bangstyle.com featured Brea Souders Brooklyn

Posted on May 2nd, 2012 by Kelsey Herman.

Professional photography has taken a turn in the digital age, becoming more instant and deviating from the lengthy process it once was. The inception of smartphones and social media has usurped the art world, as users replace dark rooms with filters and imagination with a hashtag. But like every mainstream trend, there are counteractive movements that, at their core, reject the upload culture that has made traditional photography seem completely archaic. Perusing photo-sharing site Flickr will welcome an endless scroll of photography’s second coming – people who use film and physical cameras, people who still use a darkroom, and people who combine old and new techniques like this week’s featured artist.

Brea Souders doesn’t spontaneously snap away at a subject hoping for a good shot to share instantly with friends. To Souders, photography is a personal and intimate form. “In many of my images, I use materials that I grew up with or that are tied to memory in some way.” The young New York City-based artist has a style that is difficult to pin down. Her images have that high-art, museum quality that is absent in much of the over-processed art world today. Using strategically placed objects, ambiguous settings, and compositions that exist outside of the realm of time, her personal work can only be placed among the avant-garde – a space left to the aesthetically sublime, the strangely ineffable work that cannot be broken down into critique.

Souders’ photography might be the perfect marriage of old and new – rooted in tradition while exploring the digital frontier. Her projects like “Counterforms,” a series that utilizes mixed-mediums, Impressionist pastels, vintage photographs, and digitally enhanced manipulation techniques, prove that there is a place for both in the vast and growing world of aesthetics. We spoke with Souders to discover more about what it is to be a photographer in the 21st century. Read the interview below.

Brea Souders: Modern Day Halo #3

BANGSTYLE: How did you become a photographer?

Brea Souders: Like many people, I signed up for an introductory photography course in high school, and I loved it right away. Having already been interested in psychology, design, and chemistry, I liked that I could incorporate all of these interests into my photographic work. My mother was a painter, and I was fortunate to be surrounded with art as a child. None of this is to say it came easily, and I think the best way to become anything is to work and work and work some more and to ignore the naysayers.

BANGSTYLE: Your work has appeared in huge publications like Vice, New York Magazine, and Vogue Paris. Do you approach commissioned work differently than your personal work?

Brea Souders: I generally have a more light-hearted approach to commissioned work, as I feel less exposed when I’m working on something that isn’t directly about my personal interests. I like the collaborative aspect of assigned work and brainstorming ideas with others. I recently photographed a look book for a fashion label, and their spring collection featured these beautiful fabrics modeled after whale-shark skin and the bright colors seen in tropical flora and fauna. The set was filled with beautiful plants, luscious dragon fruit, and abstract sea life cut-outs. To prepare for the shoot, I spent a lot of time in the picture collection at the New York Public Library researching plants and sea creatures. Even though not all of the ideas that we explored were used in the end, the assignment really got into my head and fed into my personal creative pursuits as well.

BANGSTYLE: What is your technique when photographing? Do you still use a dark room, or have you welcomed the digital age?

Brea Souders: I have a hands-on approach to image making and enjoy working with materials in a studio setting. I like to watch images develop slowly, as you can when working in a darkroom. Maybe this is why I’m drawn to using paint and collage in my work, building up an image over time rather than snapping it in an instant. The final images are adjusted digitally and are then printed on Photo Rag paper.

BANGSTYLE: Your recent work seems to deviate from your earlier work in terms of color and composition. In earlier work, you used stark colors and stationary objects, and in your new work, there seems to be more movement and emotion. Can you pinpoint a feeling or an emotion that resulted in your latest photos?

Brea Souders: My recent work is more personal in nature, while in “Islands and Streams,” I look outward and depict dream fragments taken from the journals of well-known writers, scientists, philosophers, and others. “Counterforms” was inspired by a desire to connect with my mixed European ancestry and is a study of the self in relation to geography, history, and time. This has been a period in my life where I feel I’m growing more than usual, absorbing more, and expanding my perspective. I believe that the luminous color and sense of motion you mentioned reflects these feelings.

BANGSTYLE: There seems to be themes of life and death in your work, especially in your more recent series. Are these subjects that you attempt to explore in your photographs? What are other themes that you explore?

