Exhibition News

I'm happy to announce I'll be in another show this year, ISTORIA: Explorations in Contemporary Narrative. As the name implies the primary purpose of the show is narrative based photography.  I'm very excited and honored to be included after looking at the list of the other participants.

Read more about it at the ISTORIA website: http://istoriautsa.weebly.com/index.html

Meanwhile, I've begun journaling again. I have a lot of ideas rolling around in my head at the moment. Some of them involve ceramics, oddly enough...

Preview, for Jessica & Brad

The other day I did engagement shots for a couple of clients (and good friends). Just thought I would post some in-progress photographs for their previewing pleasure!

News!

I'm happy to announce that I just graduated from Mississippi State University with my B.F.A. in Photography.  This past semester has been a very amazing one!  I placed 3rd in PIEA digitally constructed single image category.  I received an Award of Excellence in the Mississippi Collegiate Art Competition.  I also just had my first real show- Unmasked, a BFA Thesis Revelation.  Thesis was amazing- being crammed into studios with several highly talented artists and being asked to create to my heart's desire is an indescribable experience.

Being out of college I'm now on the cusp of a new journey.  To reflect this new journey I'm relaunching my website.  It is viewable now but not 100% complete.  I am also very happy to announce that I'm starting a side business in order to utilize the skills I've learned.  I will soon be posting more information about my freelance venture on both my website (www.stevenjoshlin.com) and here on my blog.

As such in the future my blog will also feature my freelance work as well as my in-progress fine art pieces.

Joy! And stay tuned...

A bit of excitement

Not very many updates lately as I'm very busy with my BFA Thesis at the moment. I have a couple of studio photographs I will post tomorrow.  I recently found out that I placed 3rd in a PIEA competition- something I've very excited about.  As a result I have a piece that will be exhibited in Las Vegas as well as traveling shows around the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and South Africa. It will also be in Photo Marketing Magazine.

My school newspaper published an article about it that you can read here.

Up to date!

I've been slacking on my blog. Busy busy life, and more importantly, busy busy art making. I recently completed a project which I'd been teasing on here. I've been loosely referring to them as abstract narratives.  Conceptually it is the result of two basic interests.  The first is an idea I read about in a Zen Buddhist book about intuitive understanding with no intellectual basis.  I became curious how this could be translated to juxtaposition of images.  This interest was compounded by my discovery of the graphic novel.  In particular, juxtaposed, sequential images conveying a narrative.  A central element of the comic is the "gutter" - that space in between panels where, as a reader, we fill in expectations.  In Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics he discusses the different types of transitions between panels, one being the non-sequitor.  As one would imagine this involves the juxtaposition of an unexpected panel.  This quickly brings us to the question of whether this can actually exist or not, given that the human mind has a tendency to fill in gaps and force connections.

From these ideas I came up with the concept of abstract narratives.  I chose triptychs as my method of delivery.  Images with loosely related (non-sequitor) imagery are juxtaposed and presented to the viewer as narratives.  I chose to keep the images themselves largely square/rectangular in order to force limits and define parameters which I could experiment within.  I opted to weight images in many instances in order create a sense of hierarchy within the narrative.  Sequence itself is largely inconsequential and my gift to the viewer.

I could talk at length about these but for now I hope everyone is happy I finally posted a few of them. I intend to update my main pages with a small gallery of them soon. Enjoy!

UPDATE: More images up in a gallery on my main page StevenJoshlin.com

A bit slow lately.

I've had a ton of personal things in my life recently (including getting married!) so work has been on the slow side. I have been snapping some here and there when I have the chance. I've also been working on a very big project in secret, but I'm not ready to talk about it much yet. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, some recent shots:

Hope you enjoy them!

I woke up today

Today, I did something I haven't done in a long time: I shot film. 220 color film to be exact, on this bad boy:

It's a Yashica Mat-124G. I bought it on eBay because my advance darkroom class required shooting medium format and I hated the Holgas that came with the lab fee. It's a pretty nifty little camera, it takes great photographs and even has a working light meter. Unfortunately the winding mechanism/film counter is a little... off and I'm not sure how to go about repairing it.

Regardless I love shooting with this camera- way more than with any of my digital cameras, but just a bit more than my F100. I'm mulling using this or one like it to create my thesis work.

I'm looking for a place to get the color film processed, will scan and post once I have that sorted out!

BONUS: Few images from this weeks photo'ing session...

I first visited this location a couple of weeks ago. I went right after having blood taken and was a bit woozy. I felt like I was preforming fine but when I uploaded the images they were pretty... terrible. Lots of blurriness and leaning horizon lines.

Stay tuned for a post on my most recent project...