Introduction by Chuck D
Essays by Michael Eric Dyson and Gaye Theresa Johnson, Ph.D.
Interview/Artist Conversation with Frank H. Goodyear, Jr.

Since its inception in the 1970s, hip hop music and the culture surrounding it has become a hugely influential and popular musical form in America and around the world.  Its popularity extends beyond the urban centers where it was born, and pervades and influences youth culture around the globe.

Although the media is full of images of hip hop stars, few artists have created serious and powerful photographs that explore the complexity of the phenomenon. With David Scheinbaum’s images and incisive texts by scholars, cultural critics and public intellectuals Gaye Theresa Johnson and Michael Eric Dyson, as well as an artist conversation with Frank Goodyear Jr. of the National Portrait Gallery, plus an introduction by Public Enemy front-man, artist Chuck D., this book will look at Hip Hop as a positive cultural influence that is akin to the youth movements of the 1960s in its scope.

About the Authors:

David Scheinbaum is the Director of Photography/Artist in Residence at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. With his wife, photographer Janet Russek, he operates Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd., private fine art photography dealers and consultants in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which exclusively represents the estate of Nancy and Beaumont Newhall, the preeminent photo historian with whom Scheinbaum worked from 1978 until Newhall’s death in 1993. Scheinbaum has exhibited internationally, and is represented in many museum collections.  His previous books include Bisti (University of New Mexico Press 1985); Miami Beach: Photographs of an American Dream (Florida International University Press, 1990); Ghost Ranch: Land of Light (with Janet Russek) (Balcony Press, 1997); Images in the Heavens, Patterns on the Earth: The I Ching (with Janet Russek) (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2005); Stone: A Substantial Witness (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2006); Nancy Newhall: A Literacy of Images (Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, 2008); Beaumont’s Kitchen: Lessons in Food, Life and Photography (Radius Books, 2009).

Chuck D (born Carlton Douglas Ridenhour) is an American rapper, author, and producer who helped pioneer the creation of politically and socially conscious hip hop music in the mid-1980s as co-founder of the group Public Enemy, which was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April 2013. He has used that platform to transcend the music and extend his reach to a number of different mediums and all segments of the population, inspiring a generation of artists and fans in the process. Among many accomplishments, he has published a best-selling autobiography, Fight The Power, been a highlysought after speaker on the college lecture circuit (lecturing at universities ranging from Harvard to Howard), and been a prominent member of music industry not-for–profit organizations MusicCares and Rock The Vote, which honored him with the Patrick Lippert Award in 1996, for his contributions to community service. He also started the record label SlamJamz, as well as the internet file sharing websites PublicEnemy.com and Rapstation.com and Chuck D Mobile, a global audio visual cultural network.

Michael Eric Dyson is a writer, scholar and ordained Baptist minister.  Hailed by Ebony as one of the hundred most influential Black Americans, he is the author of sixteen books, including Mercy, Mercy, Me: The Art Love & Demons of Marvin Gaye; Open Mike: Why I Love Black Women; Holler If You Hear Me: Is Bill Cosby Right?; Searching for Tupac Shakur; I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr.; Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X; and Between God and Gangsta Rap.

Gaye Theresa Johnson, Ph.D. is a mother, a partner, an activist, and an academic.  She is Associate Professor of Black Studies with affiliations in the Departments of History and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Her areas of expertise are twentieth century U.S. history; race and racism; and cultural history with an emphasis on music. She is active with the Los Angeles Community Action Network’s (LACAN) struggle for housing and civil rights on LA’s skid row.  Her new book, Spaces of Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity: Music, Race, and Spatial Entitlement in Los Angeles, is a history of civil rights and spatial struggles among Black and Brown freedom seekers and cultural workers in LA. She is also working on a radical history of women in hip hop, under contract with Haymarket Press.

Frank H. Goodyear, Jr. is a curator of photographs at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and an affiliated faculty member in the Department of American Studies at The George Washington University.  He has written extensively about the history of photography. His books include Red Cloud: Photographs of a Lakota Chief (2003), Zaida Ben-Yusuf: New York Portrait Photographer (2008), and Faces of the Frontier: Photographic Portraits from the American West, 1845-1924 (2009).

