A while ago we heard from Jim Fitts, a valued colleague and the man behind Photoweenie.com. He wrote about portfolio reviews and delivered a short and concise treatise on how best to prepare for one (here).

Next up in the Guest Blog series is Debbie Hagan. Debbie is currently an independent editor, writer and professor at New England School of Art and Design in New Hampshire. Formerly she was the editor-in-chief for Art New England.

If we are an artist, sooner or later we will be faced with the challenge of writing the dreaded "artist statement". Here Debbie Hagan writes about them and leads us to some very good ones:

A Word About Artist Statements

By Debbie Hagan

Last week, I invited Cate McQuaid, art critic for the Boston Globe, to speak briefly to a group of artists at Danforth Art. No surprise, they circled her quickly. Everyone wanted to know, how one goes about getting a review. McQuaid put it simply: send her a press release, images, and an artist statement.

A number of artists cringed. Someone must have told them that artist statements are unnecessary or passé. Or maybe they cling to another somewhat stubborn notion that the art speaks for itself.

Let’s be honest, even experienced art critics, gallerists, jurors, and curators may not be able to instantly recognize your medium and process, especially if they’re seeing your work on a computer screen. For photographers, it’s tricky if you’re using a historic or experimental process or if the art is mixed with another medium. It’s even more problematic for painters, sculptors, printmakers, and others whose work has to be photographed before it can be uploaded and seen online. Inevitably some of the dimension, texture, and subtleties are lost.

Thus, the artist statement can clear up questions that viewers may have or any details that are important to understanding your work. Plus, it offers intellectual insights into your thinking: what intrigues and inspires you. Maybe you’re fascinated with patterns formed by construction fencing or maybe you’re documenting performers’ lives backstage at a theater. Obviously you don’t want to over-explain your work and take away from its mystery. At the same time, you can seize this opportunity to find common ground with viewers and help them see the way you see.

Here are a few artist statements I really like. Nasser K writes an artist statement for each photographic series he creates. All artists should do this, because the statement does vary with the work. In Trees Grow and Fall, a multimedia documentary, he raises social concerns and asks viewers to consider, how is deforestation affecting us as people and our society?

Merill Comeau’s statement goes straight to the point telling us about the fabrics that make up her murals and what they represent to her. We learn that she uses hand stitching as a way of drawing on her fabrics—impossible to see in a photograph. She also tells us that she’s the daughter of a seamstress, and this creates a human lens through which we can see her art.

Lesley Cohen takes a slightly different approach. Her artist statement is a little more poetic and yet feels exactly right when looking at her art. It is more abstract and slightly mystical. In her artist statement, she tells us that she uses charcoal and pastels—again, hard to see on the computer. I love the way she tells us, “Working intuitively, I am inventing mystifying structures. I am on a journey of discovery to detect the secrets that are embedded in the process.” I’m intrigued, and I want to go on this journey.

There’s no formula to creating a good artist statement. The writing style should be natural to the artist and consistent with the work. As for content, the statement should be no more than two to three short paragraphs and cover three main points: 1) ideas that intrigue and motivate the artist; 2) materials used, particularly if they’re not obvious and have a special meaning or origin; and 3) the art-making process, particularly if it’s unusual, executed in an unexpected way, or if it’s essential to understanding the art’s meaning.

There’s no magic here. You can work endlessly writing and rewriting your statement, but it won’t sell your work. It won’t convince gallerists to represent you or jurors to pick you for the next big show. Your art still stands on its own—front and center.

At the Danforth last week, Cate McQuaid also told artists that choosing artists to be reviewed can seem a bit random, because it’s based on a lot of different factors. However, she did say that she needs to feel a connection to the art, and I’m guessing that’s why she likes to see an artist statement.

Debbie has a website and can be contacted through the site: Debbie Hagan

Thank you so much, Debbie.

The Oscars were a couple of weekends ago and, although I didn't see the show, I did read the list of winners and the film Nebraska got none.

The awards had the characteristic ring of "business as usual" where the industry heavy hitters garnered praise and the most small independent films did not. Nebraska is, without a doubt, a small film. But it holds so much for us as artists and photographers that I would place it as the best film I saw all year by a large margin. Were I a voting member of the academy, I would be livid.