Brea Souders: My most recent work came after the death of my mother and is also inspired by my studies in hypnosis and the unconscious. In many of my images, I use materials that I grew up with or that are tied to memory in some way. I’m interested in the idea of harsh light illuminating things only to make them more confusing, uncertain, mysterious.

Brea Souders: French Bed and Moon

BANGSTYLE: You photograph everything — from people to shells to landscapes. How do you choose your subjects?

Brea Souders: I work with models and materials such as plants, fabric, paint, plaster casts, and magazine/book cut-outs with the goal to create images that are visually as well as psychologically compelling. Many of the objects that I work with have significant meaning in my life. Sometimes it’s the dialogue between elements in one image that interests me; for instance, in the photograph “French Bed and Moon” I was trying to fix two separate places and moments in time together forever. I like to see what I can pull from any given subject matter and what it pulls out of me.

Brea Souders: Paint Samples

BANGSTYLE: Some of your images seem to channel the surrealists. I’m referring specifically to the “Constellation” series. Where did you draw influence for these photographs?

Brea Souders: In these photographs, I’ve re-purposed works that I created many years ago to make them relevant to my current life and interests. There were so many things that I made long ago, things that I didn’t relate to anymore, just sitting in my flat files. I had to do something about that. The images were made by collaging my previous photographs together, bending images to create sculptural forms, adding flash or new lighting effects, or manipulating them in other ways. Other images in this series present simple objects that represent a specific time and memory from my past such as in “Paint Samples” and “Rubberband”; I view these as re-purposed works as well.

BANGSTYLE: What music do you bring along with you on a shoot?

Brea Souders: I’m always in the mood to listen to Kate Bush, Air, or Philip Glass. If I’m working alone, I will listen to the same 10 songs in my studio all day as I’ve found it helps me concentrate. This tends to bore other people though; so if I’m working with others, I’ll usually ask them to create a play-list that they like.

BANGSTYLE: Tell us about your life in Brooklyn.

Brea Souders: I love Brooklyn! Ice cream at the Brooklyn Farmacy, after eating Senegalese fried chicken for brunch at a-bistro. I’ll admit that outside of the people here, most of my Brooklyn loves are food-related. On days off, I may go to a Russian spa in Brighton Beach or picnic with a friend in a park or on my rooftop. I live in northern Brooklyn, and my studio is located in my apartment building; so I’m able to get a lot of work done, even in the middle of the night when I tend to still be awake. This part of Brooklyn has a lot going on, art-wise, with upstart galleries popping up all the time, and the annual Bushwick Open Studios is always a nice, informal way to see what people are working on.

BANGSTYLE: What’s next for you in 2012? Do you have any exhibitions that you want Bangstyle readers to know about?

Brea Souders: A few current and upcoming shows:

Exhibition in NYC: The Wild & The Innocent, curated by Jordan Sullivan, Clic Gallery, up now through April 17.
Photography Projection in Los Angeles: Pro’jekt LA: New Research, presented by Month of Photography LA, The Standard Hotel, Hollywood, CA, April 17, from 7- 10pm, curated by Stephanie Gonot
Exhibition/Festival in France: Hyères Festival of Fashion and Photography at the Villa Noailles, April 27 – 30, with the exhibition running until May 27.
Art Fair in NYC: Affordable Art Fair, Uprise Art booth, April 18 – 22.

Cristina De Middel: n°07 Yinqaba, 2011

Cristina was kind enough to forward us more images from Afronauts. She is preparing to exhibit the full project in Spain this year and is working now on the design of the book to be published later in 2012 as well.

What follows is an extended selection of the final project. If you’re in New York, be sure to stop by Beckman to see the show!

