Can you guys critique my website/portfolio of my large format photography work?

[jnantz]

Vincent Price started this FAD in The House of WAX -- 1953!

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045888/

Thanks ! but .. I was thinking a little less waxy+Hollyweird but modern and religious >> Joel Peter Witken. ...

[manfrominternet]

Enjoyed looking through these. Looks like lots of potential for me to shoot out there in Cali. Lots of urban Railroad Landscapes. :-)

Absolutely! California is just such a massive state that you can make project after project here. Think John Chiarra and Gregory Hapern. The only problem that I have in LA is that it's constantly sunny, which drives me nuts. I don't photograph on sunny days because I simply can't deal with all the stark shadows ruining my shots. In that respect, I shoot in the essence of the Bechers, who only shot their works on cloudy days.

[manfrominternet]

I’ll offer my two cents and maybe a few more nickels or dimes… I hold an MFA.

The funded deals aren’t really funded, you end up teaching in year 3 for free so I guess it’s “funded”. You’ll also be living in a major city with an insanely sporadic class schedule. These programs aren’t built for working people in mind. If they were you’d have consolidated class schedules across 2 or 3 days. So you can’t really work, just too hard. Student loans to pay rent and eat.

The point of them? Eh, I’m not sure. The only thing: teaching credentials.

I teach full time. So was my MFA worth it? Yes.

Otherwise, the conversation regarding shooting large format BW amongst a sea of digital work got old real fast.

Also, regarding admissions… it’s 2022 bud, you better have some social causes in that statement. The cis white guys aren’t getting into Yale, no matter how good the work is. They accept like 6 first years. It’s Uber competitive as you know.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You are absolutely correct. It's so funny that you said that the "cis white guys aren't getting into Yale, no matter how good the work is." My Yale MFA photography friend said almost exactly the same thing, verbatim.

[LabRat]

Absolutely! California is just such a massive state that you can make project after project here. Think John Chiarra and Gregory Hapern. The only problem that I have in LA is that it's constantly sunny, which drives me nuts. I don't photograph on sunny days because I simply can't deal with all the stark shadows ruining my shots. In that respect, I shoot in the essence of the Bechers, who only shot their works on cloudy days.

When in Rome, ...

Wherever you are, you have to make the best of prevailing conditions... (Don't shoot an Artic film in the Sahara etc...)

Conditions reflect an environment...

Steve K

[manfrominternet]

When I look at your site on a laptop, I see 12 images. I know that if I scroll down, there are 64, but don't assume your viewers will want to scroll all the way to the end. Are any of them thematically related to each other? If so, why not organize them accordingly on their own pages?

Can you say what you want about any particular theme with 12 or fewer images plus some text?

Your "works" page is just a list of titles, no images. I don't know if this is standard in the MFA world, but I find it frustrating and not very useful. Sure, I can click on one, but a list should have thumbnails.

Good luck on applying to MFA programs. When I was an undergraduate, I got to know a few of the MFA photography students at Stanford, but that was long, long, ago.

They're vaguely related. I don't work in a series. Perhaps diptychs and triptychs, but otherwise, working in a series is simply not how I work. I have no idea how to make that come across. I think people automatically assume, by default, that your work must be thematically related, but mine really isn't.

I will go with the thumbnail idea on the 'works' page since that seems to be the consensus.

[manfrominternet]

Nice images! You've obviously got a particular vision you are working on and it is strong.

My primary advice would be to do a hard edit; 20 images should give the viewer an idea of who you are and what you are up to. Think long and hard about that. Get a couple of people you trust and admire to help you. The images should relate to each other and to the whole without being redundant, unrelated or unnecessary.

Some of the titles seem to be a bit romantic for the type of imagery you are doing (Sleeping Dumpsters, for example). In fact, maybe the titles should just be the location and not even mention the subject ("Vernon, Los Angeles, CA" instead of "Trailer Docked With Brick Warehouse, Vernon, Los Angeles, CA"). Your imagery is stark. Have the titles reiterate that feeling.

Not sure what the purpose of the Works page is. Seems to be redundant and I don't see the need to enlarge on the images.

The last thing is that I'd rather see one large image when I go to the website rather than all the small thumbnails. Click on that image to move to the next. Adds a bit of discovery to the whole process.

