Fishing, Port Mahon, Delaware by Spring HS Casey Orr

A friendly reminder––just in case you haven’t made your way on over to our home on Flickr, we’ve posted work from each of our new Hot Shots for your browsing delight. Enjoy.

Untitled (Hanoi no.2) by Spring HS Kelly Shimoda

The list is in! The time has come to announce the 10 artists selected for the Spring 2007 Edition of Hey, Hot Shot! And the winners are…

Clint Baclawski
Nina Berman
Michael Julius
Karolina Karlic
Mark Marchesi
Casey Orr
Justin James Reed
Pavel Romaniko
Kelly Shimoda
Daniel Traub

Pencil it in, the showcase soiree in honor of our Hot Shots is Wednesday June 13 from 6–8PM. Get on down to the jb, see the work, and support the winners. The show will be up from June 14–17, 2007 and quite a show it promises to be!

Special thanks to our fabulous group of panelists––Anthony LaSala, Lesley Martin, Jörg Colberg, Raul Gutierrez, Jenni Holder, Youngna Park, Christine Collins, and the Ultras, to Jeff Kirsch and Jesse Chan-Norris for all their hard work and commitment to the jb, and, of course, a whoppin’ thank you goes out to all of the participants for sharing their work with us.

And what work it is! Our panelists were posed with what seemed the impossible feat, narrowing it down to a mere ten proved just as difficult as expected. Some honorable mentions are in order:

Matias Aguilar, Rob Ball, Nelson Chan, Larissa Cleveland, Kate Copeland, Shane Lavalette, Maria Passarotti, Will Sanders, Michelle Sank, Deidre Schoo, Tamir Sher, Rylan Steele, Joseph Tripi, Ching Wah Lam, Greg Wasserstrom, Emily Winton

Congratulations to all! Stay tuned to the HHS! Blog for more news, fun facts, and other tidbits of information for your pleasure and entertainment.

A Bump in the Road by Spring HS Clint Baclawski

Clint Baclawski
Currently residing in Boston, MA

website: http://www.clintb.com

Work Statement
My most current work depicts a spectacular American culture saturated with large-scale color imagery, consumerism, and forward momentum. The attractions featured in this series are both novel and commonplace, including parades, reenactments, fairs, and trade shows in ordinary communities around our country every day. Each event is transitory, challenging me to capture a single image before that scene is forever altered. Photographing multiple frames at each location allows me to draw out fragmented cinematic feeling narratives between the subjects and their environments by seamlessly compositing them together.

Defying conventional framing techniques, my photographs appear in large (40×50x12inches), wooden, double-sided (one image on each side), freestanding light boxes. They strive to capture the attention of the fast-paced onlooker in our image-glutted world. Taken out of context and into a gallery setting, I encourage the viewers to experience the work from multiple perspectives. One has to bend, crouch, and circulate the work in order to see its entirety. This movement leads to the discovery that although the two images on either side are the same; one photograph is reversed, thus, horizontally resembling the effects of a mirror. The height restraints of the box are set to the level that spectators on the opposing sides have to face one another as they view the work. This shift from passive reception to active participation mimics the subjects in the photographs.

Bio
Clint Baclawski was born in Lewisburg Pennsylvania (a twin in fact), in 1981. He currently resides and works in Boston, MA where he is pursuing his MFA at the Massachusetts College of Art, expected 2008. He received his BFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology (R.I.T.) in 2004. Additionally, Clint has traveled and photographed extensively in the United States, Cuba, and Northern Ireland. To know more about Clint, visit: www.clintb.com

Pfc. Adam Zaremba by Spring HS Nina Berman

Nina Berman
Currently residing in New York, NY

website: http://www.ninaberman.com

Work Statement
I’m a documentary photography interested in the American political and social landscape. I started as a writer wanting to tell stories but found myself increasingly frustrated with the act of writing and would edit myself into oblivion. I chose instead to make images because I felt the process was inexact and I enjoyed not knowing for sure if what I felt and hoped to convey actually came through in the photograph. Now I intentionally seek the ambiguity of a photograph’s meaning and welcome the conversation generated by imagery that has multiple interpretations. I have no formal training other than a dark room course long ago at the New School. I am submitting images of those wounded in wartime. I made the photographs in an attempt to explore the myths of warfare and offer images that strip the warrior of heroic sentiment.

