LeMonde Magazine, based out of Paris, has done a feature on my Illuminati portfolio. They printed 6 images from the series. It coincides nicely with my show in Paris, which runs until the 23rd of December.

Massimo Sordi, photographer and co-curator of Global Photography has just sent me the two catalogs from both the Global Photography show and the Foto Festival. Both are beautiful and much bigger and better quality than I had expected. It was wonderful to be able to look through the catalog and see all of the artists in the show, especially since I could not be at the opening. Much thanks to Massimo and Stephanie!

I have to say that the catalog that was put together by Design Works over at MCAD for the Jerome show was really great. Last years catalog was somewhat thin, but this years has a nice heft to it. Each artists has four nice spreads with lots of space. And the essays (wirtten by Christina Schmid) were great as well. And to my great fortune, MCAD over ordered by about 2000 copies, so I will be taking whatever they have left over after the show. It will be a great addition to the other materials that I send out with portfolios. Make sure that you grab one if you go to the show. Or, if you are unable to make the show but still want a catalog, let me know. There are a lot of extras.

Click to enlarge

Last night was the opening of the Jerome Fellowship Exhibition. There was a pretty good crowd and I was happy to see a lot of familiar faces including a couple of my models. I feel like the reception of the work exhibited was fairly good and I am really looking forward to the panel discussion, which will be taking place on Wednesday, October 7th. I am really hoping that a lot of people show up for that. My hope for the work that I am showing is that it will spark discussion. Thanks to everyone that came and if you haven't seen the show yet, it will be up until November 11.

The essays for the Jerome Catalog, written by Christina Schmid, have been posted on Quodlibetica, a new website devoted to writing, art and criticism. I met with Christina 3 times over the fellowship year. I have to say that it was wonderful to work with her as she is a wealth of knowledge and extremely insightful.


License to Look: Evan Baden


The Mission Statement:

Quodlibetica originated from the desire to write about art and visual culture in ways not confined by academic conventions or journalistic hype. Part journal, part blog, Quodlibetica fosters critical conversations about visual arts in a forum that is accessible, engaging, and committed to quality writing. Based on the Latin quodlibet, which has entered the English language as (1) a statement proposed for disputation, (2) the actual discussion, and (3) the whimsical combination of familiar elements, Quodlibetica is a space to argue eloquently and whimsically about art, find out what’s happening in the Twin Cities art scene, and engage with writers, artists, and critics, who like to think.

Here are some of the images from the Global Photography 09 show. I wish that I could have been there. Maybe I will be able to make it for the Venice opening. It's still 8 months away and a lot can happen in 8 months. There should be more images coming, but for now it was nice to see what the show looked like.

Global Photography 09: Looking At / Looking For, a show that I am included in will be opening tonight in Savignano, Italy as part of the Savignano Photo Festival (SIFEST).

Other artists include:

Evan Baden (USA)
Catherine Balet (F)
Mathieu Bernard-Reymond (CH)
Michele Cera (I)
Samantha Cohn (USA)
Jen Davis (USA)
Wolfram Hahn (D)
Alessandro Imbriaco / Francesco Millefiori (I)
Seba Kurtis (ARG)
Molly Landreth (USA)
Lalpesh Lathigra (UK)
Maria Leutner (D)
Andrés Marroquín Winkelmann (PERU)
Colin Pantall (UK)
Andrew Phelps (A)
Marion Poussier (F)
Blerim Racaj (UK)
Richard Renaldi (USA)
Frank Rothe (D)
Carla van de Puttelaar (NL)
Shen Wei (CHINA)

There will also be a 100 page catalouge / Book that will accompany the show. The show will be traveling to Venice in March and hopefully Rome in January. We also had to make an intro video, which I would like to see.

Well, I am relieved today to have everything ready to be hung for the Jerome Fellowship show. The work has to be at MCAD's gallery on the 28 of September. I had thought that I would be cutting things close, but it turns out I am two weeks ahead of schedule, which takes a lot off my mind. Now the only thing to worry about is what kind of reception the work will have.

I had the work mounted onto 3mm diBond. They will be hung from the wall using a box cleat so that the work stays nice and flat against the wall. They will float off about 3/4 of an inch. There will be no frames on the pieces, so I had a laminate put over the face of the print to protect it. It works great because it takes all of the glare off of the print. No matter how harsh the light is or from what angle, the piece just sucks up the light. I really like the look.

Show opens October 2nd with a reception from 6-8pm at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

While my prints are at Digi being mounted and I have been going through my folders on my hard drives looking through stuff from the recent work that I can delete. I came across my lighting tests from my shoots. I couldn't find all of them for this post, but I know I have the other two. Usually what I do is shoot digitally to get close. Then, because I just don't trust that the digital really matches my film, I shoot a couple color polaroids, partly to double double check the exposure and partly because i love shooting them and seeing the image in hard form before I shoot it on film. These are the quick digital images of the models before the shoots. Just thought they were fun to show.

This was an exciting day for me. I have been waiting months to see what these images will look like when they are full size. I was curious about a lot of issues. Everything from my scanning, to photoshopping, to print resolution, to banding and the list goes on and on. But I feel relieved today looking at the full size prints. Everything looks as I want it to. And they are so big. There are a lot of people that believe that making an image bigger does not make it better, but it certainly changes the interaction that the viewer, in this case myself, has with the image. I think it is especially different for me in this case because I have been looking at these images in a small size for so long. These went straight from MCAD to Digigraphics in Minneapolis for mounting. Which is something else for me to worry about since I didn't want to spend the extra money to have multiple copies printed. Hopefully all will go well and by next week I'll have finished work ready to hang for the show in October.

That hand in the image was only for size reference.

I am getting ready to print my 5 images for the Jerome show. As part of the fellowship I have access to the facilities at MCAD. Tyler Page (who runs the service bureau there, has been incredibly helpful with testing images. Here are my final prints before giving the okay to go ahead and print the full size image. 40x50 will be the biggest that I have printed and I am excited to finally see these images full size. I have been looking at 16x20 versions for the last 6 months.

As the Jerome show approaches, I am just about done shooting what I will be able to actually finnish for the show. I am not sure exactly how much room I will get, but I am hoping to show six pieces, this being one of them.