Make sure your scans accurately reflect your images. Some seem a little flat while others are very contrasty.

Oh, one last thing. In your Artist Statement you say, "Many of my works are heavily edited collages..." Are these, in fact, collages? If so, kudos. If not, rethink how that is worded. You don't want to misinform the viewer.

MFA or not, keep up the good work!

Thank you for your kind words and great suggestions! I really appreciate it! I will definitely be doing a mach harder edit. I hate the homepage. I originally just wanted one strong image.

And YES! The titles. I'm not thrilled with them either, so I'm glad you commented upon it and gave me some great advice!

Many thanks again!

[manfrominternet]

in the case of the OP he is looking for a full scholarship so it's just time he'd be spending, and if he works off his scholarship teaching classes, he'll have more teaching experience if he wanted to go that route, and he'll have the pedigree that some gallerists look for ( being able to talk the talk and walk the walk ). typically when I've read threads with people who express an interest in higher-ed immediately there are greeted by people who go off on some anti education anti elitist rant, usually ending up with some sort of diatribe about how much they hate what is considered "art" today, their dislike of Cindy Sherman & all sorts of other nonsense. At least this thread didn't end up with that ...

While there are some dissenting voices opposed to the whole idea of an MFA, with valid reasons to truly consider, I think this thread, overall, is in favor of pursuing some sort of higher education if my goal is really to get my work into those 'blue chip' (ugh, really dislike that phrase) galleries.

[manfrominternet]

Having had a late family member who was about a high on the hog as one can get in the Art academia world with four phD's, multiple NEA grants, a great many federal and state commissions, works in the collections of the most prestigious museums in the US as well as a few in Europe, and hearing her advice during long personal conversations, we both concurred it would be counterproductive for me to experiment with a similar route. I spotted the handwriting on the wall once NEA searches started centering on written prospectus submissions of far-out "creative" projects and socio-political ideals rather than actual visual content. And now internet submissions have taken over many opportunities. It's like someone 5 ft 2 inches tall submitting a job application to the NBA by stretching his picture to 7 ft 3 inches in Photoshop.

I can't complain. I got a fair amount of attention of my own early on. Been there, done that. Rite of passage I guess. Glad to have had some real print income too, right when I most needed it. Any academic approach involves pandering to the current tastes of an extant hierarchy. Life is too short in my opinion to navigate that long convoluted detour before finally arriving at a point where one can do what they really want to do. Doing what I wanted to do was therefore where I started from instead, and how I just keep going. There are plenty of other ways of making a living, if needed. And mine just happened to have an especially generous vacation time allowance, permitting frequent trips, plus brought me into contact with a wide variety of successful creative people - exactly the kind of long-term networking I needed.

I agree with this. Regarding an MFA program, the thought of being conscripted into doing work that I don't really want to do does worry me. I keep mentioning my Yale photography MFA friend, but she is a terrific example. The work that originally got her into Yale is terrific, no question about it. Nonetheless, she told me the critiques at Yale were so harsh that she ended up questioning herself constantly, putting her in a state of constant self-doubt and anxiety, and thus creating work that she didn't really want to make. She recently told me that she doesn't even want to work in photography anymore, but rather in sculpture. She also said that many Yale photo MFA grads end up working in totally different mediums, for better or worse...

[Pieter]

Post grad students in other fields really get the short end of the stick, being made to work on their advisors' projects and the like. Less so in the art programs.

[manfrominternet]

I don't think that is necessarily so in the arts. The arts by nature encourage independence. "It is more like look at me, I don't conform to anything" which of course is conforming to nonconformism. Most art coming out of schools today is about how far can one go from the standards to get attention rather than having depth, understanding and skill.

I absolutely agree with this. However, when I toured and looked at the final photography MFA thesis projects coming out of UCLA, I was just stunned by how 'plain' they were, both on the surface and conceptually. Since UCLA is the school where Catherine Opie reigns, it seems like, despite the I-don't-conform-to-anything attitude (which was definitely present), the MFA photography students were nonetheless compelled into making second rate Catherine Opie-type work, or rather try to one-up Opie's own work, which of course failed.