__________________
If I had been present at the creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better arrangement of the Universe.
Alfonso the Wise, 1221-1284
My girlfriend is a UofManitoba alumni, and receives their magazine periodically. Sarah Anne Johnson was featured on the cover page once, and there was quite an interesting article about her background and her work.
She studied at Yale (where else?) under Tod Papageorge (who else?) and she uses a Mamiya C330 with medium format colour film (what else?), and is now represented by the Stephen Bulger gallery (by whom else?).
Her work is quite interesting, in that it mixes together documentary photos with pictures of replicas made out of clay, puppets, whatnot. She makes little story, completing the onsite pictures with her little tabletop models pictures. It's further complicated by the fact that she often makes her puppets on site, so they are not studio reconstructions only.
I have seen her work , and it is very good , reminds me a bit about my youth in the BC logging camps. though I was on the other end of the cycle but we hanged out with the treeplanters. Lots of people spent the most of the summer on Long Beach living amongs the logs that had drifted in.
Interestingly, she's currently listed as a sessional instructor in sculpture (not photography) at the U of Manitoba's School of Art. Her art blends the 2, so that makes some sense.
__________________ Semper ubi sub ubi.
Sponsored Ad. (Subscribers to APUG
have the option to remove this ad.)
It's interesting, and I'm always for MORE art, and especially photographers getting loadsadough.
But, this work just doesn't move me. She's getting a lot of mileage out of it, but I just don't see it especially in light of the other entrants. I guess that may be my shortcoming.
My Shortcoming too. I found it pretty darn boring.
__________________
Technological society has succeeded in multiplying the opportunities for pleasure, but it has great difficulty in generating joy. Pope Paul VI
So, I think the "greats" were true to their visions, once their visions no longer sucked. Ralph Barker 12/2004
She was interviewed on CBC Radio yesterday, and one of the questions that struck me was about photography - specifically was she envious of other photographers who just "snapped the photo" (paraphrasing a bit, but that was the gist of the interviewer's phrase).
She said she was, actually, but for her she can't just do that for herself (although she does work from reference photos).
Apparently she wants to venture more into displaying her dioramas with photos as the artwork itself, rather than just taking pics of the dioramas.
Thanks your the post. Good stuff...but then I can relate since I planted trees for quite a few seasons. Hard work, but rewarding -- especially when it is done with a good group of people.
vaughn
__________________
At least with LF landscape, a bad day of photography can be a good day of exercise.
There were five finalists for the prize - 2 Canadians and 3 Chinese. (See http://www.thegrangeprize.com ) Chinese all are much stronger, with sharp modern approach, more provocative. Canadians were all boring - you can do nothing about the lack of history and cultural identity in this country. Sarah Anne Johnson's work is almost identical to what another Canadian (in my vew more interesting) is doing: http://www.adam-makarenko.com/gallery.htm
Canadian Photographer wins $50,000 prize 
Linear Mode
