Glasshouse Images/Stone Thrower

Holiday Marketing and Bored Employees

Every year, a new crop of holiday marketing comes around. You know the kind… “insert your face here” dancing elves are a personal favorite of mine. The message? Who cares right? Do we realize we’re being advertised at? Food for though: Is the success of holiday marketing in direct correlation to the boredom of coworkers and employees?

Here are a new one to keep you entertained. As an experiment, see if you actually care about the advertisement.

Sit on Santa’s Lap

What do you think? Does this kind of advertising work? Do you know of something similar that actually does bring in new clients? Let me know!

Interactive Video Editing

Interactive Video Object Manipulation from Dan Goldman on Vimeo.

Cry For Me.

I always think it’s valuable to see a project from start to finish. Jesse Dittmar, a young New York photographer, just began a project where he asks people to cry via a craigslist ad. The results of the open call have been alarming. People are volunteering to openly cry for the camera. While I have yet to process what this says about the subjects or about the condition of being in front of a camera, I think the project and its response is really interesting. I also love the opportunity to watch a photographer’s project evolve.

Here are a few of his first images for the series and Jesse’s own words below.

“I solicited people who needed to cry, and asked if I could photograph them as they did so. The experience was unique and difficult. Most of these people volunteered through an ad I put up on craigslist. They are real people, and the tears are real. It was interesting to see how each of them was able to make themselves cry. Some told me the reasons, others just listened to music, and a few didn’t need any accompaniment. This is an ongoing project, so if you’d like to participate please contact me.” -JD

Click here to keep up with updates to the project.

For more information on this project, contact Jesse directly through his website.

Indre Serpytyte, State of Silence

Indre Serptytye’s photograph in her series “State of Silence” provide both a gorgeous photographic archive of her father and commentary on the political realities of his sudden death. I find these images to be a glimpse into the way photographers deal with their lives, and how they often rely on their art to help sort through their reality.

When her father, Albinas Serpytis, died in October of 2001, Indre Serpytye never believed in the government’s explanation of the incident. While the official record explained the Lithuanian Head of Government Security’s death as a “car accident,” Indre is convinced it was “premeditated and brutal.”

Indre began this project as a way to deal with that has happened to her father. The text was not originally intended to be a part of the final project but then became quickly integral to its message. Here are Indre’s text and images. An interview and commentary on the project can be found at 1000 Words Photography.

“Lithuanian papers wrote that it was a ‘Painful misfortune (a catastrophe),’

When the Head of Government Security died.

Albinas Serpytis died in the early hours in the early hours of the 13th of October 2001, in a ‘car accident.’ No one seemed to know the details, circumstances, or provide straightforward answers. His death was premeditated and brutal.

For me this was sufficient proof, he had been eliminated.

All that remains is silence, unknown circumstances. Hidden motivations. A chilling absence.

This was my father. The subject of indefatigable investigations.”

– Indre Serptytye

Source: 1000 Words Photography.

keeping up with all the magazine closings?

If you’re like me and are having a hard time wrapping your head around how many magazines are being closed lately, why not add some humor into your daily dose of disappointment? A blog called Magazine Death Pool provides just such entertainment and also does just that and also does a good job of predicting the crashes before they are declared.

Click here.

RIP New York Times’ quarterly Play magazine.

Even after being nominated for a National Magazine Award, the magazine just couldn’t hold on.

Happy Thanksgiving from Glasshouse!

As my gift to you, here is a selection of Thanksgiving cartoons. Enjoy the Holiday!

Link.

Gamers in a trance

More and more I’m becoming interested in the effect of games on kids and, in turn, adults. I’m not convinced these games are as bad for people as they are made out to be. Whichever side of the spectrum your opinion falls, here is an amazing project called My Game Face by photographer British Robbie Cooper for the New York Times Magazine.

Cooper used a Red camera, which is a high resolution video camera, and took film stills from the resulting footage. The kids are actually looking at a reflection of the game on glass in front of the camera.