Cristina De Middel: n°05 Ifulegi, 2011

Cristina De Middel: n°08 Butunga, 2011

Cristina De Middel: n°13 Butuagnbai, 2011

Cristina De Middel: n°40 Kilimanju, 2011

Cristina De Middel: n°34 Gwendalu, 2011

Cristina De Middel: n°38 Wolohka, 2011

Cristina De Middel: n°42 Botonba, 2011

Cristina De Middel: n°27 Lala Kale, 2011

Cristina De Middel: n°28 Angani, 2001

De Middel’s work will be on exhibit through March 25th. For more on Jen Beckman’s Hey Hot Shot competition (and for a peak into the depth of Beckman’s empire in general), click here. To see additional images from Afronauts click here (or keep scrolling down) for our initial entry announcing the 2011 WIP-LTI/Lightside Individual Project Grant.

Donnelly’s piece, Satin Operator, consisting of (13) 44″ x 60″ archival pigment prints is spread throughout the show, mostly in pairs .. the first print hangs high off the floor right next to the massive entrance wall text. In fact, they’re all hung rather high, as you can see if you click through the installation pics I just linked. Better yet, if you go see the exhibition, you can also listen a sound piece created by Donnelly throughout the complimentary audio assist …. something MoMA calls an audio intervention!

Trisha Donnelly: Satin Operator #12, 2007
44″ x 60″ archival pigment print

Print/Out
February 19 – May 14, 2012
Museum of Modern Art / 6th Floor

For more on Print/Out click here to be redirected to the MoMA site.

Portable TV is one of those hip-culture websites that offers all the promise of what the internet and the iPad are supposed to be delivering already. By this I mean: lots of smart, up to the minute content spanning all the cool stuff we used to like to read about in magazines but now expect delivered digitally, instantly … and with imbedded video. I myself watched a vaguely NSFW cartoon video from Adult Swim involving a pink haired vixen in a gas station, but I digress.

The link to Justin’s interview oddly does not include video but then again, he is a photographer. It does include some thoughtful and insightful answers and a bunch of good looking jpegs of his project And Still We Gather with Infinite Momentum, which, we helped produce for The Jen Beckman Gallery back in the spring of 2010.

The following is a re-post from Portable TV, which, by the way, has a logo that looks like this:

And Still We Gather With Infinite Momentum

By Brodie Lancaster / February 10th, 2012 in

It was from visiting tourist spots while living in San Francisco that New York-based photographer Justin James King came to create And Still We Gather With Infinite Momentum, a series that depicts tourists visiting great sights on the west coast, which have been blacked out from the images, so all that is left is their experiences encountering nothingness.

“I’ve always been interested in the way people move through and around a given space,” King—who arrived at photography after using the medium to capture the sculpture work he was creating at the time—told us, “I used to visit heavily touristed spots around San Francisco, watching the way people gathered at certain designated “scenic viewing areas.” I would watch the way they all wanted to stand in the same spots and sometimes there would be subtle competition to get to those perfect viewing angles–not dissimilar to finding the “best” seat in a movie theater.

“I started thinking about how different their experiences must be from each other, both personally and culturally. I tried to imagine what they might be seeing (and thinking), and thought about what I was seeing too as I looked out at the same landscapes. My conclusion was that I didn’t “see” the landscape at all, but what I did see was solely an interpretation and a projection of that interpretation. The possibilities seemed infinite. If the way we see and understand the world is shaped by our individual experience then it is impossible to truly see the landscape without the filter of culture and history.”

When it comes to his influences, King cites Ingmar Bergman’s Persona as one of his earliest connections with film as a relative of photography. The film, he tells us, made him “simultaneously aware of both the limitations and the possibilities in a frame of film. Scenes where the director allowed the image to get completely out of focus and abstract—just light and shadow—are still very memorable.”

Another driving force behind his work is controversial Australian photographer Bill Henson, who selected King’s work for an exhibition called ‘Capture the Fade’ at Sydney’s Paper Mill Gallery in late 2010.

“I was honored when Bill Henson selected my work for the ‘Capture The Fade’ show. He’s someone whose work consciously uses space to allow for possibilities. It’s those possibilities that make some viewers uncomfortable with his work, because whatever they decide to see and project about themselves and the world influences their interpretation. I wouldn’t say he’s a direct influence, but his ability to allow for self-projection and a sense of mystery is something I hope to have in my own work.”

Justin James King: from And Still We Gather with Infinite Momentum

Justin James King: from And Still We Gather with Infinite Momentum

Justin James King: from And Still We Gather with Infinite Momentum

You can see more images and the original post by clicking here.

