors that less than 1% of art students will continue on as professional artists after school. I’m not sure if that was meant to scare us or motivate us. Still that first couple years after school finding my motivation to continue was difficult at best. Without the structure of assignments and the lack of invested and honest critique my work struggled and I did as well. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing or even why I was doing it, I’d infamously proclaimed in a critique that “Art is masturbation.” In direct frustration to what I knew was coming after school. That my work and ideas would both be put under the bed and I’d likely join the 99% either out of frustration or pure ignorance about how to be an Artist.

Wake up it’s morning

It was early one morning and the dead of summer in Phoenix that I finally figured it out. If I was to become an artist it meant that I had to do it no matter what and be willing to sacrifice everything to produce the work. I had to start producing everyday and refining and promoting as if my life depended on it. When I got out of bed that day I’d joined the 1% because I couldn’t differentiate between the idea of Artist and myself. It is now my life and more deeply who I am than anything else.

Participation

Buy a print of this image. Leave a comment on Flickr or Facebook. Follow me on Twitter and share your thoughts about the image below.

Win stuff!

Those that participate the most will win stuff! Up for grabs: a signed copy of Phoenix 22, a Tyson Crosbie Photography Tshirt (morse code), and several signed 5×8 prints.

Subtle

It looks like a pause in the narrative, some open space to let all that saturation breathe. Secretly, it is the power that proceeds a storm, a power that makes your bones ache. In the silence an empty landscape has taken a moment to anticipate the chaos. It shamelessly highlights a specific instance of the form, letting it lie there naked and vulnerable.

Participation

Buy a print of this image. Leave a comment on Flickr or Facebook. Tweet this post and share your thoughts about the image below.

Those that participate the most will win stuff! Up for grabs: a signed copy of Phoenix 22, a Tyson Crosbie Photography Tshirt (morse code), and several signed 5×8 prints.

Rules

Rules are important in art because they give us a starting point, an accepted language. The aesthetics and poetry of art are all in the improvisation of those rules.

It is no mystery that I love chaos, I thrive on change and find beauty in adaptation. I guess that is why my adherence to this project and the strictness that I apply to this problem surprises me. In the beginning it was pure obsession. I recognized my attraction to formal art early on, still I was unsure of how this could or even if it should be applied to photography. I played with forms and process in printmaking and drawing classes but it never really seeped into my photography. It was the middle of the semester and an independent studies class where it was finally just too much, I HAD to do this project. Being as stubborn as I was I convinced my instructor that I should switch, but I had to agree to an entire letter grade reduction. I’m a little stubborn so I pushed ahead, confident in the project.

I pitched this to her: A formal project utilizing only straight lines and primary colors. All work would be produced in a single environment: Parking lots.

Everyone I knew thought I was crazy. I guess I was the only one that KNEW I was crazy.

Language

For three years I worked on building and adapting the rules of the project, but never once considered it real work. It was just practice. Practice in seeing, composing and of course the obsession of seeing texture and form drove me to continue refining. I didn’t understand then that I was refining the building blocks of the formal language of my work. That I was working out the structure of the letters, and starting to form words and hinting at meanings beyond the representation of decay.

That’s a little bit about when and how it all got started.

Participation

Buy a print of this image. Leave a comment on Flickr or Facebook. Tweet this post and share your thoughts about the image below.

Those that participate the most will win stuff! Up for grabs: a signed copy of Phoenix 22, a Tyson Crosbie Photography Tshirt (morse code), and several signed 5×8 prints.