Margot Quan Knight

Looking at photographers included in The Prime Years, an exhibition at the Houston Center for Photography, curated by Fernando Castor R. This exhibit depicts centenarians, artists, relatives, and other individuals enjoying, enduring, and living their lives beyond the age of 60.

Margot Knights's remarkable video of her mother's life is included in The Prime Years. This college of photographs takes us through 60 years of her mother's life.

Margot received her MFA from the Avery School of the Arts at Bard College, after working as a photographer at Fabrica, the communication arts research center of Benetton in Italy. Her work has been exhibited in personal shows in London, Milan, Paris, and published in over 30 international magazines. Margot currently lives and works in Seattle.

The first time I was exposed to Margot's work was with her 2003 series, Taking Care:
These images of dismembered bodies, inspired by the paintings of French surrealist Fernand Leger, were made over a period of 10 months in 2003 using sculpted plaster body parts. The images served as a reflection of my thoughts during that time. I considered whether caring for someone can be enough, or not, the calm feeling after falling apart, and the importance of loving and protecting one's self. For more surrealistic imagery, be sure to look at her Fabrica series.







Margot's new series, Underphotos, explores the familial reflections.
Underphotos is a series of photographs of the framed photographs that hang in my parents’ house. By photographing them at an angle, I capture reflections on the glass surface of the picture frame. Rather than offering a window to a different time or distant place, the picture frame becomes a mirror, a companion to the here and now. These works are framed under acrylic so the surface can again reflect the room in which the work hangs.

With Gratitude

I'm in a Normal Rockwell frame of mind, especially since reviewing the new book Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera for photo-eye recently. And today being THANKSgiving gives me the opportunity to share what I am grateful for:

I am grateful for being continually inspired, moved, and wowed by photographers willing to take chances, expose realities, imagine new ones, document and think about our world.

I am grateful for our wonderful community of caring, supportive, and enthusiastic individuals that take the time to send an e-mail, comment on Facebook, send a tweet, pass on a high-five, or a hello.

I am grateful for all the gallerists, curators, editors, directors, and organizations that support our journeys and really want us to succeed.

I am grateful for my students who have all become friends and inspirations.

I am grateful for well made equipment that lasts for half a century.

I am grateful for film and the feeling of excitement that comes from looking at new negatives.

I am grateful for Translight Colors darkroom and local labs that continue to support film shooters.

I am grateful for my fellow photographers who have given me so much to think about, to write about, to learn about...

I am grateful for your comments, for taking the time to read Lenscratch, for making me aware of your work, or sharing someone else's.

I am grateful for the internet and the world-wide friendships it has allowed me to create.

I hope your holiday is filled with warmth, love, food, drinks, memories, and photographs...don't forget to send your one best image of Thanksgiving to me by December 5th...

Miloushka Bokma

Looking at photographers included in The Prime Years, an exhibition at the Houston Center for Photography, curated by Fernando Castor R. This exhibit depicts centenarians, artists, relatives, and other individuals enjoying, enduring, and living their lives beyond the age of 60.

Dutch photographer, Miloushka Bokma, works as an editorial and fine art photographer. The series, Grandparents, is featured at HCP. Miloushka’s depictions of grandmothers have the unsettling quality of Jan van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Marriage. Her subtly colored scenes, which aim to bring together women generations apart, are simultaneously intimate and detached, tender and cold.

Gaby Messina

Looking at photographers included in The Prime Years, an exhibition at the Houston Center for Photography, curated by Fernando Castor R. This exhibit depicts centenarians, artists, relatives, and other individuals enjoying, enduring, and living their lives beyond the age of 60.

Gaby Messina was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. After studying advertising and photography, she worked for advertising agencies for ten years. In 1999, she left advertising to work as an advertising photographer, get married, and have twins, Félix and Pedro. Her series, Grand Women, looks at her grandmother's generation with the realization that age does not define life.

I feel extremely grateful that all these people agreed to sit in front of my camera. Also for their generosity in allowing me into their lives. When I was in their houses I would move things around and ask them to change their outfits. Some grandmothers changed their dresses a few times. It was as playful for me as it was for them.

In this series, their belongings are the key factor because they tell us more about them. It is a way of dramatizing the image and creating an atmosphere. I feel involved in every picture from the moment when these women powerfully caught my attention. At the opening of the exhibition it was extremely touching to see them well prepared. They felt like stars, protagonists. I am happy to have given them something to remember with joy.

Image from Grandes Mujeres

Edmund Clark

The Houston Center for Photography recently opened an exhibition titled Prime Years. I was intrigued by this often under-exposed subject, as much of the work showcased in the fine art world spotlights a more youthful population. Curator Fernando Castor R. selected 13 photographers who are/were exploring the many aspects of aging. From the editorial to the personal, the work in Prime Years depicts centenarians, artists, relatives, and other individuals enjoying, enduring, and living their lives beyond the age of 60.

Over the next few days, I thought it would be interesting to feature some of these photographers.

Edmund Clark is a well regarded British photographer with a reputation for "combining strong ideas with an ability to work in sensitive situations and with people on the margins of society." He works as an editorial and a fine art photographer; his book, Still Killing Time, about long term incarceration, was a finalist at the NY Photo Awards and received an honorable mention at the IPA Awards. Edmund's project, Centenarians, is featured at HCP.

Statement for Centenarians: These people were born before television was invented, before cars were mass marketed, before the Titanic was built, before the Russian Revolution or the First World War. They are all over 100 years old and the last of the pre-technological age. For some, Queen Victoria was still on the throne when they were born. A hundred years later the telegram marking their centenary came from her great, great granddaughter.








Another project, titled No Place to Go, takes a look at asylum seekers in Britain that flee persecution in one country only to experience discrimination in another.

Images from No Place to Go

Thanksgiving Challenge

It's time for the Second Annual Best Images of Thanksgiving exhibition. Send your ONE best image of the excess, the family, the clean-up, the football, the turkey (1000px on the longest side at 72 dpi) to alinesmithson@yahoo.com by December 5th. I will publish all submissions!

Laura Domela

I really enjoyed seeing the work of Laura Domela at Photolucida earlier this Spring. She has a new series titled, Everyone My Brother Knows in Girdwood, Alaska, that is comprised of 300 images taken in July 2008. Laura visited her gregareous brother in Alaska last year and spent several weeks photographing his world of friends and acquaintences in Girdwood. This project is available as a book upon request.

My younger brother Jason and I were both originally from Alaska. When I was five years old and he was two, my Mom loaded us up into our 1965 International pickup camper "Bumpin' George" along with three standard poodles (Beau, Tilly and Fancy) and two guinea pigs (Ichi and Blossom), and we began the 3,700 mile journey down the treacherous Al-Can highway to our new home in Southern California.

Jason was only two at the time, but his gregarious nature was already clear. It seemed he could almost instantly befriend anyone – from rebellious, punked-out hipsters to soccer moms to conservative business types. When it came time to sell candy for school fund-raising activities – I would always hand over my goods to Jason. He was good at selling and far more outgoing than I was, and after about an hour he'd return home with an empty box, the cash envelope full, and stories of a bunch of new friends he'd made.