Foreword by Indrasen Vencatachellum
Gallery Photography by John Bigelow Taylor
Principal International Folk Art Market Photography by Judith Cooper Haden,
David Moore and Bob Smith

The Work of Art examines the role of folk artists in the twenty-first century, recognizing their power as creative and socially responsible champions for global change, connection, and cultural sustainability. Through interviews with folk artists from Mali to Madagascar to Cuba, Peru, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and beyond, Padilla introduces us to individuals and communities who are using their handmade traditions to overcome poverty, gender inequity, environmental degradation, ethnic conflict, and limited opportunities for political, educational, and social advancement. We also hear from influential folk art advocates and entrepreneurs on how to create a viable international folk art marketplace and involve modern consumers in maintaining the world’s living traditions and the cultures they represent.

At the heart of this story is the work of the International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which, since its inception in 2004, has become a major force in the personal and economic empowerment of more than a million international folk artists and their communities. Thanks to the success of the Market and other supporters in the global marketplace, the work of art in traditional communities is today, more than ever, the work of living: generating resources for building schools, funding healthcare, protecting indigenous landscapes, and offering vital livelihoods that preserve skills that have been learned and practiced for generations. The book celebrates the extraordinary achievement of the International Folk Art Market as a profound point of connection, education, and exchange for folk artists and consumers, as well as an inspirational model for other markets the world over.

With nearly 200 photographs of folk artists and their creations, including a gallery of images of folk art masterworks, The Work of Art is an elegant and thoughtful examination of folk art and artists that emphasizes its relevance for all who value ideals of beauty, history, diversity, and community. An informative and hopeful call to action, The Work of Art invites readers to understand and invest in the living legacy of folk art as a way to participate in the human story of the handmade––and to make a meaningful impact on lives worldwide.

Carmella Padilla is a Santa Fe-based author and journalist who writes extensively about intersections in art, culture, and history in New Mexico and beyond. Her articles have been published in the Wall Street Journal, Dallas Morning News, American Craft, Travel Holiday, Latina and elsewhere. Her books include El Rancho de las Golondrinas: Living History in New Mexico’s La Cíenega Valley; Low ‘n Slow: Lowriding in New Mexico; The Chile Chronicles: Tales of a New Mexico Harvest (all with photographer Jack Parsons); and Conexiones: Connections in Spanish Colonial Art (with Donna Pierce). Padilla, who helped launch the International Folk Art Market in 2004, is a recipient of the Santa Fe Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Literary Arts and the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the state’s highest artistic honor.

Indrasen Vencatachellum is an independent consultant and expert in international culture, craft, design, and creative industries. Born in Mauritius, he received a Master of Arts degree at the Sorbonne before serving as Director of Cultural Cooperation at the African Cultural Institute in Senegal. From 1988 to 2008, he was UNESCO’s Director of the Program for the Promotion of Crafts and Design, during which time he created the UNESCO Craft Prize to reward creative artisans. He has been an active supporter of the International Folk Art Market since its inception. He has also edited practical guides for policy makers, promoters, and cultural entrepreneurs on crafts, craft trade fairs, artisans and design. He currently lives in Paris.

John Bigelow Taylor and his partner, Dianne Dubler, are New York-based still-life photographers specializing in architecture, works of art, antiquities, and jewelry. Working with the world’s foremost collectors, museums, and publishers, they have created the photography for over 200 books. Currently, they are producing bespoke, limited-edition books on estates and collections for private clients around the world.

Book-Signing for The Lost Christmas Gift with Andrew Beckham
Collected Works, 202 Galisteo Street, Santa Fe, NM
Friday, November 23, 4pm

Images & Artifacts by Andrew Beckham
Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art, 708 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM
Opening reception: Saturday, November 24, 5-7pm
Exhibition runs November 23 – December 29

Watch the promotional trailer for The Lost Christmas Gift

Sixty years after his father left to be a mapmaker in the war in Europe, Emerson Johansson received a package that had been lost in the mail for decades. An exquisite book, lovingly handmade by his father, details an extraordinary adventure they shared together just months before his departure. Setting out into the mountains on Christmas Eve to cut a tree, they find themselves in a dangerous blizzard. Lost in the snow, they are helped by a mysterious silvery man who does not speak but leaves them a series of gifts that help them find their way home. The enigmatic man’s image is not captured in the photographs the boy took with his new camera, pictures he believed, until now, were long lost. Little did he know that his father had taken the photographs with him to the battlefield and, drawing on vellum overlays, meticulously reconstructed, mapped, and narrated their adventure, revealing that the curious man in the woods was, in fact, no stranger, but somebody well known to us all. This book, destined to become a Christmas classic, is a faithful facsimile of the magnificent hand-crafted present Johanssons father sent him. Featuring a lively combination of maps, drawings, watercolors, and photographs, The Lost Christmas Gift is a poignant reminder that the best gifts, of memory, family, and the kindness of strangers, transcend time but never our understanding.

