Part II: A Personal History of Photography : 2012 - Present
An Illustrated, annotated chronology of
photography projects and related remembrances
2012 Exhibition Spectrum Gallery, Rochester, NY I exhibited my work at Spectrum Gallery in Rochester in January-February . This is the first exhibit I've had since retiring from teaching and leaving Milwaukee-Chicago area and living in Canandaigua, NY and the Rochester area. See the online version of the exhibition click here.
2012 Travel to Spain Gloria and I traveled to Spain in the spring to see more Islamic Art and architecture. Visit Crystalline Paradise.
2012 Hydrofracking Suite I created the Hydrofracking Suite which consists of 4 projects including the Meadow Series, Screenshots, Transformed Hydrofracking Photographs, and the Four-Fold Symmetrical Hydrofracking Photographs.
The Hydrofracking Suite came out of the website I have been continuing to update weekly with the newest research and essays, etc: visit NoToHydrofracking.blogspot.com
2012 Radio Interview I was interviewed by Tish Pearlman for her radio program Out of Bounds. You can find the interview by searching my name - Steven Foster - in the site's archive: visit http://www.outofboundsradioshow.com/shows.php
2012 Music Video My old friend from Milwaukee, Hen Hanson has created a new band Panalure and has written a song "I'm Not Thinking about You" which he turned into a music video using my images from my project Triadic Memories. (Look for the music video image with all the red dots.)
2012 Islamic Sacred Art Inspired Projects I began applying the four-fold symmetrical photograph construction process to earlier project material (Abstract Photographs, Meadow, Windswept Landscapes, Studies, River Songs). Also at a Commitment Party in Mass. this summer I took pictures of three paper globe lights hanging in trees . . . and from this material another little series of symmetrical photographs emerged entitled The Tree of Life, which is project #5 in the Islamic sacred art inspired projects. Then in October, 2012 I completed the sixth of the core projects entitled Infinite Beauty. These images, repeating pattern image fields, are related to my Chromatic Field photographs. In October I also posted my Preface to "An Imaginary Book" the larger title I have given the entire group of Islamic sacred art inspired projects. At the end of November, 2012 I posted the seventh project Ta'wil. All the Islamic sacred art sacred knowledge inspired projects have been collected under this one link: "An Imaginary Book"
December 25, 2012 David Travis used one of my Visual Poems for his ongoing series of video poems entitled Ta Theia Orao. He zooms into my image (Swan, leaves, light on water) as a poem is being read and music is being played in the background. Simple, Haunting, Beautiful. The poem is John Koethe's "Chester." I knew John in Milwaukee where we both taught at the University. All David's video poems are collected on a Tumbler page. You may need to sign up and login to get access to his webpage. Here is the link: http://davidbtravis.tumblr.com/
2013 February 14, Valentine's Day. Book Project I mailed off a hand bound artist book I had made back in 1966 for Nathan Lyon's Home Workshop to the Visual Studies Workshop. The book is returning as a gift to it's "source" after 47 years of sitting in boxes in attics. I had edited some pictures out and re-sequenced the book and added an Afterword before sending it off. It's all explained in my Afterword, and the book with all its 31 pictures can be seen at this link: Click Here
2013 April, Completed An Imaginary Book by adding one last project page entitled Epilogue: Visional Recitals. I hated the thought of being done with this project. It has been a very important project to me that has lasted two years in the making. I got up the courage to write about my spiritual journey that included encounters with the sacred art of Islam. But my epilogue includes many stories of encounters with the sacred in many other forms. I feel complete with this project and will miss working on it deeply. It has been a sustained contemplation on my creative process as it relates to the sacred and sacred art. See my link that includes all Sacred Art Photography Projects.
2013 May-June Created online project Studies III : Color Photographs After completing An Imaginary Book in May I began the always anxious period of wondering what I would work on next. I decided to look back through all my digital files I had collected since 2006 when I bought my first digital camera looking for interesting pictures that might suggest a visual or conceptual theme I could consider pursuing. I found many images that I liked and decided to collect them into a project based on the idea of Studies, of which at that time there had been two earlier projects under that title. Studies III includes images from 2006-2013. Visit Studies III Color Photographs.
2013 July - April 2014 Began new online book project: Still Life: Photographs Inspired by Giorgio Morandi In July I found myself asking the question again, what to do next. I got an email notice from Amazon.com about a new book on one of my favorite artists, Morandi. Seeing his work again and reading new essays about his work sparked my desire to do still life photographs inspired by his work. For the next nine months I was on fire with this project, producing what would turn out to be my second online "book" consisting of ten chapters, each with it's own sub-title, except the first chapter which I titled Introduction to the project as a whole. Visit Still Life: Photographs Inspired by Giorgio Morandi for a complete explanation and links to all of the chapters.
2014 April Just completed Chapter 10 of Still Life, and the project as a whole. Once again I am looking for the next project . . . I really dislike this part of my creative process, but what can I do? I am making photographs in hope I will be lead to the next idea. I have some conceptual notions, but I have not yet committed. Beaumont Newhall, the famous photography historian, was one of my MFA thesis advisors. He called this part of the creative process something like "swimming in the dark waters of the unknown." He said it was a necessary part of the process.
