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I apologize that this is coming in so late, rawr already getting caught up in the swing of college.

On that was just up on Lenscratch, a project by David Kimelman, I find really provoking. He's got a couple of new projects going on apparently, but the one I am attracted to, Natural Order, is quite interesting. He's photographing the interaction between Human and Nature, in both organic and synthetic contexts. There really is today such a distance that we've built up between ourselves and nature, to protect ourselves, to elevate ourselves on the food-chain, but at the same time we are always need Her and each of us, felt or not, has something drawing us toward Her, to look or to feel or to hear etc. So, this is what Kimelman is trying to show, the messed up sort of relationship we have with nature in all sorts of contexts. But I think this is most important to do in a world where we are constantly finding out what damage we've done and keep doing...

On Flak photo's site, there's a brief video clip of Keliy Anderson-Staley at her show opening. Her exhibition, called [Hyphen] Americans, is all photos that have been printed on Tintype, an old-school and tricky process. Therefore, her camera's then also had special functions, giving a very narrow depth of field, but also requiring the subject to remain still for a very long time. One of thing she said, which is find pretty humorous but can also maybe be quite revealing for us, is that this process of the taking the photograph then gave the individuals both and intense stare into the camera, trying to hold still, but also made them look very "stoic". The reason this is eye-opening is that we often see photos of our ancestors and think "Jesus Christ great-grandma looked so pissed off all the time", when in reality it's just the nature of the photograph. This brings up an interesting theoretical point that was in the Wells text, that what we are taking photos of isn't necessarily directly or faultlessly empirical. That which we see in our ancestors may be as we see it in that moment of time, not as they are in a relaxed setting where they are free to laugh and smile. I sort of noticed the same thing when I was in Peru, that many of the people, especially the older women, all of a sudden wanted to look very serious for photos, unless I begged them and danced on my head for a smile. They were all such loving and friendly people, but you'd have never known by some of the photographs.