First, you become a member by paying a fee of $50.00. Now, with that fee, you get to request a piece of art (presumably, one you’d like to eventually own) be delivered and installed in your home. And for as long you decide to keep it there and continue to pay the $50.00 per month fee, the accumulated total spent all goes towards its initial sale price. So it’s like getting lay-away that you get to take home anyway … or something like that. Crazy, right?

I’m sure there’s probably more to it … but for that, I give you the link:

https://www.upriseart.com/

February 9, 2012

Brea Souders: Untitled 7, 2010

A Q&A with Uprise artist Brea Souders:

Where are you from and where do you currently reside?
I grew up in Frederick, Maryland, lived in Baltimore for some time, and now live in New York City.

You recently won the 2011 Women in Photography LTI-Lightside Grant; what project will that grant support?
I’m working with various objects in my parents’ home that I grew up with and that have significant meaning in my life – A terrarium full of African violets, giant fossil and shell collections, plaster casts, art and physics books, microscopic slides, and family pictures. The project incorporates collage elements and paint also.

Which of your works include you in the image?
Many of my works include bits and pieces of me – such as Sunburn in Naples, Shell, Frame, Falling Seeds, Under My Thumb and Seine With Fingers.

Do you consider these works self-portraits?
I don’t consider them portraits so much as one element within a larger scene.

Your photographs are very beautifully composed, can you tell us a little about your process?
I am interested in the idea of one thing activating another. There is often a fragility and sense of time passing in my images – seeds are blowing, a snail slithers through a constructed environment, a sunburn eventually fades, picked flowers begin to dry under the hot sun, etc. Or sometimes my own fingers, body or shadow moves into the picture plane, temporarily, like a flutter (as in Seine With Fingers, Under My Thumb and Shell). In French Bed and Moon I was trying to fix two separate moments in time together forever. Butter Plate and Moth was created by coating a piece of glass with butter and placing it in my studio to see what it would attract (there were all sorts of moths, spiders, gnats, and dragonflies in my studio in France). At its heart, my work is based in exploration and discovery. I make sure to allow plenty of time for experimentation and accept that there will be failure along the pathway to success.

What was your inspiration behind the work Untitled 7?
It was inspired by a tender and surprising dream of the Marquis de Sade. The woman in the photograph represents his mother.

Who are some of your favorite artists?
Looking over at my bookshelf, I see monographs by Youssef Nabil, Francesca Woodman, Philip Guston, Jan Saudek, Paul Outerbridge and Yves Klein. Just a few artists that I admire. I’m also inspired by many Medieval paintings and carvings.

You can access the the original post by clicking here

ISE Cultural Foundation is showing recent works by Jan Staller. The exhibition titled Heavy Duty Landscapes showcases sixteen large format c prints spanning the past seven years. Staller describes his work as follows:

For more than 30 years I have been making surprisingly interesting photographs of subject matter thought by most to have little interest. Included in the ISE exhibit are sixteen large-scale color photographs, virtually all made at local construction sites and scrap yards.
 
Like many photographers, I do my work on road trips. Where most photographers’ trips are long journeys in search of the unusual, my road trips are more local- hours and miles spent canvassing the same general territory year after year in search of the familiar. From the highways and service roads within a 20 mile radius of Manhattan I have found imagery in ordinary and ignored sites. With my assistant at the wheel of a late model police car laden with camera equipment, I would scan the landscape for potential subjects. Should a subject be found, we stop the car, put up highway cones and set up the camera and tripod. As I often photograph without authorization, I try to make the work look like official business. As unprepossessing as these subjects may sound, the resulting  photographs are transformative.

Construction Barricade in Snow, New York, 2010
30 x 60 digital c-print

LTI/Lightside worked with Jan to produce a number of conventional and digital c-prints for this exhibition

Heavy Duty Landscapes opens Thursday, January 12th.

ISE Cultural Foundation, January 12 – March 2

555 Broadway, NY, NY

Justine Kurland meet David Benjamin Sherry meet Sze Tsung Leong meet Barbara Probst ….