RECONSTRUCTING THE VIEW: The Grand Canyon Photographs of Mark Klett & Byron Wolfe is featured on photo-eye’s Bookstore homepage today as the Book A Day for Friday, October 26, 2012. You can purchase a copy of the book here.

What would happen if publishers–especially the major houses–banded together and “just said no” to amazon and its unreasonable demands? If the majority did, amazon would have to back down if it wanted to continue selling books on its site. As this article points out, if publishers accede to amazon’s demands, their profit from sales on amazon would be pretty much “wipe out” their profit anyway, so why not use this as an opportunity to change the equation, shift the balance of power to publishers, and reinvigorate the indies? Books are becoming less and less of a profit center for amazon, which is clear by this policy. If amazon ends up selling virtually no books, people will find their way either to bn.com and/or to the indie in their towns. I often wonder what would have happened in the ’80s if publishers had not kowtowed to the demands of the chains, which now seem like child’s play compared to the hardball that amazon is playing.

by Kate Ware and Joanna Hurley

CENTER’s Portfolio Bootcamp, 9-24-11

Before you can write a cogent artist statement, you have to have a really well-thought-out body of work.  So first we are going to discuss the really essential question, which you have to answer before you can even think about writing an artist statement.  That question is,

Do you have a coherent, cohesive, fully-realized body of work yet?

If you can say yes to that question, then you should be able to write an artist statement in about twenty minutes; if you cannot, then you need to go back and rethink your project and where you are with it.

CONCEPTING YOUR PROJECT: How do you Create and Refine Your Artistic Vision?

• A bunch of pictures of a similar topic or place does not a fully-realized project make.
• Start with your PASSION
• Anyone with technical skill can make a good photograph these days, what makes an image and a body of work great is the heart and soul in it, whether it is a documentary project, portraiture, photo-journalism or conceptually-based, it’s that individual spark that sets a project apart.
• It’s also the intelligence and discernment and individual eye of the photographer that is evident in the choices that have been made, from subject matter, to rendering to sequencing.
• This is particularly vital if you have chosen a topic or place that has been done by many people previously—eg Cuba, Mexico, a war zone eg., discuss Alex and Rebecca Norris Web’s book on Cuba, Alex Harris’s book on Cuba, Wright Ledbetter’s book on Cuba

Now we will frame how we talk and think about the artist statement using the tried-and-true journalistic approach to writing a story, that is, answering this set of questions: WHAT, WHO, WHEN, WHERE, HOW, and WHY?

THE ARTIST STATEMENT

1. WHAT is the artist statement?

The artist statement is an essential communication tool that cogently expresses the primary meaning of your work and how you arrived there.

Remember, your viewers haven’t spent the last three years working on your series – you have! They are coming to it cold, and may have a limited amount of time in which to look at it. A good artist statement is the basis for presenting a cohesive, creative body of work.  It is a vital tool for defining and promoting your work.

As such it should provide

• A clear introduction to the work for anyone – a publisher, your mom, a bored teenager, a gallery director, etc. If you do it right, you will assist the casual viewer and encourage those who want to know more.

• Access and clarity
• Basic information on you, the work, your process, your influences and your intention
• Insight into your passion + how it guided you to make this work
• Leaves room for interpretation; guides rather than controls the viewing experience

2. WHO are you writing the statement for?

Who uses artist statements and how?

• Museum curators
• Gallery owners and dealers
• Book publishers
• Collectors

All of these people review work at one time or another, and all of them use the artist statement to

• determine if the work is suitable for their needs
• figure out what the artist is up to
• help the viewer engage with the work—particularly if it is in-progress
• maximize YOUR opportunity to have a constructive conversation about the work with a professional in a position to help you realize its potential and get it out there
• choose work for an exhibition
• assist those writing about your work, often without your being involved, eg. text for a label or education guide
• form the basis of proposing an acquisition
• determine if they want to represent your work in their gallery
• determine if the work is publishable by them or someone else

Joanna writes in her article that seeing a statement on work by emerging photographers is particularly useful in any setting, whether it is a portfolio review or if she is looking at a project for possible book acquisition.  Ideally the work should speak for itself, and the statement should provide any necessary amplification of the artist’s intention and process.

