From the series Sub Rosa by Birthe Piontek

At last! This Fall’s Hot Shots have arrived. Someone just got back from Paris Photo mere hours ago and was appropriately exhausted - hence the delay of a few hours before posting the winners. Sometimes you just gotta roll with the punches. Or should I say roll wiz ze panshez. We learned that in Paris.

Without further adieu ado:

Jennifer Boomer
Scott Eiden
Todd Forsgren
Shauna Frischkorn
Georg Parthen
Birthe Piontek
Marie Sauvaitre
Ross Sawyers
Ian van Coller
Carlo Van de Roer

Congratulations! Pencil in the opening for the Fall HHS Showcase on Wednesday, December 12th from 6-8. The showcase will be up until Sunday the 16th - you have four days to check it out!

Extra special thanks to our shining panel stars: Joerg Colberg, Stephen Frailey, Darius Himes, Youngna Park, Kate Bingaman-Burt, Ian Baguskas, Christine Collins, and Joseph Holmes.
It wasn’t easy to decide between all you talented hot shots, but here’s a list of some very honorable mentions: David Balhuizen, Jason DeMarte, William Hannigan, May Heek, Mickey Kerr, Adam Krause, Mollie Murphy, Nandor Ordog, Toni Pepe, Corine Smith, Damian VanCamp and Jon Wasserman

A big merci to everyone who participated, and congrats again to the winners.

Zanele Ndlovu by Ian van Coller

Ian van Coller
Currently residing in Bozeman, Montana

Website
www.ianvancoller.com

Work Statement

This project focuses on the intersection of post-apartheid black and white identities via photographic portraiture and oral recording of black domestic workers.
There are more than 1.5 million black South Africans, primarily women, who still serve as maids and nannies in white households. Although these domestics and their employers remain separated by an enormous gulf in race, culture, education and poverty that characterizes much of South Africa today, they are often wedded by an intensely intimate, personal, and awkward interdependence. In this project, my intent is to capture some of the complexities that all South Africans face in creating and asserting post-Apartheid identities in the face of dramatic economic and cultural realities.
The women in this portrait series were photographed in the homes where they are employed. They were asked to choose their own dress and posture as a means to express their identity within that environment, and became active participants in the construction of these images.

Bio

Ian van Coller is an artist and photographer who grew up in apartheid era South Africa. After receiving a National Diploma in Photography in 1991 from Technikon Natal in Durban, van Coller moved to Arizona in the southwest of the United States. He spent nine years in Tempe where he completed his BFA degree in Photography (from Arizona State University) and worked for 5 years as a photogravure collaborative printer and partner at Segura Publishing, a small fine art printing company in Tempe (www.segura.com). In 2000 Van Coller moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico where he received his MFA in photography from the University of New Mexico. He currently lives in Bozeman, Montana where he is an Assistant Professor of Photography at Montana State University. Van Coller returns to South Africa every year to work on art and photography projects. His work has been widely exhibited in the United States and South Africa where his work is included in many museum collections including The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Fogg Museum, The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and The South African National Gallery (IZIKO).

Untitled (One) by Ross Sawyers

Ross Sawyers
Currently residing in Seattle, Washington

Website
www.rossawyers.com

Work Statement

The spaces in my photographs are influenced by living in increasingly smaller spaces in closer proximity to others in increasingly dense neighborhoods and housing developments of a city like Seattle. I construct the situations I photograph as a way to challenge my understanding of the buildings and neighborhoods I am referencing. Building, then photographing models allows me to exaggerate and over-state what I observe in my surroundings rather than simply replicating it. The environments depicted in my photographs are close to the actual, but deliberately are not accurate copies of reality.

Recently my intentions have shifted from representing specific received ideas to the exploration of why I am so attracted to these types of environments. As the spaces I create and mediate get further away from the reality I know, I have found it increasingly important to incorporate details familiar to us as humans in living spaces in order to ground the images in a sort of reality while at the same proposing situations outside the expected.

