I have just been named Artist in Residence for Newspace Center for Photography in Portland, Oregon, which entails a month-long intensive project dedicated to my work on a new portfolio, presently titled Coexistence. This blog gives me the opportunity to show the evolution of a portfolio. I will be posting images and my thoughts as this work evolves. I have often hoped an artist would intimately share their process; during a workshop or formal class, we rarely get a chance to see how a body of work changes over time. In this blog, I’ll talk about what I consider to be good images, what are bad images, what should or should not be included, what is an appropriate title, who will be the audience for this work, etc.
I am always interested in hearing how other artists accept or reject work, how the focus of a project can change, and how to develop and apply a set of rules for a portfolio, but I find most photographers are either making these decisions in private, or are unwilling to show anything unless it is in a “finished” state. I don’t remember ever finding someone who would be willing to share their “reject” pile publicly. I hope that by sharing mine, you might learn something about your own work, or at least be able to participate in a discussion about whether you agree or disagree with my perceptions.
Where this portfolio stands in it’s infancy…
I just moved to Portland in October, 2008 and have spent the last few months getting to know the city and other photographers working here. I have been very excited to get back to working with my large format 4×5 view camera and a set of industrial landscapes seemed an appropriate topic to focus my residency on. I have tentatively titled this work Coexistence, and hope to be able to show how our obsession to control, inhabit, and possess Nature never really works and eventually a new relationship between the natural and manmade is born, sometimes beautiful, sometimes chaotic, but to me, always interesting. The image below was a starting point.
Some background on me…
I began my career shooting black-and-white film and only this year adopted color. I scan my images on an Epson v750 and print on an Epson Stylus Pro 4800. I shoot both medium and large formats. I have a 4×5 Wisner large format view camera, a Mamiya 6 medium format camera (my personal favorite) and a Holga. All three of these camera’s capabilities are exhibited in my previous work which can be seen on my website at www.laurenhenkin.com. I am a meticulous printer and view the print as the final product, not an image you see on your monitor. I think this is an important fact to share, as many of you will be judging this work on the digital representations that you see on your monitors. Unfortunately, I can’t make a print magically pop out of your monitor, but I will do my best to describe any printing problems that I run into.
I have done some initial small test prints for this portfolio on Hahnemuhle’s German Etching paper and have been pleased by the results. For now, this is my paper choice for this portfolio. This will be my first series of large format color images. I have some concerns about whether this new color work will cohere with my existing black and white images and will I be able to adapt my workflow in Photoshop to the new set of tools I will need to learn for color work. These are only a few of the initial questions that I have at this point, I’m sure there will be many more throughout this process.
I hope you will check back often and participate in this process!
Lauren
Coexistence Portfolio Image #1