First of all, the film is in black and white. But what amazing black and white it is! Shooting in very high contrast with an Arri Digital Camera, there is dynamic range as I've never seen before. Shadows are detailed and highlights bright but not blown out. The several low light scenes have almost no noise and look as seamless as the outdoor scenes. Sometimes self awareness can get in the way in a movie or in photography, but I felt as though the film makers were speaking directly to me through their use of selective focus, focus shifts, framing, placement and clearly being aware of the whole image from corner to corner in each frame. Some films deny the camera and its use. I felt Nebraska was reveling in the camera, the optics and the incredible quality it produced. I believe the quality of the cinematography raises the bar on black and white films made in the future and perhaps all films.

The film starts out in Billings, Montana with Bruce Dern's character walking along the highway to Nebraska to cash in a sweepstake ticket, thinking he's won a million dollars. I know Billings a little, and made a series of pictures there in 2005: Billings. I also wrote a blog about the series here. The Billings geography is distinguished by a large rock escarpment hovering above much of the residential area of the town. This is also prominent in "Nebraska". Much of the movie is a road trip, two characters played by Dern and the actor Will Forte as his son as they drive along the relentlessly flat and sunlit landscape of the American midwest in what looks like late summer or early fall. There is sky, which is always big, and ground, which is usually bright and almost irridescant, reminding me of how black and white infrared film renders similar content. 

The director of the movie was Alexander Payne, who has to his credits films such as The Descedents, Sideways and About Schmidt. Payne was born in Omaha, Nebraska and is of Greek descent. Phedon Papamichael was the cinematographer. He has worked with Payne in numerous films and is also of Greek descent. Clearly these two are a team with excellent results. 

My brother-in-law is Thomas L.Turman, a retired architect and architecture teacher living in Berkeley, California. He is also an excellent artist and writer. After seeing Nebraska he wrote a poem. Tom grew up in the midwest and felt a strong affinity for what the film showed of the area. Here it is:

Montana

I know you Montana
   and your sisters Dakota.
Your savagely weathered land
   grasping scarecrow stunned farmers.

Land that demands much,
  and gives little,
You lie in wait with your threat
  of never ending hard work.

I have seen your towns
   along ribbon straight roads.
Clutching the dry farmer dirt
   like flattened loosing wrestlers.

Time worn wood buildings
   huddled against history.
Leaning against one another
  along empty windblown streets.

People, hats down against the wind,
   pass neighbors with name salutes.
"Everett." "Silas." Lost in the wind.
  There is always next week.

Your fierce, hard horizon
   is a soul clenching admission.
This is all there is,
  and all that ever will be.

This may be one of those posts where you think to yourself, "duh, everybody knows that", but I'll take that chance.

I've been thinking about the key differences in the creative processes of being a writer versus being a photographer. This may have something to do with the fact that I am co-teaching with an author this spring at Penland in North Carolina. The two week class is called Word & Image and is offered in an effort to help photographers write better and writers photograph better. My colleague in the class is none other than Christopher Benfey, who has an amazing list of published works to his credit. Professor Benfey is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English at Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts (Mt. Holyoke College website).

Clearly there are many scenarios that work here but let's go through these two hypotheticals:

WRITER

Imagine this: you research a topic, you write a draft, edit it, refine it, polish it, perhaps show it to others you respect for feedback, shape it some more, submit it,   are rejected by some publishers but perhaps succeed with one or two, pique an editor's interest, and your work gets published to critical acclaim. 

PHOTOGRAPHER (Artist)

You research a topic, you begin the project, perhaps you photograph it over time, perhaps it all happens in an hour or a day, you work on the imagery in post production, refine it, polish it, perhaps show it to others you respect for feedback, shape it some, show it to a gallery or a museum (if you're well placed enough that they will meet with you), pique their interest, they agree to show it, and perhaps a year or two later it hangs on a wall, viewed by the public. The work is reviewed with high praise by the local press.

Not so dissimilar, right? But there is one major difference that comes to mind, besides the obvious. With a writer, what you read on screen or in pages in a book is directly from the writer who wrote it. There's nothing secondary that dilutes the work. It comes direct from the origin. Photography, and much art these days, is largely secondary in its presentation, run through a large number of filters before it gets to being prints hanging on a musuem wall. The "filters" are things like websites, on line galleries, Facebook or Instagram, printed cards, digital slide shows, iPads, smart phones, email blasts, blogs and on and on. These can happen with published written works too, but, although there are secondary delivery mechanisms, there is no filter between the author's work and you the reader whatsoever. Written work does not get diluted, skewed, distorted, altered or mangled at all. You are still connected to the author in a direct line with no noise or static between you and him/ her. I know you're thinking , "What about the editor?" who can transform the author's original intentions into something else entirely. This is true, of course, but I  believe you get my meaning.