Bio

Born in 1979, Ross Sawyers moved from Iowa to Kansas City Missouri in 1998 to study photography at the Kansas City Art Institute. He received his B.F.A. from KCAI in 2002 and an M.F.A. from the University of Washington, Seattle in 2007. Sawyers was recently chosen by the Art in Loop Foundation in Kansas City to be the inaugural artist for the semi-annual commission ArtWall. Concurrent with the unveiling of ArtWall, he was invited back to the Kansas City Art Institute in November of 2006 as a visiting artist. In March of this year Ross was invited to present his art work at the Society for Photographic Education national conference “Look Out� in Miami Florida where he was also presented with the Crystal Apple Award. Sawyers’ work is part of the Belger Family Foundation Collection in Kansas City, the Joseph and Elaine Monsen Collection and the King County Portable Works Collection, both in Seattle. He was selected for the 2006 CoCA Annual His work was seen in his recent solo show at Platform Gallery in Seattle in July and looks forward to a solo exhibition at Gallery 4Culture in January.

Slab City, USA by Marie Sauvaitre

Marie Sauvaitre
Currently residing in New York, NY

Website
www.mariesauvaitre.com

Work Statement

Reflecting on globalization, mobility and the new roles of borders, ERRANCES - French term for something between exile and wandering - explores and pays homage to nomads’ home through color landscape photographs.

For months I traveled across cultures and continents, living amongst nomads, while creating a poetic visual evidence of their “homes�. Starting in Jordan’s Bedouin tents, to Slab City’s trailer parks in California, through the gypsy outposts of Beauduc, France, I then explored New York and completed my photographic journey in Israel’s Negev desert.

From my own experience of exile, I am drawn to these tensions between the pulls of nomadism and the search for the feeling of home. When looking at nomadic dwellings, I am touched by their vulnerability, their transience and the enigmatic play between interiority and exteriority that they engage with the landscape in which they integrate.

My belief in the social responsibility and moral agency of the artist made me choose these places carefully: they cover various regions (the US, Europe, the Middle East) and religions (Muslim, Christian, Jewish). By juxtaposing these economically and religiously contrasting cultures in my images, the arch-narrative of the project goes against a dichotomization of the world. My goal is to challenge the viewer’s curiosity for nomadism, and in a bigger scheme, “Otherness�.

In today’s hybrid post-modern world, one must welcome difference, tolerance and the cohabitation of antagonisms.

Bio

Marie Sauvaitre is a French photographer, now residing in NYC.
After graduating with an MBA from the University of Houston in 1994, she obtained her MFA Photography from the NY School of Visual Arts in 2005.
Her fine art work has been shown since by various galleries in:
- New York: in 2007 in Chelsea at the Robert Steele and Mixed Greens galleries, in 2006 at the Storefront for Arts and Architecture and in 2005 at the Exit Art Biennial.
- Buffalo: Chautauqua Center for Visual Arts and
- California: Richard L. Nelson Gallery, Davis.
Her editorial work is published in magazines internationally (Photoeye Magazine or Time Out New York - USA, Masa Acher - Israel, Korean Photography - Korea, Il Corriere della Sera - Italy) as well as in books such as: Title TK (Anarchive Publications France), New York Downtown Style (Garden City, Taiwan) and Witty Design Objects (Garden City, Taiwan).
Over the past two years, she expended her teaching experience to being a Guest Lecturer in Undergraduate Photography, as well as an Adjunct Professor for Graduate Photography, at the NY School of Visual Arts.

From the series Sub Rosa by Birthe Piontek

Birthe Piontek
Currently residing in Vancouver, British Columbia

Website
www.birthepiontek.com

Work Statement

Similar to numerous other photographers my first take on photography was rather journalistic. Inspired by artists like Jeff Wall, Stephen Shore, Anna Gaskell and the work of David Lynch my pictures became increasingly staged over the last years.

In order to tell my stories, I frequently use a combination of portraits and stills, which currently constitute the lion’s share of my work.

Two subjects have always been of great interest to me: innocence and adolescence – both of which playing major roles in my latest project Sub Rosa.

The intimate moments captured in Sub Rosa oppose the innocent vulnerabiliy of youth to otherwise rather somber settings. We are confronted with introductions and conclusions of stories from a world we once were privy to – all the while hinting at secrets and revealing none.

Bio

I was born and raised in Germany and studied Communication Design and Photography at the University of Essen where I received my M.A. in 2004.

During my time at University, I started working as a freelance photographer for various clients and magazines. To get the experience of living and working in another country I moved to Vancouver, BC in 2005.

