The king of all photographic film had to be the 20 x 24 Polaroid Color film made for their monster sized studio camera. Can you imagine using a 20 x 24 inch camera that weighs in at a bruising 230 pounds? You'd need King Kong to set it up for you, and forget about any pretty sunset shots. This is a studio beast. You don't just pick this camera up and start shooting. If old Kong's off at the Empire State building, think fork lift. Ha! We laugh openly at your little digital cameras and lenses. If this film were scanned it would be in the tetrabytes, so don't give me any crap about your 'big' medium format digital cameras that are 40 megabytes. As someone's who's used to leading the pack, I can't pull out little prints with grungy detail. I've got prints that exude a distinct feel, and those puny little digital cameras still can't get what I need most of the time.
Ok, I'm just kidding. Kind of. I have my own array of digital cameras, and some of them are downright astounding with the feel of their images. Good stuff. Not only that, 
I've been teaching digital photography since uh... 1993? I've been one of the biggest advocates for going digital with photography, so don't get me wrong, I like digital photography.
My good friend Patrick Nagatani used the 20 x 24 camera for a couple of his projects, including the book, Patrick Nagatani/Andree Tracey: Polaroid 20X24 photographs : 1983-1986. A number of other photographers have used this rarefied camera and I'm a bit jealous. What the heck, I'm happy with the Polaroid film that I currently use. Only Polaroid pulled a quick one this spring.
Back in February Polaroid announced it was discontinuing instant film. Me being the lightning fast blogger that I am, was right on the spot with the breaking news. Oh man, this was sad
. Not just because of the nostalgic bygone era of instant photography, but some of the Polaroid film was really high end stuff that is still better than what most high end digital SLR's are able to cough out. For a lot of us photographers, this had nothing to do with nostalgia; this was the here and now, and one of our critical tools was being zapped. More on this in a bit.
As soon as the news broke, a lot of pros started loading up on the remaining stocks. I sure did. None of my regular suppliers had any anywhere. Zip. I went to my old standbys at B&H in NYC, or Calumet in LA, and both posted cryptic notes about being out of stock and to come back soon. Heck. I thought I was screwed and I must admit I wasn't thinking very charitable thoughts of my fellow pros. 'Why you f#$%ers' I muttered to myself as I scrambled around the net. In a moment of clear thought, I went to the Polaroid site (duh) and there it was. Yay. They had over 700 boxes left. At over $75.00 a box of film, I did some quick math and pitted it against the thought of never having the film I love to use for my digital prints. Dang. What to do? I thought 'What the heck. I'm not going to buy more than three, and just burn through it this summer and call it a deal.' It was a good thing I went to the Polaroid site, because the other places never did restock, and the eBay pirates were getting over $150.00 per box within days. The Polaroid site was devoid of Type 55 in a matter of days. At 20 exposures per box, I've got 120 shots left. Hmm. Maybe a party is in order for the last few shots. May as well go out the right way, I always say. An exit is just as important as an entrance, right?
My first memory of Polaroids was when I was 10, back in 1965 and my mom had a Polaroid Swinger, a cool little camera that made instant snapshots, right there. It mostly meant that we
could see how goofy we looked in family snapshots right on the spot instead of waiting for the film to be processed at a lab. Their commercials were these peppy, hip things that made it sound like you were a deviant outcast if you didn't have one. How could you not be a 'Swinger?' Holy crap. We had to coat the little prints with this stinky sticky stuff that had a briny smell like pickled pigs feet. Yum. As I recall, you squeezed the shutter release, which was this tubular thing and the viewfinder said 'yes' when the exposure was correct. How weird is that? We won't even go there, man.
Years later while a student at Brooks (Institute of Photography), we students were introduced to large format 4x5 Polaroid film. It was pure magic to be able to see our compositions instantly. We could check our studio lighting setups right then and there, which was a huge deal if you were learning studio lighting techniques. Polaroid test prints were often the difference between a mediocre photograph and an excellent one. The reason for this is that most of us worked with studio strobes and for those of you who've never seen one in action, it's essentially a huge flash, kind of like a little bolt of lightning. You see spots for a moment after the flash. Anyway, since it's such a fast bolt of light, you can't really see the effect on your subject you're photographing unless you had something like modeling lights or instant Polaroid film. Early in my career as a photographer I earned a reputation as a studio shooter and large format Polaroid film was my first line of defense against mediocrity.
An example of the Polaroid pro film was when I was making The Feather Series in the studio. I was
looking for a unique photographic feel and got it with strobes, since I was so used to working with them. I wanted a specific feel with the feather and the only way I was able to get it was via lighting with attitude. I used a lot of Polaroid film when doing the series, about 4 boxes, as I recall. The Polaroid film allowed me to not only check the general feel of the photographs, but also to see how close I was to a correct exposure. For us studio dogs, this Polaroid stuff was worth its weight in gold and was often the difference between a wishy washy print and a really cool one. A typical mode of usage was to set up the lighting, check it and when it needed adjustment (which it always did), we could actually see precisely what needed to be fixed. It took a bit of tweaking to get the light in this photograph just the way I wanted it to feel.
Notice that the above studio shot was exposed with regular roll film. The Polaroid film was mostly just for test shots and the real working media for a lot of photographers was the good old Kodak Tri-X for black & white. This meant that lots of photographers used Kodak products for their working exposures and used Polaroid for their test shots. Fuji made serious inroads into the Kodak piece of the pie, as did Agfa and Ilford. Personally, Kodak Tri-X is still my own black & white film of choice, as is Kodachrome, even as their numbers dwindle. I guess that makes me an American boy when it comes to film.
Last year Kodak commissioned a survey about film usage among professional photographers, which was published in the LA Times on September 20, 2007, titled, "Film Still Clicks With Professional Photographers." Kodak surveyed 9,000 professional photographers and a full 75% of them said that they would continue to use film even as they embrace digital photography. Sixty eight percent said they preferred film over digital for lots of stuff, and many went out of their way to point out that large format film is still very clearly superior to digital media. A lot of the photographers weren't too hot on the idea of sitting at a computer doing digital photography tasks for hours on end.
