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APG Gallery Exhibits 2013
The Post-Apocalyptic
Photo Challenge
Hypothetically, you wake up to a total failure of the electricity grid and the loss of power to your home, neighborhood, city, state, beyond.... Your digital files are gone. Would you be compelled to express yourself photographically? Would you look to the past at what you have created, what you wish you created? Would you look at what is left and work with it to create new art? For the sake of this challenge, allow a self-imposed deadline to contemplate significant images, and imagine if you never experienced the images off of your monitor or maybe only a few prints remain. How would this affect you? Would it be the end of your photographic creativity or just a new starting point? Would your new work address your loss?
The judges will be looking for authentic, original responses to the Post-Apocalyptic Photo Challenge. Deadline for submissions is May, 18, 2013.
Examples for Inspiration:
Not every aspect of these pieces were made without electricity.
Explore them to spark ideas of your own. Installations for Post-Apocalyptic
are allowed to use battery operated light sources.
Links below are examples for interesting installations and presentations that incorporate optics and visual phenomena.
- Matt Haffner – Used optics to transform a diorama in installation piece, “3 Minute Cinema”
- Projector Screens
- Stereo Viewers
Mining the remains of civilization past:
New uses for light sensitive materials
- Alison Rositer – Collects outdated silver gelatin papers like Kodak Azo and pours developer onto the surface in the darkroom. The unique qualities of each paper create abstract and unpredictable forms.
- Aspen Mays – Loaded a sheet of color paper into a large format camera filled with fireflies
- Christopher Colville – Colville ignites gunpowder on the surface of silver gelatin prints.
Traditional Alternative Processes, Photograms – Can they be done without electricity?
- Galina Kurlat – No electricity needed for this work. Kurlat uses Poloroid Positve/Negative black and white film, manipulating it during development for evocative portraits.
- S Gayle Stevens – Stevens works with wet plate collodian to create tintypes and ambrotypes. Her images are made without optics – instead using pinhole Holgas and photograms.
- Julie Anand and Damon Sauer - “Shadow” - Collaborative artists Anand and Sauer took photography to it’s most basic, imaging through light and shadow (the silhouette), and traced images of their overlapping figures to make hand-cut paper shadows.
- Susan Derges – For the River Taw series Derges worked at night, placing photographic paper on the river bed and allowing the images to be exposed through ambient light, aided by the use of a flash gun.
Re-purpose/re-use existing prints. Existing prints must be raw material for a new piece
- “Shredded Works” – Julie Anand and Damon Sauer explore the opportunities of simultaneous perspectives. Fine prints are shredded and reconfigured as strands of information.
- Matthew Brandt – For his series, “Lakes and Resevoirs”, Brandt soaked C prints in water, creating color shifts and lifted emulsion.
Please see these links as references for materials:
- Flipbookkit – artists Mark Rosen and Wendy Marvel built this system with the intention of creating a reliable, beautiful and configurable way to build and display motion art.
- Photographer’s Formulary – offers bulk chemicals (over 200 in stock) in any quantity, plus "classic" formulas and printing processes, and kits for the most up-to-date film emulsions for holography and T-grain.
- Magic Lanterns – Consider incorporating a magic lantern
into an installation – you can use battery-operated lighting for installations.
Kit available from Grand Illusion and other vendors - Alternative Photography – “a site full of information on anything to do with Alternative photography and processes”
A Fresh Look at Photographic Ideas and Materials
An exhibition of unique photo-based work jurored by
Stuart Horodner, artistic director of Atlanta Contemporary
Art Center and Beth Lilly, artist and APG Board Member.
For this year’s Concepts Show, APG is issuing a special challenge to photographers. In the past decade, digital technologies opened up new opportunities, while at the same time our dependence on it has become extensive. If disaster should strike and the power grid fail, how could you continue your work as a photographer? APG wants to see what you would do as an artist if you no longer had access to your digital files and could no longer plug into the grid.
We propose to start a dialogue by posing questions. Is our digital dependency causing us to overlook the image-making potential of new materials and knowledge that hasn’t yet been used in fine art photography? On the flip side, are there creative new ways to use vintage photographic methods? Is it even possible today to utilize chemical processes without electricity?
We’d like to see work that experiments with installations and presentations that incorporate optics and visual phenomena. Consider mining the remains of civilizations past by finding new uses for light sensitive materials. Other options might include using existing prints as raw material for a new piece.
Beth Lilly Answers Some Frequently Asked Questions:
Can my camera have a battery?
Yes, we are just supposing the collapse of the power grid. If such a catastrophe did happen, the batteries you had on hand would
still be there and still work.
What if my existing prints were made with electricity?
You can use them. Loss of the power grid doesn't affect prints that you have already made. In fact, this is incentive to go ahead and make prints of your best digital captures, so if something were to happen,
at least you'd have those. I myself have stacks of work prints and I know they would be a starting point to create new work.
Is flash photography OK?
Sure, if they use regular batteries (as opposed to strobes using power packs). As I said earlier, "If such a catastrophe did happen, the batteries you had on hand would still be there and still work." I have to say, if the power grid did collapse, people would be hoarding batteries. They would be more valuable than gold.
See the PAPC Info Sheet for more details!
See this Examples for Inspiration sheet for ideas!
Entry deadline: May 18, 2013 (Delivery June 21)
Opening Reception: June 28, 2013
Show Dates: June 28 - August 24, 2013
Entry fee $35.00 members $25 student members
One year membership $35/$25 students
ATLANTA PHOTOGRAPHY GROUP AND GALLERY
The Atlanta Photography Group (APG) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization which promotes the photographic arts through education, exhibitions, programming and support groups. more info. Atlanta Photography Group • Tula Art Center • 75 Bennett Street, NW • Space B-1 • Atlanta, GA 30309 • 404-605-0605 apg_photo@hotmail.com