Photovillian Thoughts and Some ‘Cruel and Unusual’ Installation Shots

This is a super quick post and a bit of an image dump (I’ve been asked for installation shots.)

We are half way through Photoville and my thoughts are not coalesced yet. Of the event so far, highlights have been Josh Lehrer’s Becoming Visible: portraits of homeless, transgendered teens; Sim Chi Yin’s Rat Tribe for which he transformed the container to mimic a basement Beijing dwelling; and Russell Frederick’s Dying Breed: Photos of Bedford Stuyvesant.

More to find and more to percolate.

As I reported last week, we got off to a slow start. Customs and FedEx conspired to give us all anxiety-disorders by only releasing the artwork at 8am Friday morning. Huge playdits to organisers Sam and Laura for hounding FedEx while I sailed through Wednesday and Thursday with a C’est la vie attitude. Customs never said what the problem was but we presume it was Jane Lindsay’s bottle caps filled with resin.

We had 6 hours for install and it ended up taking 8; I was still sweating about and showing off my chest-wig as the public moseyed through that first (Friday) evening.

Further thanks have to go to Wally, Trevor and Lee for hanging the work of the 11 named photographers across one and a half containers – Alyse Emdur, Amy Elkins, Araminta de Clermont, Brenda Ann Kenneally, Christiane Feser, Jane Lindsay, Natalie Mohadjer, Deborah Luster, Lizzie Sadin, Yana Payusova and Lori Waselchuk.

I took care of the other half a container; the PPOTR wall. I scrawled quotes and stats freely on the corrugated surface. Whenever I had downtime last weekend, I’d return to the container and scribble some more.

The PPOTR wall contains images by 17 photographers – Jenn Ackerman, Jeff Barnett-Winsby, Steve Davis, Lloyd Degrane, Harvey Finkle, Tim Gruber, Scott Houston, Sean Kernan, Jon Lowenstein, Ara Oshagan, Joseph Rodriguez, Richard Ross, Adam Shemper, Marilyn Suriani, Stephen Tourlentes, and Sye Williams.

I’d like to Thank Deborah Luster, Yana Payusova and Lori Waslechuk for joining me for Saturday’s panel discussion. They were happy to share stories from their experiences shooting in Russian and Louisianan prisons and they parried my challenge as regards the utility of this type of photography with varied and solid positions.

Left to right: Deborah Luster, Yana Payusova, Lori Waslechuk, me. Credit: Graham MacIndoe

Did I mention the massive thunderstorms on Friday afternoon with forks of light cracking down on the skyscrapers of Manhattan? It was great. Then there was the party that was on, wasn’t on, on again. I went for felafel, came back, had a cheeky wine. Hung out with Bryan Formhals and Michael Shaw.

On Saturday evening, Susan Meiselas raised a glass to the Magnum Emergency Fund fellows. Wyatt Gallery was there, as were Amy, Yukiko, Lauren from the Open Society Institute’s Documentary Photography Project. I saw Peter Van Agtmael later and I’m banking on him for better installation shots. Also had the opportunity to finally talk to Chandra McCormick. I had tried to speak with Chandra during PPOTR. She and her partner Keith Calhoun photographed in Angola Prison before it became common to do so.

Photoville is a relaxed place to bump into people you want to bump into. The general vibe is that it is accessible, fun, pedestrian and at the same time maintains a high standard of work. Photoville is off to a good, solid, smile-making start.

I suppose the only other news is that I delayed my return flight so I remain here in NYC. The arrangements I made for deinstall fell through, so I’ve decided to take care of it myself.

In the meantime, I’m sprinting (or biking) around the city hobnobbing with people, making interviews and panicking about how journo-blogger disclosures should be written in an age of small and borderline incestuous photo-maker-media-networks.

I’ll add to that worry of over-familiarity more at the PDN The Curator Remix party this evening.

Tomorrow, very much looking forward to Lorie Novak’s panel discussion “Community Collaborations” as I’m wrestling with ideas and best practices for potential photography workshops in prison. I also plan to be at the Daylight Photographs Not Taken panel discussion.

Enjoy the pics.