Since then my work has been exhibited internationally, and featured in publications and magazines including ‘The New York Times Magazine’, ‘The Globe and Mail’, ‘Stern’ and ‘Die Zeit’. My work has been recognized a number of times, most recently by being honored with the Santa Fe Juror’s Choice Award in 2007.

Village by Georg Parthen

Georg Parthen
Currently residing in Dusseldorf, Germany

Website
http://www.georgparthen.de

Work Statement

My “Lanscape” series is an ongoing project about reality and its photographic representation. I digitally construct photographs of landscapes that are implausible but appear authentic at the same time. It is up to the viewer whether to believes them or not. I want the images to arise doubts whether the shown reality really does exist or not. This works best when viewing the images in real-life size. Also the images represent my personal interpretation of beautiful landscapes.

I studied documentary photography in Essen with Jörg Sasse and just got my diploma a few weeks ago. All my former works are rather strict documentary works about contemporary phenomena as for example carports and mulitplex cinemas. In my new series i try to transcend the idea of documentation further. What is a documentation of a place that does not exist?

Bio

I grew up in Wiesbaden, Middle Germany, then did my social service in the middle of nowhere in the Harz mountains near the former German-German border and then moved to Essen to study photography. I did that for the last 7 years and got the best education I could ever imagine.
The thing that always interested me most in photography was the fact that you tell something or create a feeling without actually saying it.

Robert (Playing Smuggler’s Run: Hostile Territory) by Shauna Frischkorn

Shauna Frischkorn
Currently residing in Willow Street, Pennsylvania

Website
www.shaunafrischkorn.com

Work Statement

My work explores popular culture through everyday life.

Game Boys is an ongoing portrait series of young men engaged in a familiar pastime—they are playing video games. For the past three years, I have been photographing video game players who come to my studio, sit in the dark, and play for hours while I quietly watch and shoot. The studio setting lends a theatrical quality to this commonplace activity. Sometimes, I watch the game to see a particularly interesting sequence, but mostly I just watch the game players. I seek to explore the popular culture phenomenon of video games by examining the “gamers� who play them. Because my work is rooted in the tradition of portrait photography, I look beyond the hype surrounding video games and focus on the players themselves. Traditionally, the belief has been that a portrait could tell us a great deal about a subject: a window into a person’s inner character could be found through facial expressions. Although the expressions on my subjects may appear to be passive, the gamers in these photographs are actually performing fast-paced maneuvers and executing split-second decisions, making these portraits of intense concentration.

Bio

Shauna Frischkorn received her MFA in photography from SUNY Buffalo in 1998. She currently lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and teaches photography at Millersville University of Pennsylvania. She had a two person exhibition at Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art in New York in April, 2007. Publications include American Photography 20, Time Magazine, and Mother Jones Magazine.

Painted Bunting, 2007 by Todd Forsgren

Todd Forsgren
Currently Residing in Boca Raton, Florida

Website
www.toddforsgren.com

Work Statement

To create his paintings, John James Audubon shot birds and contorted their bodies into dramatic poses by wiring and pinning them onto boards. The quirky and flamboyant postures he used were not immediately popular with the scientific community, but today they are renowned.

It was Roger Tory Peterson who pioneered the idea of a field guide. His guides highlight observable marks, pointed out by carefully placed arrows, which allow for the identification of birds at a distance. Peterson painted thousands of systematic illustrations of birds in static poses which he based on photographs, bird skins, and field observations. Field guides have allowed hobbyists, artists, and scientists to identify birds with binoculars instead of a shotgun.

Ornithologists now use mist nets instead of shotguns. These nearly invisible nets are set up like fences and function as huge spider webs, catching unsuspecting birds. The researcher carefully extracts the bird from the net. Each bird is measured, aged, sexed, and banded with an individually numbered anklet. Then the bird is released.

I photographed these birds while they are caught in mist nets, moments before the ornithologist extracts them. Here, the birds inhabit a fascinating space between our framework of the bush and the hand. It is a fragile and embarrassing moment before they disappear back into the woods, and into data.

Bio

I grew up along the shores of Lake Erie, just was of Cleveland, Ohio along a major migratory bird flyway. John James Audubon’s Monograph, Birds of America, and Roger Tory Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central North America were the first pieces of artwork I loved. I spent days studying and trying to emulate Peterson and Audubon as a bird-watching teenager.

