News
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A.E. Benenson
Flatness and The War
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="776"] the underside of one of John F. Ohmer's large outdoor paintings, click for link[/caption] Ah Jean Dubuffet when you think of him doing his military service in the Eiffel Tower as a meteorologist in 1922 you know how wonderful the 20th Century can be... -- Frank O'Hara, Naptha, 1959 Before Koons
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A.E. Benenson
The Spotter’s Parable
I once read that the famous American photographer Edward Weston was employed by the government as a spotter during World War II. At home atop the Carmel Highlands, where many of his most well known photographs were taken, Weston and his wife sat with binoculars scanning the horizon for Japanese submarines. It's a story I've
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A.E. Benenson
Conspiracy Theories and Experimental Form
"Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it." -D.H Lawrence I've made the argument that aesthetic technologies and techniques are ultimately derived from socio-political behavior and that artists should look to these emergent habits to discover new forms
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A.E. Benenson
What is That Camera Doing There?
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600"] NY Times rendering, 2011, original caption "FUTURE IS HERE Through a 3-D avatar, you could always appear awake."[/caption] Two weeks ago, Kodak, the company that drove film photography for 131-years, filed for chapter 11 in order to restructure as a digital printing specialist. This week the Columbia Journalism school received
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A.E. Benenson
Augmented Reality
Even though I'm not an artist, I conceive of my projects like artworks: the content needs to reflect intelligently on its form, not pretend it doesn't exist. From the beginning of my work here, I decided that the point was not just to write about topics relevant to a Camera Club on a blog but
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A.E. Benenson
Post Media Res: What the history of photography can teach us about digital piracy
[caption id="attachment_1342" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Google Image search for Sherrie Levine's "After Walker Evans""][/caption] Today the Internet has joined together to give us all a crash course in participatory politics. With two belligerent "anti-piracy" bills, SOPA and PIPA, waiting in the wings of Congress, a number of websites have turned their home pages into soapboxes
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A.E. Benenson
What Comes First
Silver nitrates, the Brownie, Kodachrome film, the Polaroid, digital CCDs– the history of photography finds itself everywhere reduced to technological determinism: here comes some new technology, what can we make of it? If we include social, political, and philosophical developments in the history of the medium, they are mentioned as effects rather than causes. The
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harlan erskine
The Camera Club’s Annual Dinners
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="750"] Alfred Stieglitz, The Glow of Night — New York, Photogravure: Multiple Color, 1897. Photographed in 1897 Manhattan, this nighttime view shows the Savoy Hotel with a queue of carriages along a rain-slicked Fifth Ave. The nighttime “glow” effect in this plate is achieved in the printing process.[/caption] This time of year, there are many holiday events. Every era
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harlan erskine
Art Basel Miami Beach 2011 Recap
[caption id="attachment_714" align="alignnone" width="600"] Art Basel Miami Beach 2011, Art Positions park-like-lounge area[/caption] Over the past ten years, I have attended Art Basel in Miami. Each year is a little different with an evolving program of events. The city of Miami has grown up along with this fair. There are so many events to attend