John N Wall/Photographer

I Have Work on The Atlantic Monthly's Cities Blog

2012-01-16T13:06:00.000-08:00

My photograph of basket maker Neal Thomas from my Farmers Market portfolio is featured today on the Atlantic Monthly's Atlantic Cities blog, here.

Cool! or, Brilliant! as they say in England.

I Have Work in the First Juried Show of the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography

2011-09-14T06:10:00.000-07:00

Motor City, here I come.

My image "30% Off" will be in the First Juried Show sponsored by the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography, opening October 1, 2011 and up through October 15, 2011.

The juror was Nancy Barr, Associate Curator, Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

I'm Now on the Faculty of the Raleigh Institute of Contemporary Art

2011-07-18T05:56:00.000-07:00

I will be teaching classes in photography at the Raleigh Institute of Contemporary Art (RICA) this fall.

Go HERE to learn more about the RICA and go HERE to see my web page as a member of the faculty.

Yea!

I Just Made My First Color Fine Art Photograph

2011-06-24T13:42:00.000-07:00

Lets call it for now "Love in the Rain (London, 2011)."

I mainly shoot B&W, even when the image starts off as a color image. I've struggled for years to figure out what a color fine art photograph in the street/documentary tradition would look like.

I think this is it. Made with a Panasonic LX-3. I love it.

My Work Wins First Prize in ArtScene Juried Show

2011-04-02T19:37:00.000-07:00

Three of my pieces have been awarded First Prize in a juried show sponsored by ArtSceneToday.com, a website for emerging artists.

The image above, 30% Off, and More! (Bologna, 2010) is featured on the ArtScene website.

The entire show is here.

And includes Making a Man in Manhattan (NYC, 2010)

and The Embodiment of Desire

Part of winning is getting my own personal webpage, with a portfolio of all three pieces, including Making a Man in Manhattan (NYC, 2010) and The Embodiment of Desire (Bologna, 2010)

This was a multimedia competition. The juror was Adriano Buergo.

Needless to say, I'm thrilled at this news.

Website Revamp -- 1/17/2011

2011-01-17T15:48:00.000-08:00

I've completed reworking my website -- http://www.jnwallphoto.com/index.html -- to include recent portfolios and to update show information and other time-sensitive data.

Have a look and let me know what you think. JNW

Keith Carter Opens Biennial at ECU -- Faces in the Crowd

2011-01-14T11:26:00.000-08:00

The 7th Biennial Photographic Image Exhibition opened last night at the Wellington B. Gray Gallery at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC, with a talk by the juror, Keith Carter, followed by a reception in the Gray Gallery.

Carter spoke to a packed house at ECU's Speight Auditorium in the Jenkins Fine Art Center. He gave a gracious, informative, enlightening and challenging talk that included a review of his own work, from pieces familiar to us from his many books and exhibits to newer work, some of which from series still in process had not been shown widely before.

Later, Keith stayed late in the gallery, meeting exhibitors, autographing his books, and talking photography with one and all. Here he is, talking with Raleigh photographer Allison Overton, who also has work in the show.

Here's yours truly, with the piece of my work that Carter chose for the show:

And here's evidence that at least some folks stopped to have a look at it.

The show itself is large -- over 80 pieces -- and very eclectic, with work representing a wide range of styles, subject matter, approaches, and techniques, from small prints to large, and from kallitypes and platnum prints to digital prints and multi-media constructions. It's a kind of snapshot of lots of things that are going on in photography today, and well worth a visit.

Congratulations to Carter for choosing the strong body of work, and to Tom Braswell and his colleagues at the Gray Gallery and ECU for for their fine work in organizing the competition and mounting the show. I'm honored to be in it.

The show is up through February 19th, so there's plenty of time to see for yourself.

My Work in ECU Biennial, Opens Today, January 13th, 2011

2011-01-13T09:19:00.000-08:00

The Wellington B. Gray Gallery at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC will host the 7th Biennial Photographic Image Exhibition starting this Thursday, January 13th, 2011. The exhibit will open at 5:00 pm with a talk by the juror, Keith Carter, to be followed by a reception. Carter's talk will be in the Speight Auditorium; the reception and exhibition will be in the Gray Gallery of the Jenkins Fine Art Center. Work will be on display until February 19th, 2011.

The Art Faculty at East Carolina has sponsored this competition for 15 years with great success. This Biennial is perhaps the most prestigious juried competition held in North Carolina. This year's competition drew entries from 307 photographers from 23 states. Carter, a well-known photographer and educator, is the Walles Professor of Art at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. He has exhibited widely both at home and abroad and has published over 10 books of his photographs.

Carter chose 83 images for the show, including my piece 30% Off (see above). He gave special recognition to work by Dylan Ray of Beaufort, NC; Bridget Milligan of Tiro, OH; Kenda North of Dallas, TX; Fred Scruton of Cranesville, PA; and Robert Sulkin of Roanoke, VA.

