Bastienne Schmidt, Laundry Spiral, Bridgehampton, from the series Home Stills, 2009, Chromogenic print, 16 x 20 inches, Courtesy of the Artist and Ricco/Maresca Gallery, NYC. © Bastienne Schmidt, 2009.
Warm and colorful, doesn’t it sound wonderful? Well, if we can’t have warmth in winter, at least we can have color. Right now at the Photographic Resource Center (PRC) in Boston, the four winners of the Leopold Godowsky, Jr. Color Photography Awards are exhibiting their work. Given once every four years, this international competition of over 150 nominated artists was initiated by the family of Godowsky, co-inventor of Kodachrome film. Francine Weiss, Curator of the PRC, administered the competition and served as juror, along with Nathalie Herschdorfer and Roy Flukinger.
Alejandro Cartagena, Car Poolers No. 1 from the series The Car Poolers, 2011-2012, Archival Inkjet Print on Cotton Paper, 22 x 14.3 inches. © Alejandro Cartagena, 2012.
Although Kodachrome film was discontinued in 2009, the Godowsky Color Awards honor his legacy and recognize “achieved excellence in color photography”, focusing on emerging and under-recognized artists who employ new approaches to color photography.
Louie Palu, Afghan soldier warming his henna stained hands on the front lines, Zhari District, Kandahar, Afghanistan, from the series The Fighting Season, 2007. Pigment Print, 20 x 24 inches. © Louie Palu, 2007.
Louie Palu, a Washington, D.C. based documentary photographer, won First Place for “The Fighting Season”, a series of photographs taken between 2007-2010 while he followed troops fighting the Taliban insurgency in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Focusing on medics who collected casualties, Palu’s sensitive work expresses the human side of conflict, with an unusual incorporation of natural landscape as an integral part of the fighting and an unfortunately generous use of the color red.
Alejandro Cartagena, Car Poolers No. 49 from the series The Car Poolers, 2011-2012, Archival Inkjet Print on Cotton Paper, 22 x 14.3 inches. © Alejandro Cartagena, 2012.
In his series, “The Carpoolers”, Mexican photographer Alejandro Cartagena captures a bird’s-eye view of laborers carpooling in the back of pick-up trucks, part of a larger project that considers the effects of suburban expansion on local ecosystems. Cartagena’s uniformity of composition in combination with his unique viewpoint succeeds in focusing the viewer’s attention on the absorbing array of colors, shapes and activities in the truck beds, ultimately centering our attention on the humanity of the carpoolers.
Aaron Blum, The Daughter of Morgan Morgan, from the series Born and Raised, 2010, inkjet print, 20 x 24 inches. © Aaron Blum, 2010.
Aaron Blum, a native West Virginian photographer, explores what it means to be Appalachian in his series, “Born and Raised”. If identity is the substrate, “the unique quality of light inherent to the hills” is the featured character in Blum’s light infused studies of “magnificent and eerie” landscapes, as well as his admittedly idealized portraits of his “upper middle class family and friends”, cast against type in a warm Southern glow.
Bastienne Schmidt, The Turquoise Room, Samos, from the series Home Stills, 2008, Chromogenic print, 16 x 20 inches, Courtesy of the Artist and Ricco/Maresca Gallery, NYC. © Bastienne Schmidt, 2008.
In her conceptual series, “Home Stills”, the German-born New York photographer Bastienne Schmidt strongly references the writer “Virginia Woolf’s idea of a ‘room of one’s own’” as she reflects on the world of the housewife and “the strangeness and beauty of domestic life”. Using herself as the anonymous model in imaginary recreations, Schmidt cites a plethora of literary and artistic influences while mining the interior “everywoman”, with color playing a key supporting or contrasting role in her strongly composed scenes.
Louie Palu, Medevac helicopter on mission over Zhari District, Kandahar, Afghanistan, from the series The Fighting Season, 2010, Pigment Print, 20 x 24 inches. © Louie Palu, 2010.
The Leopold Godowsky, Jr. Color Photography Awards show will be at the PRC in Boston through March 22, 2014. The public is invited to the opening reception tomorrow night, Thursday, February 13th, from 6:30-8:00PM. For more information, go to: https://www.bu.edu/prc/
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