In my opinion, there is a huge difference between film and digital photography. Digital cameras have a filter in front of the image sensor to reduce moiré patterns, and it makes for a photograph that lacks the critical sharpness that large format film has to offer. For small prints, the reduction in sharpness is negligible and really quite indiscernible. However, once you enlarge the print to anything larger than 8x10, eagle eyed photographers can start to tell the difference in sharpness. The dynamic range of a typical DSLR (digital single lens reflex) camera is also less that what you can pull out of film, which simply means that a skilled photographer can get a wider range of tones from a professionally scanned sheet of large format film. This is why Kodak got the results they did from their survey of professional photographers; the photographers don't need any lessons on high end photography and stick with the tried and true techniques that still get them the best results: FILM. However, many said that for the majority of their work, digital photographs worked out just fine. I am sure that many pros have gone entirely digital.
I suspect that film's relevance will continue, at least for the time being. It appears that the masses may be abandoning it, but certainly not pros, for the reasons mentioned above. However, the writing is on the proverbial wall, especially with the demise of this high-end Polaroid film. When the dynamic range and sharpness from DSLR's matches what film has to offer, film's days may in fact finally be numbered, but I hope not. Luckily, digital cameras still have a way to go to catch up with the best of what film has to offer. I still really love film. For many of us, film is an essential part of the ritual of what defines photography, and the alchemy of silver halide is what makes a part of photography very magical. You really can 'see' into the film and silver halide print. They both have a thin emulsion that has a physical depth to it, which does give it an extra dimension that digital photography lacks. I still feel like a kid when I see a perfectly exposed Kodachrome slide and look at it through a magnifying glass on a light table. You can easily see the layers of emulsion, and the slide does look almost three dimensional. Black & white darkroom prints have an element of this too, because of the photographic emulsion that you can see into if you look closely. This is the primary difference between a black & white inkjet print and a darkroom print. If you put them both behind glass, it is nearly impossible to tell the difference between them though, which is cool if you're a digital photographer.
Lets get back to the Polaroid 4x5 type 55 film for a sec. It is an instant negative film, which is fine grained and has a spectacular dynamic range, which is why it is a film of choice for me. Not
only that, you don't have to process it in a darkroom, because it's instant! How cool is that? It's the best of both worlds because you can scan the negative into a computer and get the most beautiful prints that are huge, with intricate detail. Last year I made some negatives that I knew I wanted to make large, some 3x4 feet and larger. From past experience, I knew that this automatically bumped digital cameras out of the running; they simply aren't good enough for prints this large yet, especially if you want nuanced information everywhere in the photograph. What is really cool about this instant b&w Polaroid negative film is that you just bring a bucket with sodium sulfite to fix the image, wash & dry it at home, and there you are with a great negative to scan. This is a part of my summer art-making plans, to have fun playing with the last of this b&w Polaroid negative film. We've got to break out the Tequila for the last box of film though, don't you think? You know, the classy exit thing?
I think that the epitome of instant photographs are our camera phones now. With my iPhone, I can take a quick snapshot and email it anywhere in the world, all in less than a minute. I don't need anything else, just the phone. All of the below photos were made with the iPhone camera and emailed to myself. The iPhone photos are 640 x 480 pixels, which makes for a pretty small photo. It's really only good for email and online usage. However, I was a bit surprised at the image quality. They're sharp, with above average detail for a camera phone and the exposures were fairly accurate (click on the below image to see it in its actual size).
I get the sneaking suspicion that we're going to end up with high end digital cameras that have all the functions of the iPhone, and then some. Right now at the start of the 21st Century with general photography there is a clear shift from photographic prints to simply seeing photographs electronically either on cell phones or via some online mode, like email or a photo sharing site. I get the sense that most amateurs with digital cameras don't even bother with prints anymore, they just email or share their photos online. If this is true, it means that this chase for ever bigger and bigger mexapixel cameras is kind of silly because one doesn't need anything more than 2 megapixels for online viewing. The only real reason to have larger megapixel cameras is if you make prints larger than 8x10 inches, which clearly is not being done by the vast majority of family snapshot and vacation users. Kodak has found that even when the average photographer does make prints, it is only 4x6 inches.
If I had my way, point & shoot camera manufacturers would improve their sensors rather than increase the megapixel size. All point & shoot cameras suffer this same shortcoming. Their sensors are too small to get really excellent prints. There are some pretty nice images to be made from current digital point & shoots, but not nearly as good as they could be. Just about all point & shoot cameras are limited to ISO 100 or slower. This means that the sensor is less sensitive to light and if you make photos in either tricky or low light, your photo looks kind of junky. It starts to pick up digital noise and the image degrades.
So what is the answer for future photographers? Who knows. Just get the heck out of the way when you see Kong rumbling around with his big camera.
Essay Copyright Larry McNeil, 2008, All Rights Reserved. Please get permission from McNeil to use any portion of the essay. Or I'll send Kong your way.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
King Kong's Polaroid Film & Puny Digital Cameras
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Comic Art Indigène
Why: See the below Artist's Statement
Comic book characters have traditionally been about a yearning for heroes to come to the rescue that never did in real life. Superman and Batman are good examples. Superman was born in the waning days of the Great Depression and some of his stories involved “stuff” like him being the ultimate social activist, fighting corrupt politicians and businessmen for the most part. Only later did he start fighting the arch-criminal types. Doesn’t this say something interesting about American culture?
If one were to sift even further, you could make the argument that comic book heroes are really an extension of the yearning for mythical characters to come to life. After messing around with art that is almost pure mythology for ten years, I’ve become something of an expert on trying to decipher what myths are all about too. Instead of doing the more traditional scholarly essays, my interpretations have been as an artist.