Bio
I was born in NYC. I was moved by my parents when I was in grade school to the suburbs of New Jersey for the excellent public schools which I thoroughly despised and left high school early. I went to college at the University of Chicago where I started taking pictures inspired by the work of filmmakers, photographers and writers. I returned to New York, got a journalism degree at Columbia University, and have worked as a freelance photographer for magazines ever since. I’ve won a few big photojournalisim awards, an Open Society Institute grant and a NYFA fellowship.

Chris Austin’s nail accident by Spring HS Michael Julius

Michael Julius
Currently residing in Interlachen, FL

website: http://mjulius.com

Work Statement
The pictures I am submitting are from a work in progress, Rescuing Putnam. The completed work will reflect approximately ten years of my experience as a paramedic in the rural south of North Central Florida.

In this project I have looked at the charged environment of emergencies and the quiet spaces between looking for a presence that is difficult to define but permeates this rarefied environment. I am also interested in showing the evolution of a community through its rapid growth and how it has affected emergency services and its personnel. This work is an attempt to honor something significant and essential despite the rapid pace of change.

Bio
I grew up in a small town in Indiana and attended Indiana University for a while. I studied Anthropology before leaving to live on the West Coast. Since then I have been employed at various jobs around the country and briefly overseas until I came to Florida in the late 90’s. I am now 35 years old.

Rosa Parks Blvd by Spring HS Karolina Karlic

Karolina Karlic
Currently residing in Minneapolis, MN

website: http://karolinakarlic.com

Work Statement
“Why did we come here?” I asked years later. It was probably the first time my father answered any of my questions truly from his heart. “You should never abandon your home,” he said. I realized his regret, in “jumping the gun”, losing friends, family, and career, while gaining a life for his daughter. Just as my father built pride in his life here in America, I cherish the remarkable circumstances that the people of Detroit endure.

The resulting work is my continued quest to understand how pervasively Detroit and its people have transformed me into who I am today, and have continued to push me away from where my parents came from.

I continue to attempt to define myself and have a fascination with the unappreciated or those with great desires.

My inspiration comes through my research on master painters of Poland whom never received acknowledgement in their lifetime and from within the writings of ethnographic studies.

Bio
On the streets of Detroit in 1990, I was a white girl exactly where I should be. My family emigrated from Poland in the late 80’s. As a young girl my father would say, “We came here for you.” At the time Poland was under communist rule and my father, as an engineer, and a highly educated man, still had to wait in line for bread for more than a day to provide for his family. As smart as he was, he understood that he could do great things in the auto industry, especially in the land of opportunity.

I always carried a camera, fascinated with recording my life, while analyzing and holding onto what could be lost moments. My memories form Poland stayed in Poland and my experiences here were not a part of my history but a start to my new understanding of this beginning.

I received my BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Benno Schmidt, Portland Harbor by Spring HS Mark Marchesi

Mark Marchesi
Currently residing in South Portland, ME

website: http://www.markmarchesi.com

Work Statement
I have recently wrapped up shooting on a three year project titled “The Town and the City” It is inspired by Jack Kerouac’s classic literary work which is set in a dying Massachusetts mill town. The novel stuck a chord and filled me with nostalgia for a time when New England mill towns thrived and the word “home” was not just a term used by developers to sell more houese. I am now beginning work on a project titled “The Maritimes” which explores the seafaring cultures of the North Atlantic and the stoic individuals who depend on commercial fishing for their livelihood. In addition, my series “Friends and Strangers” is an ongoing exercise in classical large format portrait photography.

Bio
Mark Marchesi was born in 1977 and raised in Rye, New York. He moved to Portland, Maine in 1995 to attend Maine College of Art and graduated in ‘99 with a BFA in photography. Mark’s photos have been exhibited in group shows all around the country- most notably Unframed First Look at Sean Kelley Gallery and W Behind the Lens Competition Finalists show at Spike Gallery in 2004. In 2006 Mark received a grant from the Maine Arts Commission to support his project “The Town and the City”. Currently Mark lives and works in South Portland, Maine.