In a review or jurying setting, Kate usually looks at the work first but checks in with the artist statement to make sure she isn’t missing something. It is not unusual for an artist’s ambitions or ideas to be greater than what is clear to a viewer at first glance. You want to draw us in, help us see where you are trying to go, and engage us in helping you get there.

3. WHY is the artist statement necessary?

SEE ABOVE!!!

Many photographers are baffled or resentful about having to write about their work. “I’m a visual artist,” they say, “I speak in pictures.” That’s fine but you also need words to maximize the impact of your work, and to properly share it with the outside world.

If you can’t talk cogently about your work, you haven’t thought it through;

 if you talk too much about it, it’s not ready for prime-time.

4. WHEN?

At what point in the project should an artist write a statement for a body of work?

Certainly this is an individual thing, but the guideline is

• when you have a group of pictures that are starting to cohere, it is time to start thinking about defining the body of work. This can be a very organic process, in which your definition of it or your proposed titled is consistently tested against the pictures themselves.  The statement itself may change as the project changes.
• When the work is really done and ready to be shown to the world.

An excellent example is Dan Milnor’s blog on his work-in-progress on New Mexico:

http://thenewmexicoproject.tumblr.com/

5. HOW to write an artist statement?

Make a Draft

Writing can be difficult for almost anyone, especially when it is something so important and personal. Each person must find his own strategy for getting started, whether it is giving yourself permission to sit down and write whatever comes into your head or speaking out loud and having a friend write down what you say. Start with the objective of writing a paragraph, in language that anyone can understand, that you could use to give a quick sense of what you do. Your initial goal will be to address the following basic questions:

• What is it
• Why you made it: why do you have PASSION for this subject? (and if you don’t have passion then forget the whole thing and start over—more on this below)
• What does it mean
• How do you make it

Edit Your Draft

Once you have something basic on paper, it may help to amplify some of those basic questions, to give yourself room to elaborate a bit:

• What is your idea for the work?
• Is there a working title?
• What do you want it to mean or express?
• How do the materials, presentation, and process you are using contribute to and support your message?
• Keep checking back and forth between pictures and text to make sure what you are saying rings true.
• Test your statement of purpose or title on other people

If you took writing composition in grade school, you may remember tools such as the topic sentence and the outline format, which can be helpful in structuring your statement. Once you get the basic information in place, you can think about how to organize it. Your next goal is to turn the basic information into a statement that:

• Reads easily
• Is informative
• Adds understanding (behind-the-scenes view)
• Is too short rather than too long (1-3 paragraphs max)

You can try putting separate ideas on file cards, if that is useful, or simply use the computer to try a variety of sequences for each idea or sentence.
More tips and things to keep in mind:

• Make sure it has a strong and compelling topic (beginning) sentence to draw us in (Don’t begin with your childhood! TMI disease!)
• Is the most important information at the top of the statement?

• Use your authentic voice: Avoid jargon and “art-speak”

• Be specific not vague
• Tell the truth (the Truth is often a simpler statement)
• Read aloud for clarity and flow
• Write in the first person—but DON’T make it all about you
• Don’t overreach: don’t make your work about everything, then it will surely be about nothing
• Rather, tell us what is distinctive about your work.  This is vital especially if you are working on a project in an area or on a subject that has already been widely photographed

Test it!

Communication gaps – remember the old Gary Larson cartoon about “what we say to cats” and “what they hear,” where the bubble around what we say contains “blah blah blah” and the bubble for what they hear contains absolutely nothing?

What you wrote is not what I heard

Test it out against people who will be honest with you

Be prepared to rework and refine the statement

Essays by Rebecca A. Senf and Stephen J. Pyne

University of California Press
November 2012
Press Release

“In Reconstructing the View: The Grand Canyon Photographs of Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe we are treated to a Jigsaw puzzle of sorts that spans 150 years of Grand Canyon photography, paintings, sketches, and even postcards, a seamless melding of the past and present as seen through works of such giants as Ansel Adams and Thomas Moran and paired with images from Klett and Wolfe. . . . an incredible work of art.”
–Kurt Repanshek, National Parks Traveler

“Stunning…”
–Shelf Awareness

“They create a realm that is . . . portal . . . to an experience of the passage of time and an evolving perspective on place. . . . this paradoxically allows me to engage in a meaningful suspension of disbelief.”
–Karen Jenkins, photo-eye Blog