Photography in its earlier analog version was often far more direct. Much like painting, it was made by the artist. The print you saw on display was handled and made by the artist himself/herself. There was this concept of the original that had value, the print had added weight and meaning as it had been made by the "master". Think Steiglitz or Walker Evens or Edward Curtis here. 

This happens with written works too, where the manuscript or the original hand written copy of a book takes on a value of its own, as an object. Think the first draft of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, or an early manuscript from William Shakespeare.

This is thought to have been handwritten by Shakespeare (source Wikepedia).

But, for the most part, written work comes through loud and clear from the mind of the author that wrote it, simple enough. As an artist I prefer to make my work as much from me and under my control as I can. The print on the wall, be it analog from earlier vintage work or today from an inkjet printer is a print I made, handled by its edges and most often framed as well. But think about what a contemporary print has gone through to get it there: all those millions of  1's and 0's, the binary code, being pushed around at the molecular level to make some semblance of something that looks like a photograph with a computer with a display screen, with ink and with a piezoelectric head sliding back and forth spraying microspic droplets of ink onto a piece of paper or plastic.

As I wrote about approaching the end of  40 years of teaching  (A Dual Career) and what it was like to carry on two separate threads over a whole career I thought it might be helpful to discuss what it feels like on the other side of the employment divide, what is commonly referred to as "retirement". If you are young be careful that you don't dismiss retirement as irrelevant. It will happen to you. For many, retirement is almost a dirty word, denoting atrophy, decline and death. For others the word "retire" implies freedom and a life "smelling the roses".

I don't think either of those definitions quite fits what I am doing. I believe, two years into retirement, that I have been set free to do what I wanted for now many years: make pictures. This has resulted in much new work (some might say too much), perhaps as much travel as being at home, some teaching and a few residencies.

What's that like?

Mostly, really good. No deadlines, few meetings, lots of free time and productivity photo-wise like you can't believe.  If you're one of those people always trying to steal time to make art, retirement's for you. I can remember wishing for a day here and there with no schedule, no class starting at 8 am or 1:35 pm, no commute and free time to make art. At times this can be a "be careful what you wish for" thing as there can be too much down time but that simply means I haven't moved to schedule things down the line that will be interesting and allow me to make new discoveries, meet new people and extend my pictures into new realms. Also, it is important to have enough money to do as you wish. If you are early in your career please heed this: retirement could be really bad should you not be able to afford to do what you've always wanted, be it travel, work on projects, obtain exhibition, publish and so on. So, save for retirement, put money aside or plug into your company's or school's retirement plans. Start early, try to ignore it while its building and stick with it.

As I age, my health and ability to do what I want factors in, of course, but so far (knock on wood!) I don't seem to be too limited. I'm not climbing mountains anymore but don't feel so deprived. (BTW: I taught a mountain climbing photography workshop in the late 80's in Colorado's San Juan Range.) My particular kind of photography makes me rely on traveling to make much of my work, so that part has to be planned for. For the past ten years or so, I have tended to rent someplace when I travel. VRBO and AIRBNB have turned out to be mostly good but, if new to these services, it is buyer beware. Do lots of research. If you are like me and need to be somewhere else to make your pictures then think about how best to do that. If you flash through places, as in the the equivalent of 16 countries in 16 days, nothing you will do will be anything more than a first impression. But if you establish a "base camp", a place you call home while you are there, you have wonderful options and opportunities to visit a place or an area several times. I often describe this way of working as a center where you sleep, eat and rest. This is, in effect, the hub of the wheel. The day trips you take to photograph are the spokes and fan out 360 degrees from the hub. Can't get far enough away in a day or find yourself in an area where you want to work more? Stay over a night or  two, then head back to the hub when done. Hotels and motels get old for me after awhile. Restaurant food too. And driving all day every day is no fun either. I did this a whole lot when I was younger but now tend to fly to where I want to go and rent a car. Renting  palace to live and a car makes much more sense to me.

As I am single I don't have any others to consider when working or traveling to make new work. I don' have pets and I don't have plants. That's so I can go away whenever I like.  

