New Jersey Photographic Educational Conference Being Held April 4-6, 2008

I’m really looking forward to attending the New Jersey Photographic Educational Conference Friday to Sunday, April 4-6, 2008. It’s being held at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey in Summit, NJ, and it includes workshops, lectures, panel discussions, portfolio reviews, a faculty gallery exhibition, and an exhibitor fair.

The roster of about 20 workshops and discussions will be conducted by photographers who specialize in a wide range of disciplines, from darkroom printing to Photoshop. They include: Ron Brown, George Bujarski, Patrick Connor, Diana Edkins, Chip Forelli, Ted Harris, Dot Kuehn, Eric Kunsman, Donald Lokuta, Nancy Ori, Joan Pamboukes, Stephen Perloff, Don Polzo, Ernestine Ruben, George Schaub, Mitchell Seidel, Jay Seldin, Joel Smith, Roy Thomas, and George Tice.

The following events are free and open to the public:
• Friday night opening reception photography exhibit at 9pm
• Sunday exhibitor fair: 10am-6pm
• Sunday darkroom demos, tour and presentations
• Sunday mini workshops by vendors

The keynote discussion on Friday evening, panel discussion on Saturday evening, portfolio reviews, and workshops are very reasonably priced in my opinion (just $45 for any 2, and more can be purchased in blocks of two for $45). The conference organizers highly recommend registering online, however on-site registration will also be available. A good overview of the full schedule can be found on this page, and a full list of workshops, discussions and portfolio review sessions can be found here.

According to the event organizers, to determine if a class or portfolio review is full when registering, sessions that are full will not be listed in the box where you choose your sessions near the bottom of this page. To choose multiple sessions, just Cmd click on Mac (Ctrl click on Windows) and select the sessions you’d like to attend, then click continue to advance to the payment page.

One of the events that I am particularly looking forward to attending (shown above) is the Panel Discussion on Saturday evening from 7-9PM entitled: “The Image as Information: Where Does That Lead Us?” moderated by George Schaub, Editor of Shutterbug Magazine. The panelists include:

• Ted Harris, View Camera Magazine, Contributing Editor
• Joel M. Smith, Princeton University Art Museum, Curator of Photography
• Donald Lokuta, Author & Photography Professor, Kean University
• Diana Edkins, Aperture Foundation, Director of Exhibitions & Limited-Edition Photographs

The event is sponsored in part by Epson and The New Jersey Photography Forum.

For more information or to register, visit www.njphotoconference.com.

The Armory Show 2008-New York City: March 27-30

My eyes and feet had a workout on Wed. 3/26 at Pier 94 in New York City during the preview of The Armory Show, the International Fair of New Art’s tenth edition. The overall feeling I had when walking through aisle after aisle of artwork was very similar to the feeling I get when strolling from room to room at MoMA, New York. It’s an eclectic mix of many visual art forms, from oil paintings to psychedelic LED light sculptures. And photography is, in my opinion, the star of the show. I especially like how photography blends seamlessly into the landscape of the show. It’s also interesting to me that many of the artists being exhibited at the show work in a variety of mediums (more to come on this in future posts over the next few days).

Entrance to The Armory Show. Photo © Andrew Darlow

The Armory Show was started by four New York art dealers in 1994 as The Gramercy International Contemporary Art Fair and it takes its name from “the rich history of the 1913 Armory Show,” which introduced European Modernism to America. This from the 2008 press package sums up The Armory Show quite well: “Featuring new art by over 2,000 living artists from 160 of the world’s leading galleries and nonprofit organizations, The Armory Show 2008 provides an excellent opportunity to see the most current developments in the word of contemporary art.”

The Armory Show has a program to raise money for two organizations, The Pat Hearn and Colin de Land Cancer Foundation (www.phcdl.org) and the Pat Hearn and Colin de Land Acquisition Fund at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. This is the seventh year that The Armory Show has commissioned an artist to define the image of the fair, and this is the first time that two artists (New York artist/painter Mary Heilmann and Baltimore artist/filmmaker John Waters) have been asked to work together on this task. For more information about the Artist Commission you can download this PDF, and for more about the benefit prints, visit this page.

John Waters speaking at The Armory Show Press Conference on 3/26. Photo © Andrew Darlow

With galleries from 21 countries showing the work of artists from across the globe, this is truly an international art event. One of many high points of the show was seeing the work of many of the photographers of Magnum Photos represented in a large booth filled with stunning imagery. Like most of the work shown at the event, most of the Magnum prints on display are available for purchase.

Magnum Photos Booth at The Armory Show. Photo © Andrew Darlow

I highly recommend anyone who enjoys contemporary art to visit The Armory Show for a few hours (or days if you want to see everything). Photographs from the last seven years of the show can be found on this page, and for more information, including ticket information and show hours, visit The Armory Show site at www.thearmoryshow.com.

Very Cool Free Word Counter and More at ma.tt

I am a huge fan of WordPress. This site, as well as my book’s companion site, inkjettips.com, uses WordPress as the content management system. The founder of the software, Matt Mullenweg has a website called ma.tt, which is filled with a lot of great photos taken by Matt (like this cool jellyfish shot) as well as some nice scripts and useful web apps like this free word counter. I’ve been using Microsoft Word (Under Tools>Word Count) for word counting text for years, but this seems to work as well or better. You can find more tools on this page, like a random number generator, which is great for contests, or for making important decisions.