Political and historical reasons aside, this American presidency and campaign has struck me on a purely superficial level thanks to photographer Callie Shell. Potent images by Shell and others on the campaign trail are turning into potent images in the White House (Pete Souza is the official White House photographer) and offering some of what Obama calls the “new transparency” that he hopes to bring to the presidency.

I get my daily fix of Obama images on Livejournal Community, Obama Daily Pics. My boyfriend and I are also starting a wiki (that might end up being a blog) called Barack Obama’s Day.com, in which we hope to compile, with the help of others, in text the things that Obama does everyday, since everyone seems so concerned about it. I guess we are all fascinated by what a mess he was left with?

My pictures are about a captured moment, rather than about the person. They are about a feeling, and to that extent they preserve my children’s anonymity. They are disguised somehow. I’m showing a moment of life, not part of their personality, and to that extent they could be anyone.

Essentially, this is all a question of perception. It’s like this: someone shows another person a blot of ink and asks them what they see. They reply: “I see a German shepherd dog.” Then they show them another blot, and they see a springer spaniel, then another and they see a doberman. The first person exclaims: “Say, you sure do have an obsession with dogs.” And the second replies: “You’re the one who keeps showing dog pictures.”

Tierney Gearon, The Guardian, 13 March 2001

Photo from the totally awesome and thorough site of Eggleston Trust that I learned about thanks to Jeremy Okai Davis.

Harmony Korine interviews William Eggleston:

HK: What about digital photography?

WE: Don’t know anything about it.

HK: Have you ever shot with a digital camera?

WE: As I said, I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know, I might love it.

HK: You’re not opposed to it?

WE: There’s plenty of film out there, and quadrillions of cameras that use film-I don’t think it makes much sense not to use it. The thing that’s going out is the manufacturing of the paper. Incidentally, all these years my wife has told me that I’m color-blind.

HK: You’re color-blind?

WE: Yes.

I will not refrain from setting among these precepts a new device for consideration which, although it may appear trivial and almost ludicrous, is nevertheless of great utility in arousing the mind to various inventions. And this is, that if you look at any walls spotted with various stains, or with a mixture of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys, and various groups of hills. You will also be able to see divers combats and figures in quick movement, and strange expressions of faces, and outlandish costumes, and an infinite number of things which you can then reduce into separate and well conceived forms. With such walls and blends of different stones it comes about as it does with the sound of bells, in whose clanging you may discover every name and word that you can imagine.

I’m really looking forward to visiting this exhibition next week at the Smart Museum:

Aaron Siskind, Chicago, 1949, Gelatin silver print, mounted. Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Gift of the Illinois Arts Council, 1976.140.

“Aaron Siskind (1903–1991) is best known for his abstract photographs, often of natural forms or architectural features that were manipulated in order to produce unfamiliar images. Siskind minimized the importance of literal representation by carefully distinguishing between a photograph of something—which is a distinct, flat object shaped by the photographer’s perception—and his fully three-dimensional subject or “the thing itself.” This intimate exhibition combines key images from Siskind’s first forays into abstraction with the artist’s own eloquent writings in order to examine the tension inherent in his work: between the artist’s perception and the literal representation of an object.”

My friend Joe made a scanner camera.

To the extent photography is often thought of as a violation - as more intrinsically exploitative than other mediums - family pictures hold the artist more accountable than any other subject imaginable; at the same time, much more is at stake.

Photographing one’s own family is always more treacherous than photographing anyone else. We never just walk away from our families as we do from most of our other photographic subjects. Would many families let an outsider penetrate the security of domestic privacy? Will a photographer’s pictures of her children inadvertently burden the children when the pictures become part of our public culture? Will a child’s or parent’s feelings about the images conflict with the art maker’s ambitions?

Tom Bamberger writing in Blood Relatives: the family in contemporary photography