From New York Times Magazine:

“Cooper, who grew up in Britain and Kenya and played a lot of video games as a child, says he tries to capture ‘people interacting with worlds that aren’t real.’ In his last major project, which was published in the magazine in 2007, he photographed participants in Internet-based games with their virtual-world avatars. Cooper is particularly struck by the intensity of people’s experiences while interacting with digital realms … Cooper says, “It’s fascinating that a world that’s purely visual can have a physical effect.”

Link.

What do you think?

Is photography immune to the economic crisis?

An interesting article found its way into my inbox this morning. Well…maybe it is less interesting and more optimistic. Either way, it is making my rainy morning just a little brighter.

Glasshouse Images / Image ID: 7102100041

Article from Art Price:

Has photography proven crisis-proof? [Nov 08]

Confronted with the crisis, the results achieved on the sale of the last photographs in the Jammes collection on 15 November at Christie’s were more measured than alarming. Prices on old negatives are proving resilient, with modern and contemporary photography being harder hit. Whatever the period or medium, the photography market enjoyed the strongest growth in the last decade. Between the last speculative bubble in the art market in 1990 and last summer, the photography price index posted an increase of +131%, compared with +55% for sculpture, the second most popular medium over the same period.

The dispersal of the Jammes collection belonging to Marie-Thérèse and André Jammes effectively put 20th century photography in the spotlight. This dispersal which began in 1999 at Sotheby’s, was to continue in 2002 with two more sales, before concluding in 2008 at the same auction house. In 1999, a number of spectacular sales generated a real shock wave and a +191% rise in prices in two years. The sale of Grande vague, Sète Gustave LE GRAY (1820-1884) is an abiding memory: the print achieved ten times its estimate, the hammer coming down at GBP 460,000, a peak it has never again reached. Since then, the record for an albumin print of this same Grande Vague has been GBP 85,000.

During the last phase of the Jammes sale on 15 November, Sotheby’s catalogue cover boasted a very rare Baron Jean-Baptiste GROS daguerreotype, on which the hammer came down at EUR 180,000. A price level certainly in line with expectation in that it did not surpass its estimate, but which nonetheless beat its previous record by some EUR 90,000. Supported by the quality of the work and a historic provenance, the results were pretty positive with only 27.4% remaining unsold, a rather reassuring level in view of the 42% of prints bought in at other photography sales, irrespective of period, in October and November 2008 (rate recorded on 12 November).

The October sales have seen modern and contemporary rather than historic photography achieve more than their due, with five-figure sale results far more frequent for 20th century photographs. Some stars of the contemporary scene have even propelled photography to million-ticket highs. We might mention the USD 3 million achieved by the Richard PRINCE Cowboy at Sotheby’s NY in November 2007.

At the New York sales dedicated to photography, the most sought-after names suffered the greatest setbacks. More than half the works which had been expected to achieve USD 100,000 remained unsold. At Christie’s, for example, 53% of the negatives being auctioned at Rockfeller Plaza on 14 October remained on their books…

Link.

November 2008 Newsletter

For those of you not currently on our mailing list, here is our monthly newsletter from our assignment division. If you’d like to receive our news once a month, please email info@glasshouseassignment.com.

Catch up on past months with the “Assignment Newsletters” page to the right.

November 2008 | FALL BLOG ROUND-UPWe hope that everyone is enjoying autumn. It can get a little cold here and there, and sometimes it just plain feels like winter, but the leaves are on the ground (depending on where you are) and the colors are beautiful. While we point you to some of our favorite photography blogs, we’ll pepper in some of Derrick Gómez‘s recent personal work–a few beautiful reflections on the fall season.

RESOURCES FOR CREATIVESWhile most of you probably clued in to Rob Haggart’s A Photo Editor, here are a few photography related blogs you might not know about:

Rachel Hulin’s A Photography Blog | Rachel, who gained a strong following writing for Photoshelter’s Shoot!, decided she would maintain her stream of consciousness blogging with this new project. In a recent post, Rachel speaks with the photographer of the cover of this month’s New York Magazine.

