Sure, drool starts this week with a long thing about me.
But if you care to carry on down the page, why, you’ll
see other stuff, too.

Get going………

AMERICAN STATES

and it seems the same but it’s
all somehow different- like taking
1/4 hit of acid- these american
states of mine, the geography,
the people and the stories they
tell merely because i ask, pay
attention, and they, for some
reason, want to be represented,
pictured, and it’s impossible to
predict who i’ll meet, what i’ll see,
the only constant being my state
in these american states

I’ve been taking trips to the USA since 2002, to shoot
personal projects. There’s just something about that
country that turns my crank.

In all I’ve shot projects in California (twice), Mississippi
and Alabama, Ohio, New Jersey and Arkansas. Each trip
yielded a portfolio, each portfolio was, more or less, a
stand-alone thing.

When Carrie Colton, the curator at Exposure Gallery, asked
me if I’d be interested in showing some work there, well, I
jumped at the chance. I saw it as an opportunity to throw
all my American shooting into a big pile, stir it up and see
what came out.

Some of my American fotos

Anyone who follows drool knows that one of my favorite
things is to sequence fotos. I’m fascinated by how putting
fotos in a certain order can bring forward certain feelings.
It’s like a puzzle with no one correct solution, but some
solutions are more correct than others. Like chess. There
are a million permutations. It can be maddening. Move one
foto and a sweet, but not perfect enough, passage can fall
apart. Like dominoes.

Ah, the games we play……

Field, Ohio, 2005; My motel room, Mount Sterling, Ohio, 2004

The title, AMERICAN STATES, refers to many things. First,
and most obviously, the states I visited and photographed.
But this sequence is also about the state of America, from
my perspective. And it’s also about my state, when I travel
there to photograph. How can it not be?

Mechanic, Westmoreland, California, 2003

The opening is this Thursday, March 4th, from six thirty to
nine. Exposure Gallery is at 1255 Wellington Street West, in
Ottawa.

I hope you can make it.

JESSICA DIMMOCK

Jessica Dimmock burst onto the scene a few years ago with
her work The Ninth Floor. A series of fotos, shot over many
years, of a group of heroin addicts.

Moby, the musician, liked what he saw and commissioned
Dimmock to shoot a video for one of his songs.

Haunting. And, let me tell you…..I haven’t been affected
this much by anything in a long time.

(Be sure to watch this sucker full screen, please
and thank you.)

Moby ‘Wait For Me’ by Jessica Dimmock and Mark Jackson from Moby on Vimeo.

She talks a little bit about how this happened, and her
process, here.

(And, as an aside…..stuff like this, from fotografers who are
on the front lines of art/documentary, make those wildly pop-
ular videos being produced by the likes of Vincent Laforet, and
all those other commercial shooters, look like what they are:
slick drivel. There, I said it.)

MAGNUM WORKSHOPS AT CONTACT

CONTACT, the big Toronto foto fest, is offering what looks
to be some very interesting workshops. I know for sure that
if I wasn’t going to be super-busy dealing with last-minute
details and hanging my CONTACT show (USER at PIKTO,
opens May 7th), I’d be there in a heartbeat. I’d love to
study with Alec Soth.

Details here.

WINk MAGAZINE

Tyler Brülé, the dude behind Wallpaper* and Monocle magazines
also has an ad agency/design firm, called WINKREATIVE. Based
in London and Zurich.

I’m fortunate enough to have them as a sometimes client. The
folks there are amazing to work with and only want the most
forward, modern work. They have sweet budgets, too.

Another thing this consortium is up to these days is a foto mag,
called WINk Magazine.

So far they’ve only put out 2 issues, but this looks promising.