2014 May-July Completed the project entitled The Creative Process which is a meditation on the symbolic photograph and the relationship of my practice of yoga (meditation, study of the yogic scriptures) to my photographic practice.
2014 July-August Completed the project entitled The Space Between Color and Black&White. The brief project is an extension of the Creative Process project and a transitional project to the next project which will be about Angels, inspired by the art of Paul Klee and the philosophical writings of Henry Corbin and Tom Cheetham.
2014 August-November Completed the project The Angels.
2014 September-December Completed the project Acadia--Arcadia ?
2014 October My work appeared in the publication Sites of Performance: Of Time and Memory, by writer Clark Lunberry. My photographs were used in Lunberry's essay 'Staring Sightlessly' : Proust's Presence in Beckett's Absence Anthem Press, London
2014 December-February 2015 Completed the project The Photograph as Icon
2015 February-May Snow : Photographs from the Silver World
Note: A complete listing of my projects, contact info, resume, etc. are provided on my website's Welcome Page.
2015 June 18 I posted the first part of my project Photography and Yoga. I had completed this Introductory part of the project in late May, but was taking my time to go over it, correct and revise it, etc. then on May 28 my wife Gloria fell and broke her pelvis bone in at least three locations. I stopped work on the yoga project for over four weeks while I was caring for her. She has improved over that time enough that I now feel comfortable enough to begin spending some time getting back to the yoga project. I imagine Photography and Yoga to be yet another large project with multiple parts. It could also very well be the concluding project in an ongoing series of projects that began with "An Imaginary Book" 2011 which explore sacred art and the sacred in art in relation to my creative process in photography. We will see . . .
2015 November As Above, So Below : Mirror In the Temple
2015 December Field of Vision symmetrical photographs of the colorful leaves of Vermont.
~ 2016 & Beyond ~
Please Note: I will stop here with making new entries to my Vol. II
Personal History page. I refer you instead to my Resume
in which as of 2016 I have posted yearly summaries of
art related events and projects. See also, on my
blog's Welcome Page a listing of recently
completed projects, my complete archive
listing of blog projects, and a section
entitled "Theme-Related Pictures
and Projects."
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HISTORY OF GALLERY REPRESENTATION
Spectrum Gallery, Rochester, NY I was represented by this gallery in Rochester until mid-June, 2015. Spectrum Gallery, Bill Edwards Director, was located inside Lumiere Photo, 100 College Ave. For over 40 years, Bill presented over 400 exhibitions of photography in Rochester, NY. It is sad to see it close its doors. Thank you Bill for all that you have done for the Arts community in Rochester, and the the larger world of art photography in general. ~ My first and only solo show at Spectrum Gallery (my first exhibition since 2004, three years before leaving Milwaukee and moving to Canandaigua!) opened January 6, 2012 - February 25. To see the online version of the exhibition click here. The first show in Bill's new space opened in July, 2011, with a retrospective of Ralph Gibson prints.. (The Gibson show was great show. I was very happy to be invited to join a gallery that would show work of that calibre.) Other shows of note that followed have included the work of Nathan Lyons, and Carl Chiarenza. Both are very important figures in the history of photography, to the Rochester area, and to me personally.
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Digression: Eastman House is of course in Rochester, and an important place in the history of photography. I took the History of Photography Course at George Eastman House in 1965, when Beaumont Newhall was teaching it there. It was a required course for my RIT photography program. I loved going to Eastman House for Newhall's lectures, the exhibitions, all the newest photo books to browse through, the print collections. I remember lying under one of the big trees on the front lawn of Eastman House, looking up at the overarching tree limbs, and having the fantasy of one day having an exhibit of my own photographs there. At that time Nathan Lyons was curating ground breaking fine arts photo exhibitions for Eastman House. It was such an exciting time.
Interestingly, two of my photographs (made in Chicago after I left Rochester to finish school at the Institute of Design) were included in a George Eastman House exhibition, curated by Nathan Lyons entitled Vision and Expression. There was also a catalogue which included one of my images from the show. (To see the image and learn more Go back to Personal History part I , and look in the section dated 1968-69.)
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Other Past Gallery Representations
Carol Ehlers Gallery, Chicago represented my work in Chicago from 1978-2001 first via the Frumkin Gallery – Chicago, and then later via her own Ehlers/Caudill Gallery. Finally it became the Carol Ehlers Gallery. She closed her gallery in 2001 and became director of the LaSalle National Bank Photography Collection. My Lake Photographs sold well in her galleries. Everything else didn’t. My last show with Carol was the Garage Series, coupled with the Harry Callahan's architectural facade photos.
The Fassbender Stevens Gallery, Chicago represented and my work from November 2002 through March 2003. The gallery closed in March, 2003 after an exhibition that highlighted my work in a large group show with other artists of the gallery. The economy was causing lots of gallery closings. The director of the gallery was thinking of moving to Berlin to start a new gallery there. I never heard from her again.
The Michael Lord Gallery, Milwaukee represented my work from 1983 through 2005, when the gallery closed. Michael was very generous with me. He paid for all the framing and announcements, allowed me to have shows whenever I felt ready, of whatever I wanted. He always had very elegant New York City quality gallery spaces.
End of Personal History
To see a collection of stories, essays, and remembrances of extraordinary show openings & life events, philosophical and artistic ideas, visit: Selected Writings: Remembrances.
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