Fred Ritchin’s After Photography | While he maintains his own cult following as a veteran of print media, Ritchin’s words have entered a new sphere with his blog, which serves as a continuation of his recent publication of the same name. While still in it’s infancy, After Photography is sure to become a strong source for insight into the changing industry.

In a recent post, Fred spouts one of the best quotes we’ve heard in a long time: “It can be like the magician: while we are all watching one hand, it is often the other hand that is doing the most important work. With all the billions of digital photographs we are making with our cameras and cellphones, we too are becoming the subject, but in ways that we might never have imagined. It’s not about our smiles after all.”

Adverblog reports on the latest in interactive advertising, a field most of us could benefit from learning more about. Many posts revolve around sports advertising–writer Martina Zavagno is an interactive marketer for a sports brand.

Recently, she posted about a project called Love at First Site which is a 17 minute interactive advertisement for a Greek chocolate bar company called Lacta. The film is about two lovers who meet and are eventually drawn apart. The audience can bring them back together by making the right choices. The website is part of a campaign targeting young adults. Interestingly enough, there is already a facebook group for fans of the love story.

Now that we’ve written the word “blog” a dozen times, it’s back to reality. To view more work by Derrick Gómez or any of our photographers, please visit www.glasshouseassignment.com.You can also see more of Derrick’s work on his own [gasp, we have to write it again] blog: derrickgomez.blogspot.com.

For portfolio requests and other inquiries, please contact our assignment representative

Jacqueline Bovaird: jacqueline@glasshouseassignment.com | 212 462 4538

* STONE THROWER: The Glasshouse Blog | always updated with fresh photography and news from all over the web *

Glasshouse Images
161 W15th Street, #1C
New York, NY 10011

212 462 4538
info@glasshouseimages.com
www.glasshouseimages.com

Resource Magazine…

A great source for NYC photographers. Founded by Alexandra Niki and Aurelie Jezequei, co-Editor in Chief. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Alex when she was a stylist. One of best. I’m sure with her creative talents the magazine will have much success. … swj

“Just in case you were wondering who’s behind this endeavor of madness, let us introduce ourselves. We are your fellow photo productionists, Alex and Aurélie. We entered the scene years ago as a stylist and producer and since then have experienced all angles of the industry. Some were good, some bad, but at the end of the day, one thing we’ve realized is that we’re all in this together. Photo production is more than just a job or an artist’s deception– it is a lifestyle, a culture, and a world of people like you and me. Enjoy!”
-Alex and Aurélie

picture-34

Resource Magazine

. .. … It’s Late Fall.

We are weeks away from December 21st , the first day of winter. There’s a chill in the air and I just can’t warm up! Here are some images from our stock library which should get you in the mood.

Gloved Hand / Plainpicture

Image 1317900403

Deck Chairs in Snow / Millennium Images

Image 1049900004

Hand Print on Frosted Window / Johner

Image 1279800136

Iceberg Floating in the Water / Nordic Photos

Image 1231000161

www.glasshouseimages.com

Love Derrick Gomez’s sports photography?

Well then I’ve made a special portfolio just for you!

To view a custom portfolio of Derrick’s sports photography, click here.

Like what you see?

—

Jacqueline Bovaird

212-462-4538

jacqueline@glasshouseassignment.com

Our Agency Site. Derrick’s Site.

A new take on cowboys…

Walter Lockwood’s photography certainly doesn’t lack a sense of satire. In a new project, Lockwood parodies the cultural staple of a “Spaghetti Western” by inserting Asian characters into quintessential American roles. His project Sukiyaki Western, is meant to explore the changing quality of media and stereotypes.

“By casting Asian actors as “Cowboys/Gunslingers” and using a palette as open and malleable as the western film genre, I am participating in and illustrating the dissolving of cultural values and reference points.”

– Walter Lockwood in Fabrik Magazine

These images hold my attention not only because of the cultural commentary but because of they are clean, crisp, and technically perfect. What do you think? Leave me a comment!

