Klea McKenna

San Francisco photographer, Klea McKenna, creates work that is rooted in the natural world: the effects, the celebration, and the examination of that world. Her investigations result in new ways of looking at photography, and at nature. She recently had an exhibition at the Rayko Photo Center of her project, Slow Burn, and was selected to receive the 3rd Hey, Hot Shot! Curator's Choice Award for the same work by Lesley A. Martin, publisher of Aperture's books program. Nymphoto also has an interesting conversation with Klea here.

After growing up in northern California and Hawaii, Klea studied photography at UCLA, UCSC, Florence Art Institute and recently received an MFA from the California College of the Arts where she is currently an instructor.

My relationship to the natural landscape lies somewhere between adoration and suspicion. This ambivalence has fueled each of my recent projects. I am interested in human perceptions of and representations of nature, and photography's ability to both confirm and disarm those perceptions. Slow Burn is an ongoing series of experiments. With each one, I learn something new which leads me to the next experiment.



As we rush ahead to embrace new digital technologies we are leaving the imaging potential of traditional light sensitive materials relatively untapped. Confined, as they have largely been, to representational reproduction. With this is mind I push these materials to record perceptual experience rather than accurate image. Using analogue photographic methods and crude, handmade cameras, I explore the materiality of the photographic medium and it's capacity to interact with and represent place and landscape in new ways.



Recent experiments have included filling the camera with live insect and plant specimens while photographing as well as folding the film up so that it reacts to light as a 3-dimensional object. I attempt to rupture our perception by making the flawed material of the film itself as visible as the image it has captured. There is also a sense of gradual loss in this work, the loss of natural places, of time and of the analogue photographic materials that make these experiments possible. My methodology is informed by the strategies of field biology, Victorian naturalism, and homespun science; practices that employ intense and prolonged observation of natural phenomena.















Images from Give Me A Sign

Alan W George

I am not quite sure how but somewhere along the way, photography has become a central part of my life. Photography for me is a way of exploring the world. It's the process of searching, selecting and examining something that would otherwise go unnoticed. Through this process, I feel more conscious, more aware, more engaged, more alive. Plus, as Mr. Winogrand put so succinctly , I just like to see what things look like as photographs.

I can really relate to what Alan George has to say about photography, and it's evident in his work. Alan has a number of interesting series--three are featured below--that are observations of the world around him. He has a way a finding order in chaos, finding humor in the mundane, and most importantly, realizing that life is fascinating and worth celebrating.

Alan was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina and then moved to Nashville, Tennessee. In 1996 I moved with my wife, Jennifer, from Nashville to San Francisco, California looking for a change, something different. We found it. After 10 plus years of culture shock, it's starting to feel like home. We now live in the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco with our two kids, dog, cat and a 30 year mortgage.

Images from Immediate Vicinity
On 21st of March, 2007 my daughter was born. My son had, two months prior, celebrated his second birthday. Anyone in similar circumstances can appreciate that there is little time for anything other than domesticated "bliss" and occasionally some sleep. Photography seemed out of the question. Determined to pick up the camera again, I set about to make the best use of the only time that I had at my disposal, my commute to work which consisted of a 12 minute walk to the subway and then a 10 minute ride.

Photography, at least it seems to me, has a direct relationship with the "reality" the photographer experiences, either accidental or contrived. The photographer selects some portion of this "reality", captures it and presents it as a photograph. The job of a photographer is to manage this "reality" is such a way as to result in interesting photographs. Traveling to exotic destinations, achieving access to the otherwise inaccessible locations/people, constructing film set like concoctions; these are but a few of the many "reality" enhancement techniques. None of which where readily available to me. This series of images is a result of an attempt to make the most of my forced "reality".











Images from domesticated
With this series of images, I examine domesticated urban plants and people's attempts to control and manipulate them in sometimes trivial and inconsequential ways. My hope is that these at times humorous and tragic examples echo conditions within the larger context of the relationship between humanity and nature. I also hope that the viewer can identify with certain human or anthropomorphic characteristics of the subjects, perhaps feeling a bit saddened by their subjugated circumstances.