Our own indigenous Northwest Coast culture has a powerful mythological tradition too, rife with characters that are not only pugnacious, but are also filled with irony and humor. Our mythical character is Raven, whose main trait is to be simultaneously scrappy and funny. Instead of fighting corrupt politicians like Superman did, he brazenly took on a mendacious, greedy Chief who has lost his way from being the type of forthright and visionary leader that the people desperately needed. The corrupt Chief was the ultimate villain in that he was so greedy that he actually stole light from the world. Isn’t that a wonderful metaphor for a bad guy? Our hero, who was kind of a scoundrel himself, came to the rescue and stole the sun, replacing it back in the sky where it belonged. Raven was white before this, and his act turned him black as he is today, so he paid a price for his audacity, another almost sublime part of the mythology. Raven was a transformer, changing shape at will. Superman was a transformer too, changing his identity from a mundane everyday guy into someone that was, uh, well… super (as in wonderful, fantastic, marvelous and brilliant).
I’ve had a Tonto comic for years. Sometimes people (and especially artists) just have things lying around that seem to serve no real purpose except that is has some kind of resonance that makes sense. My theory is that we have an intuitive part of ourselves that knows things, and that artists sometimes “tune in” to what this is about. That’s what happened with my Tonto work. I’ll freely admit that the intellectual part of me had no idea what I was doing with Tonto, only that it happened without much conscious thought. In my own art, I transformed Tonto from something of a dimwitted sidekick to the proverbial main hero character. He transforms right before our eyes and starts kicking butt in the postcolonial world, setting disgusting and repugnant people like Edward Curtis straight, with one mighty punch. In this sense, the comic book aesthetic is perfect for what I want to do with my art, especially as Raven acts as a literal foundation for the art.Monday, March 31, 2008
1960's (Print Exchange)
Melanie Yazzie (Artist & Scholar) organized this print exchange. She titled it "1960's." Thank you for inviting me to participate Melanie, I did enjoy trying to figure out what the 1960's meant. I can't really say I've figured it out, but here is kind of a take on it.
Artist's Statement
I think that America itself was the proverbial child of the 1960’s. It seems to me that the 1960’s epitomized irony because there was so much hope for a better world juxtaposed with the worst that humanity was capable of inflicting on each other. I think. Maybe. I can’t really say because I was just a kid myself; on the other hand, I did come of age in that era.
All I remember is that there were so many earth-shattering things going on all the time. Should a third-grader have to see their teacher break down in tears and have to leave because she couldn’t tell the class that the young president was just shot? Our classmates lost a bit of our innocence that day (like nearly everyone else, as it turned out). What about a fifth grader watching the new Batman program on his neighbor’s new color tv who sees a few news-clips of American soldiers wading through some jungle river in a place called Vietnam? Your uncle comes home proudly wearing his gold sergeant’s stripes and Green Beret, yet something is profoundly bothering him, so much that he becomes a raging alcoholic right before our eyes. Even a ten-year old knew that something was not right with our country.
On my paper route in 1968 I remember loading my stack of newspapers into my bag and reading the huge headlines about our president bombing Hanoi. I did not like this president. He seemed like a used car salesman and his vice president had the look of a well-groomed shark. I much preferred LBJ, who stopped his motorcade right in front of me in 1966, got out and shook hands with a crowd of us, me included (this was in Alaska when he stopped to refuel Air Force One on his way to South Vietnam).
By now, average people were following the lead of the recently assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. Even in death, his philosophy of non-violent protests lived on. It looked to me like the entire city of Washington DC was there listening to his “I have a Dream” speech five years earlier where he did change a lot of people’s way of thinking, even as the government did not. I learned that it takes someone with not only a dream of how things should be, but it takes someone with a powerful will that would not give up, no matter what. Hearing “No” was not an option. Hearing “No” just meant regrouping and coming forth with more will and people convinced that “Yes” was the right thing to do.
By the end of the decade, like so many other people my age, I was starting to become jaded and had the creeping suspicion that maybe our country was not made up of the good guys in the white cowboys hats, and at 14, was solidly against the Vietnam War. My hero was Muhammad Ali, who gave up his boxing championship rather than being drafted into the army. I entered high school with the fear of being drafted and being sent to Vietnam myself, like the thousands of other kids getting out of high school facing the draft. It seemed to me that average people from all walks of life were against the war. I was very, very thankful when the draft was dropped just as my own draft numbers were set to be drawn in my senior year of high school in early 1973. Years later I remember thinking that an appropriate war memorial should include a representation of the millions of everyday people who protested and saved so many young men like me from becoming drafted in a senseless war.
Here in 2008 I asked my 12-year old what his impression of the 1960’s was. “Great music (he’s learning the Stone’s ‘Paint it black’ on his Fender guitar), good movies and the hippies were at their peak (laughter here from him). He explained hippies as young people smoking and beating “the man.” In my opinion, the idea of peace is what keeps many of us going, standing up and saying, NO to the injustices that are overwhelming us as we speak.
Friday, February 22, 2008
First Nations Conference, Boise State University
You are cordially invited to the 2008 First Nations Conference at Boise State University (BSU) being held on March 20 & 21. The conference is dedicated towards presenting and sharing the information on what it takes to initiate a Native Studies area here at BSU.
It is completely our honor to have Wilma Mankiller as a keynote speaker, along with Lee Marmon, the Laguna Photographer.
In accordance with our theme of "Native Studies at Boise State University: Talking Strategy," we are inviting many indigenous scholars to share their expertise, in conjunction with inviting representatives and members of regional tribes to get their input as to how to serve the educational needs of their members.
We are also hosting the exhibition "Pocahontas Meets Hello Kitty," which is a traveling group exhibition that questions notions of how people generally view indigenous women in history (which was organized by Melanie Yazzie, Professor of Printmaking and artist). There are going to be film screenings (to be announced) and a Powwow organized by the Intertribal Native Council (our indigenous student organization).