Thank you Walter and Fabrik Magazine!

A Break from the City

Derrick Gomez spent a day in the country recently and was nice enough to share his photos with us. They remind me that not every place is a concrete jungle and though it may be getting colder, this is a beautiful time of year.

Thanks Derrick!

Sasha Maslov’s “Prison Theatre”

Yesterday I came across a wonderful project by Sasha Maslov. Sasha was kind enough to provide me with some additional information on his photography and his time in Ukraine.

“Fall of 2005. One of the penal colonies in Kharkiv, Ukraine.”

“The depressing view of endless gray walls with barbwire on the background of even grayer sky. There is no such thing as time exists in these walls. It’s really hard to imagine that people would try to find something uplifting in this small piece of reality inside other reality.”

“And it’s not just regular people, these fellows are there for a reason, they all committed pretty serious crimes, it’s the prison of a special treatment rank, without any benefits and little hope of cutting the time which for some of them is their lifetime. But there is something. I guess human nature in many cases doesn’t let you drop your head completely and makes you to search for the light even in the deepest shaft.”

“There is a group of prisoners who, with the support from one of the local theaters called Arabeski, makes an effort to organize a troupe and stage a play. The play was written by Jonathan Swift long time ago in Ireland and has very little to do with prison reality in Ukraine of 2005. And that’s why it was extremely moving to observe how these guys are mastering the acting, the transition between prison slang and calling each other sirs and lords, wearing wigs and costumes, rehearsing and then performing for the crowd of their inmates, relatives and guards.”

Thank you Sasha!

Sasha Maslov’s Website

Ryan Schude in PDN!

Ryan Schude the newest addition to our Glasshouse Assignment team, has done us proud in being recognized in PDN’s 14th Annual Pix Digital Imaging Contest. Ryan Schude PDN Ryan submitted the above image and received merit in the new talent category! Way to go Ryan!

To view more of Ryan’s work, see his new photographer preview here.

You can also view Ryan’s website.

Like what you see? To chat about how great Ryan is and request more info, feel free to contact his rep, Jacqueline Bovaird, any time.

–

Jacqueline Bovaird

212-462-4538 | jacqueline@glasshouseassignment.com

www.GlasshouseAssignment.com

… How Do We Break Our Pattern Of Thought

Disruptive Realism

“The beaten path does not lead to creativity. Good thing there are people out there ready to rock your routine”

SWJ

View Dave Hoffer’s thoughts on DR

Dave Hoffer is Associate Creative Director at Frog Design

Disruptive Realism by design mind

. .. This is fantastic and alarming all at once.

Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait by Chris Jordan

A visual examination of the vast and bizarre measures of our society.

Artist Chris Jordan intricately assembles from thousands of smaller

photographs an expose of the society that we have become.

Toothpicks, 2008

Depicts one hundred million toothpicks, equal to the number of

trees cut in the U.S. yearly to make the paper for junk mail.

Plastic Cups, 2008

Depicts one million plastic cups, the number used on airline

flights in the U.S. every six hours

Detail of actual print size:

Handguns, 2007

Depicts 29,569 handguns, equal to the number of gun-related

deaths in the U.S. in 2004

Detail at actual size

Click here to check out more of Chris Jordan’s project

Drumroll please….presenting Ryan Schude!

RYAN SCHUDE JUST BECAME THE NEWEST MEMBER OF OUR GLASSHOUSE FAMILY!

Ryan Schude is one of the freshest talents I’ve seen in a while. Both he and his work are very clever and just the right amount of fun.

Just for you, our loyal blog readers, I’ve put together a preview of his work before his full portfolio is launched on our website. Ryan Schude

To reach the preview directly click here.

Otherwise, you can reach the preview by going to our website and following menu to our client access section. The password is: preview.

For portfolio requests and to commend us on our wonderful choice of talent, call us any time at 212-462-4538.

