Featured Artist...Stephen Tomasko

Images speak differently to each of us. Sometimes they take on other meanings not intended by their creators. This week's featured artist, Stephen Tomasko puts it best...
"For me, making photographs, especially involving people or the things that people make, is about story telling. As with any type of story, if engaged, people will bring their own history and sensibilities to round out a narrative. My goal then is to make an image beautiful and compelling enough to make the viewer want to linger, and in some way then make it their own. "
I have passed this scene many times in many cities,someone's portrait being drawn or painted.The subject sitting in anticipation, trying not to make eye contact with the viewers whose faces might reveal the results. Here she is either complacent or on edge pressing on her elbow, her hands wrenched hoping for the person she wishes to be appear on paper. I have stood in this same spot as part of this audience. Not wanting to make eye contact I too have felt the same apprehension as she does in this image making it hard to witness the end. It's a uncomfortable barrier that I can however, safely cross here via this photograph thanks to the recognition of the moment Tomasko captures. It works for me, and in this comfort zone, as Tomasko says, makes me linger. 

"Boys and Girls" is about the roles that we play in our culture. It is also about the excitement and terror of relating to one another. These images were all found in the American landscape, processed minimally, and printed full-frame. Aside from being true, they are also better than any I could have concocted in my own head. Of course, they are interesting as images because of the composition and the framing, and the recognition of and reaction to the light. These things I can do. It’s for the continued supply of American weirdness and wonder that I’m reliant, always surprised and forever grateful.



Stephen Tomasko makes photographs of the natural and the man-made. He has created bodies of work with subjects as diverse as the steel and automotive industries, the life and landscape of the American city streets, and pristine blooming gardens. Tying the work together is a vision of carefully seen straight photography, presented full-frame, with minimal processing. 

For more his work go here

Featured Artist...Denis Olivier

  

Bordeaux is mostly known for its great wine. It's also known for great photography. For wine suggestions, contact me offline..for photography look towards Denis Olivier, our new "Featured Artist."

Originally born in Royan,France where he was introduced to photography through his parents, he started by drawing later painting taking part in some exhibitions. By seventeen, he began to photograph turning his attention to it as a more interesting area of study after finnishing three years of Biochemistry. Attending the Poitiers School of Fine Arts he meets Alan Fleig who introduced him to photography as an art form.

"...felt a need to practice photography, and with a friend we spent a lot of time learning how to develop films and photographs. We did sessions with models, scenery, and discovered France."

He continued on and trained with Phillipe Salaun, the assistant to Robert Doisneau   

"I did some jobs for organizations, shows and commissioned works. I then started in December 1995 working with computer graphics and made use of the Internet.

I worked in artistic direction for several years, then digital cameras came along and I found a way to work quickly and experiment without using too many resources such as film, chemicals, photo sensitive paper and of course the wonderful resource of water."  

His work appears as classic Zone system for those of us who remember that. Squares, my favorite, seem to dominate his frame and help to focus on, this is his view exactly as he saw it.  

Apart  from his classic approach, he also has a series of manipulated images making creative compositions by blending them together, some whimsical, some haunting in his Dreamspace Reloaded series. 

He has been well exhibited in France, appearing in magazines and collections. 

More more of his work can be seen here