Gunalsh'eesh, Thank you,
Larry McNeil
Tlingit Professor & Artist
Please see the previous post regarding a raffle for one of my prints! We hope to see you at the conference.
PS, I would like to thank the organizing committee for helping to make this conference a reality, including community members Deaun Lonebear & Josephine Halfhide; student members Hailey Wilson (President of INC), Krys Lopez and the rest of INC; our Cochair Dr Gretchen Cotrell , Associate Professor of Social Work: Dr. Mike Cutler, Assistant Professor of Counselor Education; John Francis, Associate Professor of Graphic Design (great poster John!); Dr. Marcy Newman, Assistant Professor of American Literature and all of her great volunteer students; Bob McCarl Professor of Sociology; Dr. Virginia Husting, Associate Professor of Sociology and President of the Cultural and Ethnic Diversity Board; Gaylord Walls, Academic Advisor, Gateway Center; The Martin Luther King Human Rights Celebration Committee; the Student Activities Organization; and anyone else that I may have forgotten to list. Thank you one and all, your proactive activism helps make our university a better place.
First Nations PowWow Raffle, Exhibition, & First Nations Conference
The Intertribal Native Council (INC), our indigenous student organization at Boise State University (BSU, the coolest initials in all of academia) is raffling one of Larry McNeil's photographs as a fund-raiser for their PowWow. It is the Rez Net 3076-2 photograph, which is valued at $2,500.00.
INC is only selling 100 of the raffle tickets at $20.00 each. The contact person is Hailey Wilson (INC President) at hlw22@hotmail.com if you want to contact her regarding the purchase of tickets.
The photograph, "Rez Net 3076-2" was originally part of a print exchange organized by Melanie Yazzie, Professor of Printmaking at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The prints from this exchange are going to be in an exhibition titled, "Pocahontas Meets Hello Kitty" at the Student Union Building Gallery from March 19- April 20. The traveling exhibition uses Pocahontas and Hello Kitty as a tactic to engage the public to open their minds as to how they view Native American women in history. Kirsten Furlong, the gallery director of the Visual Arts Center at BSU also has a print in the group exhibition.
All of the events are in support of the fifth First Nations Conference to be held at BSU on March 20 & 21. See the separate posting for the conference, which has Wilma Mankiller and the photographer Lee Marmon as keynotes and presenters such as Greg Cajete, the Director of the Native American Studies area at the University of New Mexico. The theme for the conference has to do with doing the research to start a Native Studies area at BSU.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Migrations: New Directions in Native American Art (Part Two by McNeil)
Three Part Series:
1. Intro & Vision for Migrations
2. Jurors & Contributing Authors
3. Migrations Artists
Part Two, Jurors & Contributing Authors
Jurors
Marjorie Devon, Director, of the Tamarind Institute seemed like a natural choice as a juror, especially for this project, what with all of her years of experience working with a very diverse group of international artists. She had a shrewd sensibility of the uniqueness that each artist could bring to the project.Siri Engberg is the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. They described their internal long-range plan as the desire to create "a pioneering 21st-century multidisciplinary arts center with audience engagement and experiential learning at its core." It is known for its major exhibitions of 20th-century art, for its presentation of vanguard music, dance, theater, film, and video, and for its innovative education programs. The Walker is definitely on my list of places to visit; what can I say? It looks different and thought provoking; I remember seeing äda web years ago and am glad to see that it's still as vibrant as ever.
Jaune-Quick-to-See Smith, artist and independent curator, writer, advocate and critic was among this stellar group brought in to jury this Migrations project. Jaune has been one of the most dynamic activists promoting Indigenous artists in recent memory. She is selfless in this respect and donates her time to many projects. She is a frequent artist collaborator at the Tamarind Art Institute in Albuquerque.
Truman Lowe is an artist, scholar, advocate and Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC among other things. Truman is a true Indigenous intellectual and is a Professor of Art at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the very prestigious Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Art. His art is in numerous major museum collections around the world.
Deborah Wye is none other than the Chief Curator of Prints and Illustrated Books at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (click on this link to the Museum of Modern Art's site of Audio Archives and scroll down to find a lot of audio programs, including many featuring Wye). Needless to say, MOMA is one of the premier arts institutions in the world. I heard that she had the walls of the remodeled print galleries painted gray "so that the prints with their white margins pop off the wall." Wye has been the Chief Curator since 1996 and is the caretaker of what many critics consider to be among the most comprehensive collections of contemporary prints in the world. 
Lucy Lippard is quite the hip art intellectual, critic, author, activist, feminist and theorist who wrote an insightful chapter titled "Moving Days." I really value Lucy because she's influenced how people re-think the status quo, not only in the art world, but how we think about what's happening in our American culture. Not to be overly simplistic, but I think that once we get too smug about our scholarship, it needs to be given a decent rattling to see how sound our presumptions hold up. Sometimes this translates to putting forth a paradigm that other scholars cannot see, which is part of what makes her more unique than your run of the mill art expert in the world of academia.With her Moving Days essay, Lippard brought her laser vision to bear on the cultural landscape that we're all constantly trying to figure out. I liked how she opened her essay with a quote from Oscar Howe's 1958 letter to the Philbrook Museum's Annual, upon being rejected because his work was too modern and abstract to be "Indian." It inferred that the art world wasn't always ready for what various artists have to present with their art, and how museums commonly play the role of gatekeepers for how we define art, especially when it crosses cultural borders. She mentioned the students and faculty at the Institute of American Indian Arts (where I would humbly add that I helped add substance to their Photography area as a faculty in the 1990's).