As an undergraduate at Bowdoin College in Maine, I studied biology, focusing on using molecularly biology explore ecosystem ecology. However, when I picked up a camera during my senior year, I realized that my youthful passions of birdwatching and gardening lay in photography, not biology. When I graduated in 2003, my only desire was to take pictures.

Since then, I have traveled widely with my camera. My work grew substantially in 2004-2005, when I studied at the SMFA in Boston for a year. Aside from the bird photographs in this portfolio, I have spent much of my time photographing urban and community based agriculture projects. Across the US as well as in Cuba. Next February I begin a Fulbright Fellowship to look at the new agriculture projects in Mongolia.

Sequim, WA by Scott Eiden

Scott Eiden
Currently residing in Brooklyn, NY

Website
www.scotteiden.com

Work Statement

As a history major in college, my senior thesis was a study of the history of the Utopian colonies in the 19th century in the Pacific Northwest. This involved a great deal of traveling to these locations and meeting with people who had some type of link to the colonies. But as I was traveling, I began to meet people who, in their own way, were trying to find their utopia. These people and this search stuck with me for a long time. As I began to take photography more seriously, I wanted to go back and explore this theme further. Having moved to New York, the trips to the Northwest became more personal (being able to visit family, friends, memories, etc) and the project took a more intimate turn. These are images of an admittedly idealized utopia of the Pacific Northwest - my Home. The images are a type of fiction in many ways, an idealization of a place I could no longer live in.
The title of the project comes from a book by Edward Bellamy that was credited with starting the surge of the Utopian movement, and a quote from Thoreau - “It is as hard to see one’s self as to look backwards without turning around.”
The images submitted were photographed with an 8×10 view camera.

Bio

I grew up in Tacoma, Washington, and attended the University of Puget Sound, where I graduated with a BA in History. I have no formal training in photography, but have been taking pictures since I received my first camera at 11 (a Yashica from my mother - I still have it). I began printing my own work in 2000 at the Photographic Center Northwest, and continue to do so in New York. I also print for other photographers (Sze Tsung Leong and Len Jenshel among others) as a freelance printer.

Foreign Vessel in Harbor, Dutch Harbor, Alaska by Jennifer Boomer

Jennifer Boomer
Currently residing in Dallas, Texas

Website
jenniferboomer.com

Work Statement

After I finished studying photography in school, I made the move that so many other aspiring photographers make and I headed straight for NYC. I lived in the city for a year, working as a freelance digital technician for various fashion photographers. I worked hard, learned the business and more importantly, learned what type of photographer I did not want to be. After my year of living in the city came to an end, I made the decision to stop assisting, to build a portfolio and to begin my photographic career on my own terms. In the back of my mind I had always kept stories that an old boyfriend had told me about his former job as an Alaskan fisherman in the Bering Sea. He painted a picture of a vast and colorful place, somewhere that I wanted to experience firsthand. I chose to move from Manhattan to The Aleutian Island Chain in Alaska since it was the furthest place west I could possibly move in Alaska and still be in the United States. I have always been attracted to extreme lifestyles and isolated places, so moving to Dutch Harbor, Alaska seemed to be a great place to live and to work at becoming a better photographer. Photography is how I explore my surroundings and what results is photographs from my fascination with what I find. The following “Greetings from Dutch Harbor� series is the result of my intimate 2-year relationship with the environment and community existing on the edge of the earth in Dutch Harbor, Alaska.

Bio

I was born in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas in 1979 and went to the same school with the same group of students from preschool through high school. I discovered photography in high school and it afforded me the opportunity to stay out of trouble and saved me from otherwise boring weekends hanging out at the local mall. At 16, I saw Diane Arbus’ photograph, “Retired man and his wife at home in a nudist camp one morning, N.J. 1963.â€? It was Arbus’ nudist camp photos that inspired me to venture out of my comfort zone and to photograph people hanging-out at the Downtown Dallas Bus Station. I became facinated with the transitory lifestyle and was eager to photograph the people at the station and to learn their stories about where they had been and where they were going. Needless to say my mother almost had a heart attack when she found out that her teenage daughter was spending her weekend nights at a seedy bus station. Since leaving NYC in 2006, I’ve been living the gypsy lifestyle, traveling across the country while documenting people and places that I discover.