I have a tendency to become reclusive, to hide away and do my work, without enough contact with others to keep me out and active. I have learned to search out people, to ask for help, to reach out to what Jason Landry of Panopticon Gallery calls, the"art community". These are the people that can provide support, recommendations, counsel and criticism when needed. I value them tremendously and learn from them often. 

Since what we do (exhibit our work) means very often having things scheduled quite far out it is also important to have short term goals too. Keeping yourself curious and invested is important in retirement. This can be hard to pull off but consider the alternatives: once again, "atrophy, decline and death". Oh boy.

And finally, I believe it is important to give back when you get older. If you've been in a community for many years and have benefitted from it, think about how you can help others in that community. This could be the town or city where you live, but could also be to volunteer for a non profit, serve on a board as a trustee or to give your time and/or your dollars to help others that are newer, younger, or up and coming. Wouldn't it have been great if someone or some organization was there to help you as a young man or woman trying to break into a new profession? As you retire, consider giving back.

Sometimes I get caught up in the day to day, just like I used to when I worked. Try to remember to savor what it is that you do have as someone retired. Keep up your health as being sick is a drag, especially when you don't have to work. Finally, you can't only do one thing all the time. Try to diversify your interests. I play the piano, for instance, not well but I work at getting better and have been taking lessons. 

The other day with my former student's daughter, Rose, in California:

In digital photography there is much discussion about file size. File size? What is that? This refers to the number of megapixels (MP) a given chip or sensor in a camera has to capture the light coming through the lens.

Generally, the number of megapixels has increased in size since early digital cameras. What was once regarded as excellent at 6 MP is now thought of as being small and what was regarded as impossible at 24 or 36 MP is now relatively commonplace.

On screen at 72 DPI (dots per inch), pretty much any camera makes files that look very good. That can include smartphones. It is when putting ink to paper to make a print that some of the smaller file size cameras and smartphones don't hold up.

Again, generally, the larger the file size, meaning the higher number of MPs a camera can record, the larger the prints it can make.

There are important and longer range considerations to keep in mind regarding what camera you use and what you can and can't do with the files shot with it.

In early digital days my first digital still lens reflex (DSLR) camera was a Nikon D70. I believe its sensor made 6 MP RAW files. This becomes larger when processed into an RGB file and ends up at about 34 MP. (BTW: RAW is not an acronym for anything and simply means that the file once shot isn't processed into anything in the camera. That's why it shooting RAW  is referred to sometimes as a "digital negative").

Small files sizes look fine on screen:

This photograph of my 8 x 10 camera in Wyoming shot in 2005 looks fine here on screen, but blow it up and take a look at its makeup were you to make a print 36 inches across and a crop looks like this:

Not so good.

So, what's my point? The only real reason for a 24 or 36 MP DSLR over something like a 10 or12 MP camera is print size. Simple enough.

Let's compare what that looks like:

Full file from the Nikon D800e (36MP):

and the cropped image:

Nothing is falling apart here because there is far more information contained in the file and therefore an enlargement holds the sharpness and detail far better. This is roughly equivalent to the difference in enlarging a 35mm negative to a big print size verses enlarging a 4 x 5 or 8 x  10 inch negative to the same size.

So, much is made of new cameras and their amazing capabilities but stick to making 4 x 6 inch prints and you could be working with a 10 year old digital camera and the quality would be fine and you could save your money.

For most people out there a camera shooting in RAW mode at 12-16 MP is about right and meets most needs. Anything with more MP is for those wanting to make larger prints at higher quality. 

All this is pretty straightforward and may sound like Digital Photography 101 to many of you but there is a more subtle and longer ranging issue to think about and that is: what do you want to do with the photographs you make now in the future? 

Since beginning to work with full frame sensors and cameras with 24 or 36 MP chips, I have had options available to me in terms of print size I didn't have before.

Another way to put this is that I cannot show any pictures I made with the 6 MP D70 Nikon larger than about 8 x 10 inches, and even that is a stretch. For someone who often makes 36 to 40 inch prints for exhibition, this simply eliminates that work from consideration. Knowing this back then, I wasn't very serious about what it could do and didn't dig in and make real work with it at all, thank goodness.

A final point:  I seem to be saying that working with a full frame sensor camera that shoots a RAW file in the 24-36 MP range makes good sense, and I believe it does. The downside is that everything gets bigger and slower too. This means larger and  more storage, bigger files and slower computer times. 

So be it. It seems a worthwhile trade off to me.