Alec Soth in Ann Arbor...

[bill schwab]

tomorrow.

History of Art Symposium Part I: "Contemporary Strategies in Documentary Photography" with Alec Soth

Date: Saturday, 01/30/2010; 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Location: U-M Museum of Art Auditorium, 525 S. State

 

[SuzanneR]

Wish I could go... hope you can report back to us, Bill!

 

[Jeremy]

Wish I could go... hope you can report back to us, Bill!

Ditto. Do you know if it will be webcast by any chance?

 

[mikebarger]

Wish I could go, then stop at Zingerman's for a sandwich.

Mike

 

[bill schwab]

I know of no webcast, unfortunately.

 

[bsdunek]

Wish I could go, then stop at Zingerman's for a sandwich.

Mike

Sounds Great!

 

[Jeremy]

I know of no webcast, unfortunately.

They do have a video of the Pen & Parchment talk here: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/histart

So I'll keep my fingers crossed. As a large format documentarian (yes, I just made that up) I'm VERY interested in what Soth has to say.

 

[Marc Akemann]

I hoping to make it.

 

[bill schwab]

I'll look for you Marc.

 

[Marc Akemann]

I'll look for you Marc.

I'll be there and will look for you, too, Bill. Later, if you have the time, there might be some good music at the Blind Pig. The Sights and The Satin Peaches from Detroit as well as Timothy Monger (Great Lakes Myth Society) will be playing. -Marc

 

[bill schwab]

That sounds really good, Marc. Unfortunately I'm on a pretty short leash today with people coming over later. Hopefully see you at the talk.

 

[Marc Akemann]

That's okay. I know it was short-notice.

 

[bill schwab]

Just back from the talk where it was great to see Marc and a few other old photo friends. All in all a pretty good presentation and well attended. Pleasantly unpolished in my opinion considering Alec Soth does so many of these types of talks. Covered mostly work from Sleeping by the Mississippi and Niagra although he did get into some more multi-media types of projects incorporating still and video. Apparently he will be doing a monthly project of this type for the New York Times that will be interesting to see. He also plugged his new project, Little Brown Mushroom Books... www.littlebrownmushroom.com. Here is a sample of the type of thing he seems to be into now... http://www.vimeo.com/8537213 There is more to check out there as well.

 

[Marc Akemann]

Just back from the talk....and dinner and hanging out in Ann Arbor with another photo bud. It was great to see Bill and I totally concur with Bill's description of the symposium. I'll add that if you like William Eggleston you'll like some of Alec Soth's work, too. I especially liked Alec's story done with stills, video and sound of his trip to Memphis, TN, getting a hotel room with his dog, explaining to his dog (and ultimately us) his plan of walking 7 miles to Eggleston's house and hoping for a good situation. It was not a good situation. But one of my favorite photos came from this piece. After Mrs. Eggleston slammed the door on Alec and his dog, Alec managed to get a nice photo taken through the Eggleston's kitchen window (from the outside in, of course). If I'm asked to leave a property I'm not sure I'd be looking through windows of the place to get a photo, but he had to leave with something, I suppose. Part II is next Saturday: Dead Link Removed

-Marc

 

[Marc Akemann]

Part II was today with two speakers on tap. Due to a previously scheduled family commitment I missed the first speaker, Sally Stein. Her program was entitled "Between f/stops and F-starts: Women and Photography between the Feminist ‘Waves". The second speaker, Allan Sekula, whose program was called “Realism in a Time of Lies”, was to me an unorganized mess of a program. Perhaps others got more out of it than I but after about 20 minutes I had to leave.

-Marc