Images from sweet nothing
It occurs one day. The realization that there is just about as much road ahead as there is behind. That you have made decisions that have put you on this seemingly unalterable course and the conclusion appears disturbingly clear.

Bill Chapman

Bill Chapman sent a couple of terrific images for the July 4th exhibition, which lead me to his site, Color of Baseball. Rick has an exhibition that will be on display through the end of August at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute that highlights this body of work.

For the past eight years, Bill has attended and photographed "The Classic" game at Rickwood Field. He feels this best represents the game of baseball and its fans in both a social historical context unique in America. The hundredth anniversary of Rickwood Field has given him the chance to reflect on the photographs he has taken over the past eight years and to organize them in a way which shows the spirit and diversity of the people who attend the game there.

"Rickwood Field has a charisma all by itself, but by adding the fans, it becomes a truly magnificent American experience," said Chapman. "It has now been a national treasure for 100 years and may it continue to be it for many more decades." Bill has been photographing baseball exclusively since 1990. He has traveled to more than 60 ballparks and photographed hundreds of games all across America when not working as the manager of Humanities Faculty Services at Harvard University.

I grew up less than half a mile from the ballpark whose owners were the last in Major League baseball to integrate their team. Twelve years after Jackie Robinson broke the color line and eight years after Willie Mays had become a New York Giant, my hometown Red Sox finally allowed a black player, Pumpsie Green, to become a member the team. The year was 1959 and even as an eight year old, I grasped some of the significance of the event.



Perhaps I didn’t comprehend the national implications of the Civil Rights movement as such a young child, but I did know something was amiss when the Sox did not have a single player as joyful and as talented as my hero, Willie Mays. Seeing Minnie Minoso and Pumpsie chattering and laughing right in front of me as an eleven year old, is still something I can envision every time I go to Fenway Park or think about when I wonder why I bother with the game in the first place.



Fast forwarding through to my fifties, my interest in baseball and photography had never waned nor diminished. I became close friends with Dr. Ernest Withers, the master of social documentary photography. His photographs of the Civil Rights movement, the music scene in Memphis and his Negro League photography in Memphis and Birmingham are world renowned. From working with him I learned many stories about the Negro Leagues and was introduced to not only the Memphis Red Sox and the Birmingham Black Barons but also to Rickwood Field.



During the past eight years, I have visited Birmingham, AL and Rickwood Field many times. It is more than a well-preserved and century old nostalgia piece. It is both sanctuary and haven for all of the players and fans of baseball that have played and passed though its gates over the years. More than just the charm of old parks, Rickwood has a special charisma. From the moment I bounded out of a cab and walked across the field, where a seventeen year old Willie Mays played and Ernest Withers photographed I never wanted to leave. Many visits, thousands of photographs and a new legion of friends have convinced me that Rickwood Field represents The Color of Baseball.

Cheryle St. Onge

A few months ago, I was researching the Guggenheim Grant. I wanted to see what kind of work wins that significant prize. Last year, it was the work of Cheryle St. Onge(amongst others). Cheryl is a New Englander, having grown up in Massachusetts and now splits her time between New Hampshire and Maine. Cheryl's images come from the soul of someone that looks at the land, that listens to crickets on a summer night, and that knows how to ride a horse, probably bareback. Her work reflects the simple pleasure of exploring and celebrating the natural world.

Ms. St. Onge received a M.F.A. from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA, studying under Nick Nixon and Barbara Bosworth and interned at M.I.T. contact printing the archives of Dr. Harold Edgerton. For over a decade, she taught photography at Clark University, and art & writing workshops for high school students at the Worcester Art Museum. Ms. St. Onge has guest lectured at The University of New Hampshire, University of Rhode Island and New England A.S.I C. In addition to exhibitions and print sales, Ms St. Onge provides architectural and editorial photographic work.

Images from Natural Findings
















Images of Horses