I would completely agree that it is critical that Indigenous artists know precisely who our early master artists were and that we have a long history of artists who have struggled to make a place for ourselves in the art world and that mediocrity was never all right; that in addition to everything else, we continue to break new ground with our art. I like her succinct writing style. She asks, "Where and when did contemporary native 'Modernism' begin?" Good question, especially when it is framed by her assertion that "the crucial difference between the Studio School (Dorothy Dunn's) and the IAIA is that the latter was founded and run by Native artists. One of the realities of being a faculty member at the IAIA was that we valued the Indigenous knowledge, or epistemology that students brought with them and we used the type of knowledge that they had ingrained within themselves as momentum for their own art-making practices. It meant that other non-western philosophies were a part of how we nurtured our students, including honoring the ancient spiritual beliefs and world-views that they brought with them. It meant that we had to be more sensitive to the non-academic elements that art schools usually reject, because in order to nurture our students, we had to be open to their entire identity, not just sections of it.
Lucy was also shrewd enough to recognize the implied conflict between the terms "traditional and contemporary." In my opinion, the terms traditional and contemporary are sometimes perceived to be polarized beasts on opposite sides of a compass and artists had to choose one, because that is the nature of things. Of course, we indigenous artists know that is completely ridiculous; I just finished writing an essay about this for our own Northwest Coast cultural organization, the "Sealaska Heritage Institute," in Juneau, Alaska, due to be published this summer.
Regarding history, one of the best phrases in the book was where Lucy quoted the Mi'kmaq video artist Mike McDonald, "I once heard an elder say that the great crime in this land was not that the natives had their language and culture beaten out of them in boarding schools- the great crime was that the people who came here did not adopt the culture of the land." It is this sensitivity that makes Lucy's research so relevant; she gets right to the heart of the issue without flinching or shirking away. Thank you Lucy, you have the sincere appreciation of generations of Indigenous artists.
Jo Ortel is an Associate Professor at Beloit College and the Chair of their Department of Art and Art History and author whose area of expertise is nineteenth and twentieth-century and contemporary art, including feminist and Postcolonial art and theory. Her chapter titled, "Multiple Migrations: (E)merging Imagery," discussed issues that are of significance to both artists and scholars, especially the ongoing debate about the issue of meaning in art. Jo opens her essay by reflecting about the 2004 Whitney Biennial and how a critic proclaimed, "the decade of socially and politically engaged art was over." That was quite the stentorian proclamation. Maybe even some kind of a weird junior manifesto?
Jo pointed out that "she argued- rightly I think- that the art selected for inclusion in the 2004 show largely retreated from the single-minded obsession with the world's ills." Jo added, "In their choices for 2004, the curators overstated the resurgence of escapism in contemporary art, in my opinion, and underrepresented art addressing issues of cultural identity. Although many artists have turned away in recent years from engagement with the world, identity politics and political and social concerns remain urgent, compelling subjects of investigation."
I'm sure there was a large multitude of artists who breathed a collective sigh of relief upon reading the above. I can't imagine a more stultifying, or mind-numbing act than to have a critic proclaim that making art that has relevance to our times is passé, like a frivolous fashion had passed. This discounts the intellectual aspect of being an artist, to say nothing of a human being making art about what they're passionate about. Do we hear the same argument about authors? "Oh, sorry, you can't write about life anymore. It's way too intense for our people."
While surfing an entire litany of banal television programs recently, the pop celebrity of the hour, Paris Hilton was asked what she thought of her book being on the Wall Street Journal's bestseller list. Her answer? "What's the Wall Street Journal?" I got the feeling that back in 2004 Paris may have been a gallery darling at the Whitney (had she shown up) for her intellectual prowess. I apologize, Americans may sometimes epitomize political naiveté, but not that bad; I take the Paris thing back. I think. Maybe. It just seems to me that ignorance and indifference is a bad combination, especially for an artist, so I heartily second Jo's point of view and thank her for writing about it in the book, because it was so relevant to the year the Migrations art was being created.
In my opinion it was a smart strategy to have the various authors assigned specific tasks, such as researching both the Tamarind and the Crow's Shadow Art Institute. It gave a well-rounded view of the prime ingredients that made the exhibition distinctive. You'll have to ask each artist whether Jo's interpretations of his or her art was accurate. All I know is that her take on my own art made me laugh, which meant that it was pretty much right on target. I thought that her interview was thoughtful and she did her homework about what informs the art before she talked to us.
Jo and Lucy have reaffirmed my belief that artists need critics and historians and that at their best, they're able to add momentum to what artists do. On the other hand, some historians and critics do just the opposite, so I guess us artists really need a healthy skepticism about their profession, leave it to them and go about making our art (Oops, I guess that means I shouldn't be writing this). On the other hand, there is a convincing argument being made by various Indigenous artists that in order for our history to be truly accurate, it needs to be written by Indigenous intellectuals and writers; that a powerful sense of sovereignty is required as a key ingredient for our truths to emerge. At any rate, I am sincerely grateful for their contributions to the book; thank you, Gunalchéesh.
Kathleen Howe is the Director of the Pomona College Museum of Art and professor of Art History. I've got to fess up and mention that I studied with her while an MFA student at the University of New Mexico. I asked to take an independent study with her and she was gracious enough to approve it (which included research on the French photographer Felix Bonfils, but that's another story). Her essay "A Quiet Commitment: Tamarind and Native American Artists" was very informative and taught me a lot of valuable information. Her essay shared a lot of the Tamarind's history, including that they came from LA to UNM in 1970 and their commitment to pedagogy with their Master Printer program. Kathleen put forth the argument that then Director Clinton Adams encountered a very large and diverse arts community in New Mexico (that included many Hispanic and Native American artists) that necessitated a shift towards a more diverse printmaking workshop and that it was a welcome part of their new strategy. Kathleen described Fritz Scholder (who was then teaching at the IAIA) as one of the early Native artists that Adams approached to make lithographs at the Tamarind. In a four-month span, they made an astounding twenty-one lithographs. Kathleen described how other Native artists followed- T.C. Cannon, Patrick Swazo Hinds, Dan Namingha, R.C. Gorman and that Jaune Quick-To-See Smith started making lithographs at the Tamarind in 1979. She mentions the 1986 transition of directors between Adams and Devon. She describes the influx of new Indigenous exhibitions on the national scene that emerged in the 1980's and who was generally doing what and where.
