Selective Focus

Christine Dean, “Shuffleboard”

Last year my folks moved into senior housing. While it must have been traumatic to leave a home of 45 years, to abandon treasures from a lifetime of travels, and to part with thousands of photographs, they’ve created a miniature version of the life they knew, and found friends who were similarly diminished — but not lain low. (more…)

Sarah Jean, untitled

Given our theme, this week’s images could easily have veered into cloying territory. Thankfully I received many uniquely interpreted shots, and some that are even exceptionally moving. I’m grateful how this feature included our older loved ones; a population often disregarded in visual art. Let’s remedy that next week by dedicating a theme to our “elders.” (more…)

Sharon Mollerus , “Crown Fountain, Chicago”

Clean is a construct; an aspiration more than an actuality, demanding as much scrutiny as that which we deem dirty. Each term requires criticality, and attempting to understand the world from broader contexts. Likewise, while we could use more rituals like the Roman’s annual Februa purification festival (from which I drew our theme) we could well abandon their plutocratic, militaristic ways. (more…)

Aaron Reichow, untitled

I thought this week’s theme would be simple, though it did raise some discussion as to what exactly constitutes a portrait. My belief is that a portrait is anything which somehow conveys a being or beings- even non-sentient ones; though sentience itself is a contestable construct (doesn’t our region’s Spirit Tree seem capable of feeling, and perception?). I will leave any thoughts more esoteric than that to you, and the comments section below. (more…)

Lars Wästfelt, untitled

Due to a near total lack of submissions this week, I had to bring in some pinch hitters. For the past 5 years I’ve managed a photography collective called “You are not a dinosaur” which features vernacular images from around the world, and I was compelled to draw from this pool for our current theme. See more here: www.flickr.com/groups/notadinosaur/pool/ (more…)

Frank Sander, untitled

It is hard to not feel a bit inadequate when a friend will schlep 4 miles for groceries when it’s 15 below, and my biggest concerns are where’s my Zhivago DVD, and do I have enough cloves to stud a lemon for a hot whiskey. That said, Winter is my favorite season — not as some endurance test, but as a time to heed nature’s insistence that we “lie low to the wall until the bitter weather passes over” (John O’Donohue). (more…)

Aaron Reichow, untitled

While it has been too warm to be stuck inside contracting the negative strain of cabin fever (Winter will no doubt find us), this week we can emphasize the phrase’s positive connotations. Such retreats represent our desires to simplify, to get away from the dissonance and clutter of what we ordinarily deem important. They foreground necessity and diminish the superfluous, and manifest our plainest requirements for dwelling; heat, light, a water source, a welcoming entry, maybe a window to gaze from or peer into. (more…)

Aaron Reichow, untitled

What won’t you change in the new year? What remains a fixture in our lives? That was this week’s challenge; to find the things that ground us in a world of whirring flux. Easier said than done in a region whose predominant feature is an endlessly shifting inland sea. I would like to have seen some people as “constants” (as they’ve always been in my life), but hey, I only edit this thing. (more…)

Paul McIntyre, untitled

As I have little to add to the vast literature surrounding this holiday, I can only recommend one of my favorites: Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory.” His own reading of this short story used to be a staple this time of year on Minnesota Public Radio. I have no idea why they’ve departed from playing it, but here is a link to a 2006 This American Life episode that includes a tear-defying excerpt: Episode 255 (more…)

Marie Zhuikov, “Buddy, Winter 2012”

Should I infer from the lack of submissions this week that there is a lack of empathy in our world at the moment, or merely accept that the concept is a difficult one to represent? Being prone to hyperbole, I’m going with the former assumption, while hoping that a more general theme next week will boost contributions. Let’s go with “holidays.” (more…)

Mary K. Tennis, “Steve, Cranes”

It’s easy to take pristine air for granted while living in this Arcadian spot, but an alarming study of phytoplankton from the University of Leicester posited this week that rising carbon emissions could deplete the planet of breathable air. This brought starkly to mind the homophone err, and deepened my belief that true change can only occur from the ground, up — or in this case, from the micro-organismic. (more…)

Erin Naughton-Garrison, “Drag Queen Baby Shower Buffet”

Nice. I was expecting perfectly-plated smart phone grabs from local restaurants, and instead received a group of highly original interpretations on this week’s theme. Erin’s da Vinciesque tableau was especially arresting, and I appreciated the subtext of food as a tradition we convey along generations. Staying with the elemental, next week’s theme will be “air.” (more…)