Clever Indonesian Advertising…

Below is one of the most interesting advertisements I’ve seen in a while. While I am not sure how effective it actually is in Indonesia, the image itself is amazing.

agency : Bates141 Jakarta
creative director : Hendra Lesmono
art director : Andreas Junus & Irawandhani Kamarga
copywriter : Darrick Subrata
photographer : Anton Ismael

The above advertisement is not promoting Photoshop CS4 but rather encouraging people not to pirate the software.

Thank you Rachel Hulin.

I’m a fan of The Selby

Todd Selby never disappoints. His photo blog The Selby, displays his photographs of people within their homes/apartments. His subjects are always funny and dare to never take themselves too seriously, both of which are qualities I can truly admire.

His most recent post was too good not to share. Here are his latest images of Abigail and Philip Smiley.

Todd Selby’s Photography

The Selby Blog

Rachel Papo: Serial No. 3817131

“At an age when social, sexual, and educational explorations are at their highest point, the life of an eighteen-year-old Israeli girl is interrupted.” – Rachel Papo, speaking about her project Serial No. 3817131.

When Rahel Papo served for the Israeli Air Force for her mandatory two years, she was eighteen years old. Fifteen years after her service ended, she returned to the military bases to document the lives of women solders, helping her to understand her own experiences.

“My service had been a period of utter loneliness, mixed with apathy and pensiveness, and at the time I was too young to understand it all. Through the camera’s lens, I tried to reconstruct facets of my military life, hopeful to reconcile matters that had been left unresolved.” – Rachel Papo

“Photographing these soldiers, I saw my reflection; I was on the other side of a pane of glass—observing a world that I had once been a part of, yet I could not go back in time or change anything. It felt like a dream.” – Rachel Papo

“The photographs in this project serve as a bridge between past and present—a combination of my own recollections and the experiences of the girls who I observed. Each image embodies traces of things that I recognize, illuminating fragments of my history, striking emotional cords that resonate within me. In some way, each is a self-portrait, depicting a young woman caught in transient moments of introspection and uncertainty, trying to make sense of a challenging daily routine. In striving to maintain her gentleness and femininity, the soldier seems to be questioning her own identity, embracing the fact that two years of her youth will be spent in a wistful compromise.” – Rachel Papo

The book of Rachel Papo’s project Serial No. 3817131 is available through powerHouse.

Website.

Framing the Presidency

The Aperture foundation will be holding a free panel discussion Wednesday, November 12th about how photography has shaped our perceptions of Bush’s presidency.

“This panel explores the collision of photography, mass media, and politics in examining the role of images in the 2008 presidential campaign and beyond. Artists and media experts share their experiences and explore the power of photography in constructing our image of the presidency.” Aperture Website

Panel Guests:

David Scull, New York Times campaign picture editor

Todd Heisler, Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist

Tim Davis, body of work My Life in Politics, irreverently examines American politics

Robert Hariman, Chair of Communication Studies at Northwestern University

Framing the Presidency
Panel Discussion
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
7:00 p.m.
The New School
Tishman Auditorium
66 West 12th Street
(212) 229-5353

Photographers’ Advice for the Next President

PDN did a interesting survey of former white house photographers recently, exploring how the role and the photographs which result from it effect the country’s perception of a president. They then gave their thoughts on how the next first family might take advantage of the impact of photography. Here are some select quotes. The full article and photo gallery can be found here.

“The President and First Lady can set the tone. You have to keep in mind that if you’re willing to be followed occasionally you’re giving the country the opportunity to see how you are. Is it absolutely real? No, of course not, because they know you’re there. But it’s as close as you’re going to get.” – Diane Walker

“I’m concerned that both candidates now have photographers and their main mission is to provide a public relations service. It’s fine if the White House press office wants to use photographs taken by the White House photographer for their own purposes, as long as the photographer is documenting for history. If those pictures don’t get seen for 20 years, so be it.” – Pete Souza

“How you present a president is very important. “Mission Accomplished” was the biggest gaffe in years.” – Diane Walker

“The president doesn’t have to be friends with the photographer, but they certainly have to trust and know him or her well enough to give that person essentially unfettered access to the oval office.” – Pete Souza