This was a partial survey of contemporary Indigenous art, and valuable because you don't see them that often. Kathleen reminded us that "From its inception, Migrations was intended to redress the lack of critical appraisal..." The plan was "to invite the critics to visit the presses while the artists were in residence to foster knowledge of their work and to encourage the exchange of ideas." I think that it's really great that Kathleen was able to write this chapter, given her own history of working at the UNM Museum and knowing a lot of the people she wrote about, or at least being able to interview people who knew what was going on back then.
Gerald McMaster is a First Nations artist from the Siksika Nation in Alberta who is an artist, activist, scholar, curator and arts administrator. His art, which is satirical, helped inspire my own art at times. McMaster created the first national Indian and Inuit art gallery at the Canadian Museum of Civilization and was appointed to the dual roles of Deputy Assistant Director for Cultural Resources and Director’s Special Assistant for Mall Exhibitions at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. These two key roles had him centrally placed as a major influence on Indigenous art and artists in both Canada and the US. His essay, "Crow's Shadow: Art and Community" describes the background information that led to its formation on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation near Pendleton, Oregon and how James Lavadour (Walla Walla) led the way in order to make it a reality. Gerald wrote, "This is the story of Crow's Shadow Institute of the Arts and James Lavadour's ambitious vision to establish a community resource that would support Native art in all its dimensions." He writes a brief background history of the Umatilla Reservation; who lives there and the political realities they had to deal with, including a powerful sense of sovereignty that drove all else. He tells of how Lavadour worked with their Education Director Woesha Hampson (Ho-Chunk, and my sister-in law's sister) with curriculum development and how, "like many people on the reservation, Lavadour had a strong social conscience and an idealistic commitment to community... he hoped to use art to effect social change on the reservation."
Lavadour was used to working with other Indigenous artists with a similar sense of sovereign status and community, and that serving their own people was just as important as being an artist; that it was critical to prioritize service to the Indigenous community. One could make the argument that this service to their own communities is what adds a level of reality to their own art. They're able to avoid the stereotypical and starry-eyed notions of Indigenous identity and use an exciting new visual vocabulary that is sometimes unique unto themselves. He believed that the Crow's Shadow "could act as a community based arts organization that could attract resources and also be a conduit for Native artists into the mainstream art world."
Gerald wrote about how Frank Janzen, their Tamarind-trained master printer came to work at the Crow's Shadow and helped with not only getting the presses set up, but also with programming and day to day operations, along with his key role of collaborating with artists with printing their hand-made lithographs. Three of the Migrations artists made their lithograph editions with Frank- Steven Deo, Ryan Lee Smith, and myself. I had heard from Marie Watt how outstanding it was to work with Frank, so I asked the Tamarind if I could print at the Crow's Shadow. Besides, I thought it would be very cool to make art on the Rez for two weeks.
What made Frank special was he is an artist himself and not simply a print technician, which brought a special artist's sensibility to the project. Same with the other Tamarind-trained printers, especially Bill Lagattuta who actually trained many of the Tamarind master printers. Frank had to do a lot of creative problem solving with me because I worked primarily with digital media. Our challenge was to translate my digital images into the aluminum plates that were used to print each of the five lithograph layers. We had to figure out the proper exposure for the original acetate negatives and in turn, the exposure for the plates from the digitally based negatives. Frank had an uncanny knack for getting them right on target even though it was a newer aspect of lithography.
One of my own favorite aspects of the process was playing and experimenting with the various inks for the prints themselves. It was exhilarating to see the myriad of possibilities for the prints, including the colors, opacities and how they interact and cause subtle changes when layered. I liked how one is often forced to be fearless with all of our creative decisions and how sometimes it was like rolling the dice to see what happens, which inferred that a peculiar kind of "art luck" was involved. All I can say is that if this was true, Frank was my big-time good luck guy. In reality, luck had little to do with anything. Our creative power essentially drove everything, coupled with a highly skilled application of technical prowess. Thank you Frank and James. You are both the heart and soul of the Crow's Shadow.
Gerald's essay gave a unique insider's view of what made the Crow's Shadow earn a singular distinction in the world of contemporary art, which serves to inform a critical aspect of contemporary Indigenous art. This act is in complete harmony with Gerald's long history of service to the Indigenous community, and we're lucky to have him as such a selfless contributor. I've read the book twice already, not to mention just looking at the images. I am honored to have played a role in it's existence and that my own art and sensibilities are floating around in the mix somewhere, especially when one considers that the people involved with Migrations embraced the philosophy that a contemporary art community is vital to its own evolution and health.
Part Three, "Migrations Artists" willl be posted soon.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Migrations: New Directions in Native American Art
Three Part Series:
1. Intro & Vision for Migrations
2. Jurors & Contributing Authors
3. Migrations Artists
Part One, Intro & Vision for Migrations
It was a pleasant surprise to learn that the Migrations: New Directions in Native American Art exhibition was going to be showing at the Boise State University Visual Arts Center Gallery. I am going to give a public talk about the Migrations art on February 8th at 6:30pm in the Hemingway Gallery.
We're at the start of our new semester here at BSU, and I'm writing this primarily for our new batch of art students, including our usual suspects in the MFA area. Consider this to be a pedagogical entry that sometimes veers off to commentary from an artist, which is a very accurate reflection of my life as both an art professor and artist.
If you can, go to the above link and get the catalog; it's more a combination of a focused survey about Contemporary Native American Art and a broader view that includes a more inclusive interpretation of how to describe relevant art being produced in America at the start of the 21st Century. Please visit the numerous links in this posting to get an inkling of who and what the art, artists, jurors, writers, contributors, organizations and so on are all about. It really is an all-star list from the world of contemporary art. No lightweights here.