Reconstructing the View, a four-year photographic project exploring the Grand Canyon, dramatically expands on Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe’s previous collaborations, resulting in a diverse body of work distinguished by its diversity, sense of humor, and power. Calling on a wealth of images of the canyon, ranging from historical photographs by William Bell and William Henry Holmes to well-known artworks by Edward Weston and Ansel Adams to ephemera and souvenir postcards, Klett and Wolfe used digital postproduction methods to bring the original images into dialogue with their own photography. Reconstructing the View interrogates a broad range of issues, including the passage of time and how it is manifest in photography; changing cultural assumptions and perspectives; how images are circulated; and understanding the role photographers—both anonymous and great—have played in picturing American places.

Reconstructing the View is also a collaborative publishing project, initiated by the Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, and produced by HurleyMedia for the University of California Press under the direction of Kari Dahlgren, the art history editor.

Rebecca Senf, PhD, is Acting Senior Curator at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and Norton Family Curator at Phoenix Art Museum.

Stephen J. Pyne, PhD, is Professor, Human Dimensions Faculty, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University.

While I believe strongly that the work must speak for itself, and that no amount of verbal deconstruction will make up for a poorly-conceived or executed idea, a good artist’s statement is essential if the photographer has any desire for recognition or progress, as well as to gain as much as possible from the review process. I have found over the years that the photographers who can speak or write clearly about their work also produce the most affecting and powerful images.

One could argue that that there is an inherent paradox in asking photographers to speak or write about their work; presumably if they could do it in words they would be writers not visual artists.  However, just as the best works of fiction or non-fiction engage the reader on a number of different levels, so do the best works of art and photography.  To read something really clear about the artist’s vision and process enhances the viewer’s experience of the work and, in the review setting––where often a photographer is presenting the germ of an idea as opposed to a fully-realized project––can make the difference between the reviewer not having a clue what the artist is up to and therefore giving a less favorable comment, and being able to provide constructive feedback. This is why I always read the artist statement.

The essential qualities of a good artist’s statement are clarity, brevity, humility and a keen awareness of the work that has come before you and inspired you. But first you have to have some idea of why you want to make the work and what you want to express with it––in other words, a concept, even a simple one.

Here’s a great example. I had the opportunity to hear Julie Blackmon describe how she came to make the kinds of photographs she does. She said that she had studied photography in college, and had been a stay-at-home Mom for several years.  She wanted some artwork for her house, and she thought she could create something herself that would please her as much as anything she could afford to buy.  She admired the work of the seventeenth-century Dutch masters, and she was at home, so her children were her natural subjects.

We are all familiar with the results, which are a fresh, contemporary and very original take on a familiar subject.  The images speak to a sense of history, and are ironic and funny without being self-conscious or pretentious.  Indeed, they have become almost as iconic as their inspirations.  And her statement was short and direct, amplifying the vision behind the work while allowing it to speak for itself––which is, in the end, the whole point.

—–

I first wrote this article after the 2009 photolucida, for their de-brief.  It was then reprinted in Center’s online newsletter.  It actually became the inspiration behind Center’s upcoming “Portfolio Bootcamp”, September 23-24, where one of the main topics of discussion will be–you guessed it:  how to write a cogent artist’s statement. For more information on that very worthwhile seminar, please go to Center’s website, www.visitcenter.org.

George F. Thompson Publishing
Fall 2013

This unique collaboration between Gerry Adams, the renowned leader of Sinn Fein, and Elizabeth Billups, a Santa Fe-based photographer and activist, reveals the Ireland not always seen in guidebooks, as well as a side of Adams not usually captured in the news.

He shares personal anecdotes and family stories along with relevant historical details, legends, and myths, complemented by Billups’ photographs and her impressions of the country culled over many years and many visits. Although Adams does not focus on politics, his discussion of his participation in the historic Good Friday Peace Agreement adds a timely dimension to his text.

Gerry Adams has been president of Sinn Fein, the fastest growing party in Ireland, north and south, since 1983.  He has served as a member of Parliament for West Belfast from 1983 to 1992 and from 1997 to the present.  He is he author of several books, including A Farther Shore: Ireland’s Long Road to Peace, which was published to wide acclaim by Random House in 2003.   He lives in Belfast.

Elizabeth Billups is a Santa Fe-based photographer and political activist who has worked with the American Indian Movement and the International Indian Treaty Council, among others. Her photography has been exhibited in the U.S. and Ireland.