Thursday, February 08, 2007
Photo 07' Juror's Talk
JUROR’S STATEMENT
It was a pleasure to be back at the Ellipse Art Center performing jury duty...years ago I exhibited in this show, and the award I won from the juror, Corcoran professor Mark Power, was a big thrill. The Ellipse show was a big and important show then, and seems to be even more so now. 235 photographers submitted work this year, and we evaluated 647 pieces to arrive at the final selection of 105 photographs from 79 photographers. I am very happy with the broad range of quality work in the show, from the intensely personal, moving yet technically proficient tribute by John Babineau to his dying mother, “Mother and Son” to the more abstract and cerebral, such as J. Brooke Chao’s “Variety is the Spice of Life” and Jim Burkholder’s “Barn/Flag”. The show also covers the full range of contemporary photographic practice from the political, Steven Melkisethian’s “Protecting the Nation’s Capital from Photographer’s” and David Moss’ “We’re not Criminals” to tongue-in-cheek avant-garde playfulness of Brightside Pictures’ “Lady Fair”. The show also covers the gamut from straightforward representation to fictional spaces created in a computer, for example the captivating image of oriental carp by Tom Kochel.
Deciding upon the three Juror's Awards was difficult, but less so in the case of Allan Hockett, whose beautiful prints squarely in the traditionalist vein are both a testimony to a lifetime of achievement in photography and a reminder of how compelling "old school" black and white photography can be...no "flavor of the month" conceptual conceits, no gimmicks, just mastery and perfection. The same applies to the visually arresting nighttime image by S. Sean Khamphouang; it is mysterious, evocative, and beautifully done. During breaks in the jurying process I found myself wandering over to admire the image “End Point” by Ibi Henrichs; its rich vocabulary of pattern and texture, the grid shapes, the horizontal lines, the curves of the railing, the iconographic content of the text and symbols painted on the building, and the muted but interesting color rewarded repeated viewing.
A considerable number of photographs submitted for consideration were great images I would have loved to jury into the show, but were displayed so poorly in marginal frames that they were clearly not exhibition-ready. The Ellipse annual regional photography show is probably the most significant show of its kind in the area, and work needs to look like it has been presented with some forethought and care. That doesn't rule out innovative approaches, some of which can be seen in this show, but it does rule out drugstore frames, badly cut mats, prints coming loose from their mounting, and so forth.
I would like to thank Cynthia and Lisa and their multitude of energetic volunteers for their help in working through the daunting number of submissions, and for their patience in the closing hours when we had to make the most difficult final cuts so the show would actually fit on the walls. It would be great to have bigger walls, but you have to mount the exhibition with the walls you have, not the ones you would like to have.
JUROR’S BIOGRAPHY
Frank Hallam Day has been active as a fine art photographer in Washington DC for many years. He has taught photography at Photoworks, at the Washington Center for Photography, and at the Smithsonian. His work is in numerous museum and private collections in the United States and abroad. He has also received a number of important grants and museum commissions, and his work has repeatedly been selected for inclusion in the Washington Project for the Arts/Corcoran and Transformer fundraising auctions, and has just been selected for the Print Collectors Program at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego. His recent photographic interests include an extensive body of work on the erasure of personal and social memory in East Berlin, and an even larger body of work on the many ramifications of globalization for African economies and African identity. His exhibition of Berlin photographs at Addison/Ripley Fine Art was picked by the Washington City Paper as the photography show of the year in the Washington area for 2004. He also writes on photography for the Photo Review.
¶ 6:22 PM 
This evening Frank Day gave a talk about his experience as juror of the Photo 07’ exhibition, his jurors statement is posted below.
JUROR’S STATEMENT
It was a pleasure to be back at the Ellipse Art Center performing jury duty...years ago I exhibited in this show, and the award I won from the juror, Corcoran professor Mark Power, was a big thrill. The Ellipse show was a big and important show then, and seems to be even more so now. 235 photographers submitted work this year, and we evaluated 647 pieces to arrive at the final selection of 105 photographs from 79 photographers. I am very happy with the broad range of quality work in the show, from the intensely personal, moving yet technically proficient tribute by John Babineau to his dying mother, “Mother and Son” to the more abstract and cerebral, such as J. Brooke Chao’s “Variety is the Spice of Life” and Jim Burkholder’s “Barn/Flag”. The show also covers the full range of contemporary photographic practice from the political, Steven Melkisethian’s “Protecting the Nation’s Capital from Photographer’s” and David Moss’ “We’re not Criminals” to tongue-in-cheek avant-garde playfulness of Brightside Pictures’ “Lady Fair”. The show also covers the gamut from straightforward representation to fictional spaces created in a computer, for example the captivating image of oriental carp by Tom Kochel.
Deciding upon the three Juror's Awards was difficult, but less so in the case of Allan Hockett, whose beautiful prints squarely in the traditionalist vein are both a testimony to a lifetime of achievement in photography and a reminder of how compelling "old school" black and white photography can be...no "flavor of the month" conceptual conceits, no gimmicks, just mastery and perfection. The same applies to the visually arresting nighttime image by S. Sean Khamphouang; it is mysterious, evocative, and beautifully done. During breaks in the jurying process I found myself wandering over to admire the image “End Point” by Ibi Henrichs; its rich vocabulary of pattern and texture, the grid shapes, the horizontal lines, the curves of the railing, the iconographic content of the text and symbols painted on the building, and the muted but interesting color rewarded repeated viewing.
A considerable number of photographs submitted for consideration were great images I would have loved to jury into the show, but were displayed so poorly in marginal frames that they were clearly not exhibition-ready. The Ellipse annual regional photography show is probably the most significant show of its kind in the area, and work needs to look like it has been presented with some forethought and care. That doesn't rule out innovative approaches, some of which can be seen in this show, but it does rule out drugstore frames, badly cut mats, prints coming loose from their mounting, and so forth.
I would like to thank Cynthia and Lisa and their multitude of energetic volunteers for their help in working through the daunting number of submissions, and for their patience in the closing hours when we had to make the most difficult final cuts so the show would actually fit on the walls. It would be great to have bigger walls, but you have to mount the exhibition with the walls you have, not the ones you would like to have.
JUROR’S BIOGRAPHY
Frank Hallam Day has been active as a fine art photographer in Washington DC for many years. He has taught photography at Photoworks, at the Washington Center for Photography, and at the Smithsonian. His work is in numerous museum and private collections in the United States and abroad. He has also received a number of important grants and museum commissions, and his work has repeatedly been selected for inclusion in the Washington Project for the Arts/Corcoran and Transformer fundraising auctions, and has just been selected for the Print Collectors Program at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego. His recent photographic interests include an extensive body of work on the erasure of personal and social memory in East Berlin, and an even larger body of work on the many ramifications of globalization for African economies and African identity. His exhibition of Berlin photographs at Addison/Ripley Fine Art was picked by the Washington City Paper as the photography show of the year in the Washington area for 2004. He also writes on photography for the Photo Review.