One of my own most challenging aspects of teaching art (to both undergraduates and our MFA students) has to do with how to get them to navigate towards finding significant meaning with their own art. I require them to research other artists, especially those of whom are wrestling with the creative process in ways similar to their own challenges. I would put forth the argument that there are a lot of artists out there that are off the beaten path, but are making great art nonetheless. See the article "Tribal Hybrids" in the Art News June 2007 issue, by Cynthia Nadelman regarding many Indigenous artists that are not nationally known yet, but are on the verge of various types of breakthroughs. On the other hand, this Migrations exhibition is a fairly high profile exhibition with lots of venues and a most excellent catalog with lots of interesting critics, artists and art professionals contributing essays. It has certainly acted as momentum for not only the creation of new art, but for more venues and opportunities for us, the Migrations artists (Well, for me anyway).
The Migrations, New Directions in Native American Art project "was developed to identify and showcase Native American Artists who are working with a contemporary vocabulary," as written by Marjorie Devon, the Director of the Tamarind Institute at the University of New Mexico. Marjorie and the Tamarind have a history of innovation as being a world-renowned center for fine art lithography and influence on contemporary art for the last few decades. The Tamarind has a long track record of producing not only editions of lithographs by a who's who of national and international artists, but of also training new master lithographers. The Tamarind also goes out of their way to work with Indigenous artists, and I'm happy to say that I've worked with their master printers a couple of times on collaborative lithograph editions. Their staff people are creative, smart and personable problem-solvers when working with artists. The Crow's Shadow Art Institute was brought in as collaborative printers too (more on them later). Marjorie Devon was definitely one of the key players that brought everyone together; one of her gifts is doing the behind the scenes work that makes art projects a reality, which is so rarefied these days. Thank you Marjorie, you are amazing and it doesn't surprise me that you are constantly bringing forth new art projects in addition to running the Tamarind's operations (which includes acquiring a new building by the way).
The Migrations project was partially funded by grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (the foundation is leading the way with a lot of innovative arts initiatives and funding) and the National Endowment for the Arts (stop by and take a peek at what your arts organization is up to). Getting the funding to initiate the project was a major coup in itself, let alone doing all of the planning and work to make the Migrations project a reality. This was one of those ambitious art projects that involved people who represented a wide spectrum from the art world, which is what took it to a higher critical level.It was clear that everyone involved had higher hopes than usual for this art project, and each brought their own unique sensibilities to the project. Linda Weldy Bahm, the Director of the University of New Mexico Art Museum, wrote in the catalog that "Migrations exemplifies three goals shared by the University Art Museum and the Tamarind Institute- presenting the work of outstanding Native American artists working with a contemporary vocabulary, broadening the understanding of contemporary Native American Art, and encouraging serious discourse related to Native American Artists." I'd have to say that they were aggressive about carrying out these plans, as seen with how they initiated a critical discourse with the variety of jurors and writers they brought in to compose essays for the catalog.
See Parts 2 & 3, which talks about the jurors, contributing authors and artists, to be posted soon.
ISBN 10: 0826337694
ISBN 13: 978-0826337696
University of New Mexico Press, Edited by Marjorie Devon
Monday, January 7, 2008
Visual Currencies: The Native American Photograph in Museums and Galleries
I authored one of the chapters for the new text, Visual Currencies: The Native American Photograph in Museums and Galleries. It was edited by Henrietta Lidchi and Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie. It is being published by our good friends at the National Museums of Scotland.
It was a great experience to write for both Henrie (Dr. Henrietta Lidchi) and Hulleah. They had a powerful and very conscientious premise for the collection of essays, which produced a unique incentive for us writers to go beyond the ordinary with our writing.
The text is due to be released on July 25, 2008. My photograph Masks, Masks and More Masks is on the cover and the caption reads:
- The photograph Masks, Masks and More Masks presents a photographic vernacular that puts forth the notion that Tonto had a basic disagreement with Derrida’s theory of deconstruction, and even more critically, offers his own set of Indigenous semiotics that places his epistemological paradigm at the forefront of the mainstream visual culture.
ISBN-10: 1905267126
ISBN-13: 978-1905267125
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Real Indians Photograph Give-Away
This was a Real Indians Give-away. It seemed to make more sense to give four of them away. The four people who get one are Nick Galanin, Mario Caro, Patrick Nagatani and Daniel Rudnick (my wife & son picked the names out of a hat, just to try to get some cosmic balance).
I like how Richard Ray, a good friend phrased it; thanks for keeping us Real (Indians)... after all, We are Give-Away People(s) in Observance of the Seasons (Winter Solstice)...
This was fun! Thanks one and all for participating, it helped make it memorable.
Gunalsheesh, Thank you.
Larry Tee Harbor Jackson McNeil
Friday, December 14, 2007
Larry McNeil's "Real Indians" is 30!
To Celebrate, I'm giving one of the Real Indians photographs away.
It's kind of hard for me to believe that it's been 30 years since this photograph was made. I'm going to give one of these photographs away as part of the celebration. It is valued at $2,500.00 from my gallery in Santa Fe. Don't tell them though, this is between you and I.
Real Indians was made in December of 1977 when I was a senior at Brooks Institute. During an all-night darkroom session I was listening to a Santa Barbara radio station when the DJ played a soon to be released double album in its entirety, and I was fast enough to record it on a cassette tape. It featured Jaco Pastorius on bass and a lot of the Weather Report gang, and one of the very cool cuts took up an entire side on the album. Name this album and I'll put your name in a drawing for the photograph to be drawn on winter solstice. This tape was played a lot during my improvised trip to Santa Fe the next day.
I say improvised because the trip wasn't really planned, and I just wanted to put a lot of miles between myself and school. Everyone at school was more burned out than usual; it was an intense semester and lots of us were more than ready to hit the road. I'd just had a run-in with one of our honored faculty, Mr. Herbert E. Boggie. Boggie was one of the guys who made Brooks great and I have a great admiration for him, but he didn't approve of my shoulder-length hair, so I kind of slinked quietly around campus whenever he was around. He once stopped me in the hallway and told me to go get a haircut. My first impulse was to snap smartly to attention, click my heels together and yell, SIR! YES SIR! But I just said OK, and went the other way as quickly as possible. This was the environment in which the photograph was made, which makes it even more critical because it was overtly defiant of the Brooks culture in which I was studying to be a photographer. It was kind of silly really. I think that Boggie actually would have liked the Real Indians photograph.