Karen Owsley Nease, “Selling Mom’s Car”

There is a perverse fullness in loss. Loss propelled me here. It informs my need to make art. It makes space for the unexpected to grow. Atul Gawande’s recent book “Being Mortal” describes “the chasm of perspective between those who have to contend with life’s fragility and those who don’t.” Loss widens our apertures to see farther down narrow, well-worn paths. It opens us to risk, and to more keenly-felt joys. (more…)

Tyler Johnson, untitled

Bliss is seldom of an epiphanic nature; it often just slowly suffuses us, when after years or moments prior we’d barely thought it possible that matters could just placidly align. But a surfeit of joy can be just as intolerable as an abundance of grief. Neither can be sustained, and each will evanesce, then quietly, someday, return. (more…)

Hugh Reitan, untitled

Limbs (of trees) stripped near to bare, firewood cribbed, quilts at hand, larders stocked. This is the month that Maslow’s hierarchy seems tangibly real, unless you’re an artist and thus inclined to invert the pyramid. Many diverse takes this week, despite my dread that a theme so prospectively barren would go unchallenged. Credit a strain of Scandanavian fatalism? Anyhow, thanks. (more…)

Brian Barber, “John Barber: Service station owner, school bus driver, Mayor, Parnell, MO”

This week’s theme offers the opportunity for a p.s.a.: have prints made of the images you’re making now, or we might not have the kinds of memories shown here. Digital media storage changes so quickly that having our memories in tangible form may vanish. Anyone still have a floppy drive on their pc, or a pc for that matter? (more…)

Brian Barber, “Bandit”

Black and white photography is most often anything but. Degrees of tone exist in a broad spectrum within what we reductively deem either/or. I’ve argued before that its use as an aesthetic device is antiquarian, retrogressive- that the medium has grown past the limitation, yet there remains an appeal in seeing images pared to their essence, without the ersatz mediation of hdr and hyper-saturation. (more…)

Paul McIntyre, untitled

The idea of “coming home” propels nearly all our endeavors, knowing we are tethered to other people, to familiar, comforting things. For anyone lacking a stable, sane place, or those exiled by circumstance, the capacity to venture is stunted while the desire to find moorings never leaves us. Emily Norton’s “Family Motto” (below) states well this simple, not easily-attained aspiration. (more…)

Tamara Jones, “Full moon over the Lake”

There is no way to comprehensively describe Duluth with an inane little photo feature, but I do think this week’s image’s alternations between grandeur and ruin say something about this place; what we value, what we’ve let moulder. Duluth is a place where our failures aren’t hidden. Its broken roads and crumbling industries, all set on that capricious gem of a lake impress the psychic landscape, and inform our present strivings. (more…)

Ashley L. Behrens, “The Joys of Color”

Even though we might not feel a part of it, or intentionally cast ourselves to the margins, we live- without choice- within communities. What we do to broaden, to expand that meaning defines us; how many and of what sort we’ll include. Let’s celebrate here the pulling together, the belonging, and the recognition that no one, as was said, is an island. (more…)

Jason Linus, untitled

Where’d we be without the square pegs, the odd ducks, and the outliers? Blaine, probably. Feels like I’ve landed somewhere that not only appreciates, but cultivates individuality. Not eccentricity for its own sake or ostentatious outrageousness; still, there is a climate of mutual support here, and a community that values unconventional ways of approaching life, accommodating people and schemes that yield weird, unanticipated, often gratifying things. (more…)

Annie Dugan, untitled

Harvest is the time to reap what we’ve sewn, and to stow our goods for the difficult days ahead. It’s the time to decide what merits entry into our sod huts, and what is left to the elements. Often this is based on a degree of conformity to norms, on a willingness to fit in, and to play along. We decide what’s suitable to sustain us, cede diversity to the predictable, and leave the rest to wither on the vine. (more…)

Aaron Reichow, untitled

Last week’s steep drop in temperatures had me thinking, overeagerly, of Fall. It has always been my favorite season for its paradoxical combination of things reaching fruition, then brilliantly flaming out. With luck we’ll see a harvest, survive the Winter on what we’ve stowed, and celebrate another Spring. Without luck, well, we’ll have joined the grand circle. (more…)