“You’re talking about a human being [Johnson] who is so much more human when you see Okamoto’s photographs. Those pictures tell me that that man went through hell, and the sympathy I have for him I can thank Okamoto for. That’s the job of the official photographer. His job isn’t to supply us with pictures, it’s to tell history what this person went through.” – Diane Walker

“If Obama is elected, he has two small children. The Obamas could take a page from the Clintons’ book. They made a certain pact with the Washington press corps. The Obamas could say: We’ll let you have an open photo opportunity when the girls go to the school for the first day, then after that, don’t photograph them unless they’re with us. It was amazing how everyone showed up to see Chelsea Clinton walk into the door of Sidwell Friends School and that was it. If we saw her walking with other girls, we didn’t photograph her. If they [the Obamas] decide it would be nice for the press to have a picture of the girls on the south lawn or in the Oval Office with him, more power to them. If you do that, you take away the desire for it, and the press isn’t always nagging for it.” – Diane Walker

“The current administration has been a confetti machine of hand-outs. They have, in my estimation, tried to supplant outside photography by releasing photos almost on a daily basis of stuff that other photographers should be able to cover. That doesn’t include classified meetings – I understand that. But the more photos the White House releases, the less valuable they become, and the more suspect they become.” – David Hume Kennerly

Love Love Love, Martos Gallery

Recommended Show: Love Love Love at the Martos Gallery

On View November 6 to December 6

Press release:

Martos Gallery presents Love Love Love, a provocative group exhibition exploring the physical and emotional effects of love on a diverse group of artists and their practice. Are artists bound by the same taboos as everybody else? Is sexual artwork always personal? Is it obscene? Are artists more scopophilic than other people?

The work on display pushes past conventional notions of romance to focus on the transformative power of obsession and fantasy. Artists can, like anyone else, be held hostage by the fascinations of transgression, pornography and voyeurism and their role in sexual desire; but they are also aware, more than anyone else, of the power of imagery and how to harness it. Artists’ willingness to subvert and collage everything from the portrait of a lover to an advertisement in a magazine demonstrates to what extent their experience of love and sex is mediated by imagery.

Some of the pieces in the exhibition display a playful, irreverent attitude towards body parts, confusing genitalia with identity in a kind of metonymic sleight of hand. Lee Lozano’s portraits of penises seem awkward and puzzled; Keith Haring’s painting about being sexually bound to another human being in the age of AIDS is both joyous and agonized.

By quoting and appropriating from pornography, the artists in this exhibition bring pictures meant for mass consumption into a realm between public and private, where the game of what is hidden and what is visible is shown once again to be an essential ingredient in both erotism and art. Our puritan society had relegated sexual imagery to the realm of the dirty or evil; but pornography only exists in societies that repress sexual expression. Sexual organs and acts have been celebrated and ritualized since the dawn of humanity, and the artists in this show prove they still know how to have a good time.

Included artists: Andisheh Avini, Nobuyoshi Araki, Donald Baechler, Kevin Baker, Marina Berio, Jean-Christian Bourcart , Ellen Berkenblit, Larry Clark, Alberto Di Fabio, Tracey Emin, Nan Goldin, Leon Golub, Napoleon Habeica, Keith Haring, Eberhard Havekost, Barbara Kruger, David LaChapelle, Lee Lozano, Robert Mapplethorpe, Maripol, Servane Mary, Almagul Menlibayeva, Curtis Mitchell, Eduardo Paolozzi, Marco Rountree-Cruz, David Salle, Sam Samore, Kiki Seror, Lyle Starr, Danniel Swatosh, Susanne Thiemann, Chris Verene, Lawrence Weiner, T.J Wilcox, Pawel Wojtasik…

Above Photograph by David Salle, ‘Untitled’, 1984

Martos Gallery

http://www.martosgallery.com

540 W 29th Street,

New York, NY 10001

info@martosgallery.com

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Has photography proven crisis-proof? [Nov 08]

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