The Real Indians photograph is a landmark photograph for me because it marks my first really great photograph which set the tone for my attitude towards making art. It was my only photograph that actually drew applause from my fellow Brooks students; I thought it was very cool that they appreciated its significance because they were a pretty sophisticated crowd, and they were voicing their support of what could be viewed as being a bit subversive to the Brooks culture. After all, a core group of us were free spirited and were used to having the likes of Ansel Adams, Duane Michaels, Mary Ellen Mark and so on, stopping by to shoot the breeze about photography. We knew what really great photography was about and were anxious to finish school and start being photographers ourselves.
Route 66
It was a pleasant drive to New Mexico. I hit a blizzard in Flagstaff, which was a notable omen for a Northern boy who hadn't seen snow in a long time. The photograph was made while driving near the Santo Domingo Rez, just south of Santa Fe off of I-25. It was cold, but there wasn't any snow on the ground there yet. Route 66, the famous interstate from early in the 20th century runs right through the area. Even back in 1977 it felt decidedly retro and even a bit campy. Ghosts of cars from the 20's through 70's literally had the run of the place and if you listened carefully you could hear the old cars echoing through the area. What is it about Americans that have always made them so restless? We love to travel. We're defined by the road, whatever that means.
Route 66 goes from Chicago to LA, mostly via the Southwest and roughly follows the Santa Fe trail, which was the route that the first train tracks took west. It is dotted by trading posts, motels, gas stations and diners from the early 20th century, many of which were still open 30 years ago. The feel of the Joads from Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath was palpable. So was the Indigenous presence. After all, many of the roads in America were built upon ancient indigenous trading routes; we've been traveling the continent for well over 10,000 years and we still know the best ways of getting from here to there.
Santo Domingo Trading Post
While driving past the trading post I saw a blur of the sign that covered the entire breadth of the building. It was so bad that it was good, and I did a U-turn to see if it was really what I thought it was. I walked back and forth chuckling at its audacity, looking for a place to shoot from. I shot a couple of fast rolls of the trusty old Kodak Tri-X with my Hasselblad. My good friend Patrick Nagatani once gave a lecture about photography and phrased it as "Paying attention." His premise was that one of the hallmarks of both artists and photographers is that of simply paying attention to the world around us and making work about the things we notice along the way. I'd have to say that this Real Indians photograph definitely falls into that category of noticing things, and perhaps noticing them differently than everyone else.
It was too cold to linger, so I was brisk about putting the cameras back in the trunk of my little 1976 Volkswagen Sirocco. It was a jazzed up Rabbit that got 25 MPG in town and 39 MPG on the highway. After a number of years I eventually ran this car into the ground and in the spirit of recycling, it is now a rusted out dog house on cinder blocks in Alaska. Oops, pretend you didn't read that.
After locking up the cameras in the trunk, I browsed around the trading post. It was run by the Santo Domingo people, and it was loaded with glass cases full of turquoise and silver jewelry. It doubled as a general store with little kids running in and out to buy candy and soda pop. It was adobe with wooden floors. One of the walls was covered with old dusty black & white photos of a film production shot there in 1969 of "Flap" that featured Anthony Quinn as an Indian. It was a bit surreal and seemed to epitomize my journey. I liked New Mexico a lot, especially in the winter. The smells were unique; there's still nothing like coming in out of the cold and into a house warmed by Piñon wood which has a kind of spicy fragrance.
Camera Gear
I traveled with two cameras, a spiffy new Minolta XE-7 that was the first auto-exposure camera that was truly accurate, and a Hasselblad system. Minolta led the way with electronics back in the 70's, which is why Leica had Minolta build a lot of their cameras for them, and why their light meters were more accurate than everyone else's for so long. They both had identical Leitz Copal stepless shutters, which is what made their exposure system so fast and accurate.
The Minolta XE-7 is the same camera body as the Leica R3 and the guts are essentially the same with only minor differences. Some Leica aficionados scoff at the early R versions, but what the heck, to each his own, right? I've never been a gear-head purist and always went for whatever made my photography easy while not giving up on image quality. Who cares what the critics say? It was the first high-end 35mm camera that was fast on the draw and made exposures so accurate that even fussy Kodachromes were right on (as in right on, man. I'm hip. It wasn't a bum trip, man. Grody and bitchin to the max. Far out.). Its only drawback was that it was more of a consumer camera and I ran it so hard that it eventually just plain wore out. Oops. Dang, don't you hate it when your camera dies? It wasn't designed for pro use, or someone like me who had more intensive demands than the average user. It was the last non-pro camera I had to get, because in the early 80's Canon came out with an electronic AE shutter with their new F1-N pro body and I've been a Canonite ever since. In my opinion, Canon got the jump on Nikon with electronics and Nikon never really caught up.
My other camera was a Hasselblad 500CM with an 80mm and 250mm lenses with a couple of regular 120 film backs and a Polaroid back. If I was ever forced to only have one camera, this would be it, hands down, no contest. The leaf shutter in the lenses made it an ideal studio camera because it could synchronize with a strobe at all shutter speeds. It was great for on the road because it was more compact than most medium format cameras. Its impeccable optics gave it the extra punch to make itself indispensable.
Just about all of the medium format camera systems from that era were pretty good. I always say that the right camera is the one that works for you. Life is too short to muck around with fussy gear. Just find one that works and get on with it, man. I must say that there is something pretty special about the Carl Zeiss Planar lenses though. I still use them with my little Contax G2 system, but that's another story. When I was a kid I remember seeing the Apollo moon photos, which of course were shot with Hasselblads.