Fishing, Leeds, Yorkshire by Spring HS Casey Orr

Casey Orr
Currently residing in Leeds, UK

website: http://www.caseyorr.com/

Work Statement
My work is about journeys, lines, grids, America and my personal narrative, unconscious flows, and how man interacts with nature for the benefit of commerce. I’m often responding to the fact that I no longer live in America. I’m constantly exploring this separation from my own culture, landscape and family. These photographs are from a series called By Water. On July 7th of last year I rode my bicycle from my home in Leeds, England, 127 miles along the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, to Liverpool where I boarded The Independent Venture, a container ship. Ten days and 3500 miles later we docked in Chester, Pennsylvania, my birthplace. By Water is a series of photographs about that journey, about how water connects us, how it linked us historically through wool, cotton, tobacco, and slavery and how it links us now through the often invisible movements of goods. The photographs are also about time; killing time and wasting time. The three I’ve sent you are of fishermen along this journey, all waiting for a bite.

Bio
I was born in 1968 and am originally from Pennsylvania. I grew up around West Chester and Wilmington, Delaware. I have a BA from Goddard College in Vermont where I studied art and made up games to get through the long winters. I’ve lived in England for 13 years. I’m a photographer, artist, mother, and teacher. I’ve been taking pictures since I was 15 but I’ve been watching the world around me change out of all recognition since I can remember.

Alexandria, Carlito, and Shayne, Jackson Street, 2006 by Spring HS Justin James Reed

Justin James Reed
Currently residing in Philadelphia, PA

website: http://justinjamesreed.com

Work Statement
I moved to South Philadelphia about two years ago from rural Idaho. It was quite a shock to be in an urban inner city again, and I was surprised by how put off I was by the environment. It was only until I started exploring this specific part of Philadelphia at dusk that I was able to approach it as a photographic subject. Exploring streets and finding isolated moments of serenity became my way of coming to terms with this city. I became interested in the relationship between evacuated spaces, and contained lives in the cityscape. Focusing on the young people that live here is another way of revealing quiet beauty under a rough exterior. Through juxtaposition of portraits with the lived environment a more personal vision of this hostile terrain presents itself. By focusing on South Philadelphia’s individual aspects I am documenting the place that I see, and am now proud to call home.

Bio
Born. 1980 Boring, Oregon

My family moved all over America for much of my childhood, and I ended up in Minneapolis at the age of 17. It was there that a great friend gave me my first camera, a 1972 Nikkormat. After a few years of personal practice, I decided to pursue photography from a more academic angle at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. After graduation I worked as both a commercial photographer, and as a printer for Alec Soth. These experiences helped to solidify my interest in pursuing my own work. So I headed for greener pastures (read living on a lake in the middle of the woods) in Idaho. After a year of solitude and a lot of shooting, I moved to Philadelphia. I am currently in the process of finishing up my Masters at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art.

Untitled (Roxy) by Spring HS Kelly Shimoda

Kelly Shimoda
Currently residing in Brooklyn, NY

website: http://www.kellyshimoda.com

Work Statement
I capture images to feed my obsession with the intricacies of human behavior. I am fascinated by the way that humans interact with their environments: how they construct spaces for themselves and others, how they move through those spaces, and how those spaces become reflections of their inhabitants. Through both still and moving images, I examine encounters, moments, and arrangements of objects that reveal patterns in our collective actions, and insight into our collective psychology. I am interested in finding and sharing images that resonate with viewers emotionally, such that they might feel more connected to the world, or gain a deeper level of awareness about themselves and their surroundings. I want to challenge people to slow down, reflect, and hopefully gain some degree of introspection.

Bio
I grew up in Connecticut, and got my first camera - a Kodak disc - in elementary school. Though it wasn’t until I was living in Barcelona in 2000 that I picked up a camera more seriously. I loved the life there and started taking a picture a day to be able to remember it all, which propelled me to think about photography more seriously. The consistency of thinking about and looking for images hiding in the everyday helped me to translate the way I see in my head onto film. I also discovered that the camera was a way to ask strangers questions, which satisfied a lot of my curiosities. It took me a few more years before I quit my corporate job and made the leap.

I completed the ICP’s Certificate Program in Documentary Photography/Photojournalism in 2005 and co-founded the photo collective/agency, Veras Images (www.verasimages.com). I have since been published in the New York Times and Le Monde 2, among others. In 2006, I received an Honorable Mention in The Magenta Foundation’s Emerging Photographers competition, was selected for the Soho Photo Gallery’s National Competition Exhibition. This past February I received a Johnson & Johnson Photography Fellowship to shoot in Latin America.

Prior to ICP, I spent six years in international education and communications. Before that I graduated from Brown University with a BA in Latin American Studies and American Civilization. I currently live in Brooklyn and am 31.