I am honored to be included among such fine company.
The Wellington B. Gray Gallery is located off of Fifth and Jarvis Streets on the campus of East Carolina University in the Jenkins Fine Arts Center. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM and Saturday 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM, except for university holidays.

I plan to attend the reception. Hope to see you there.

On Entering Juried Competitions

2010-12-17T09:17:00.000-08:00

Some reflections on entering Juried Competitions --

I come to the professional practice of fine art photography a bit late in life, but nontheless with great enthusiasm and commitment. One of the things I resolved to do as a step in career development a couple of years ago was to enter at least 2 juried shows out of my local region every month.

I did this for a variety of reasons, one of which of course was that Mary Virginia Swanson, who knows everything about career development in fine art photography, told me to.

As a result, I've been successful sometimes. I've had work in shows from Vermont to Florida, from Texas to California, from New York to Georgia, and a number of stops in between. I won first prize in in one show (see the image above), and placed in others. I've had my work reviewed by a number of distinguished photographers. The same Juror accepted work for one show that he turned down for another. I was told to expect about a 20% acceptance rate and I'm running a bit ahead of that right now, which I take as good news.

I've learned that entering shows is valuable, its worth doing, in part for what one learns from the process when one has to make decisions about one's work, choosing this or that image, assessing what is strong as a stand-alone image and what really is part of a series, and so forth. The best advice I've gotten about entering is to tell oneself that what one is really doing is collecting rejection notices. One therefore is not disappointed when the rejection comes. One actually enters more shows than one otherwise would, and thus stands in more lines, thus increasing the possibility that one of those lines is the right one to be in.

I'm getting better at reading the prospectus to gauge my chances -- researching the juror to find out what kind of work s/he does, appreciates, etc, reading the description of the show's parameters to evaluate whether I have work that seems to fit, etc, evaluating the entry fee to decide whether the gamble is worth it, etc.

But I've also had frustrating experiences. And I'm also aware that the process of running a juried show is getting to be a BIG BUSINESS. The ease of submission by electronic means, the spread of communication about shows through the Internet, and the explosion in the number of folks who aspire to careers in fine art photography have all added up to far more entries for shows than in the old days when entries came through the mail in the form of slides or prints of real work.

Thanks to all this, and to entry fees that can easily run up to $100 per show in some cases, we are beginning to talk about Real Money. I recently did not get into a show in which the average entry fee was about $50, a fairly typical number. My over-polite email of rejection tried to soften the pain by telling me that there were entries by over 600 photographers. This means the income for the gallery with this show exceeded $30,000.

I know there are expenses in setting up and running an event like this. It costs something to put up a website, to handle the entries, to pay the juror's travel expenses and fee, and to stage the show itself. But I have to believe that this show was a major money-maker for the gallery. Galleries and centers that do a juried show a month are probably looking at income from such activities of $350,000 a year from this source alone.

Similar kinds of numbers probably apply to photography festivals and other events that include Portfolio Reviews, where aspiring artists pay significant fees to meet with arts professionals who tell them, in a variety of ways, that the are not the next Ansel Adams or Sally Mann.

Of course, arts organizations need all the money they can get, and I don't begrudge them the opportunity to fund their organization and their programming in this way. This is a case of artists supporting the arts in return for moments of glory and pain, and for the exceptionally rare possibility that something will actually come from the exposure.

At the very least, however, organizations that sponsor these events should, in exchange for the entry fees, treat aspirants with dignity, respect, and courtesy. Often this is the case, but not always.

Here are some things that people organizing juried competitions could do that would improve life for those who look to them for recognition, validation, etc.

1. Standardize on one format for digital submissions. Many shows specify 72 dpi jpegs; others want 300 dpi jpegs. In either case, there is no standard size. In fact, folks ask for sizes all over the map. I spend far too much time resizing images. It would be so good to be able to create a submission file for an image in the knowledge that it was ready to go when the opportunity appeared.

2. Standardize one process for digital submissions. Most folks are going to online submissions, rather than files on CD, which is great. Except that the specific process is never the same from show to show. Some folks want email attachments. Others have portals for entry, each one of which has quirky specifications (see #1 above).

3. Communicate promptly via email with entrants.

3.1. When the entry is submitted, to indicate that the entry is successfully submitted, or, if there are problems with the submission, what those problems might be and how to fix them. This would seem to be a simple courtesy. After all one has sent real money and would like to know that one's work is actually going to be reviewed.

3.2. When the date for reporting on the juror's selections arrives, either report on time or announce a delay and specify when the (delayed) announcement will be made. I have been in shows in which only the winners were notified, so those of us who were not chosen had to wait for the opening of the show to know we weren't in. I've entered shows in which there was a delay in announcing the results but no announcement of the delay, so that days went by in which I felt in a kind of limbo about whether to get the work ready to go or not.

4. Report the results of the jury process to ALL entrants, at the same time.

5. Post an on-line gallery of the winning images so that the rest of us can see if our work was worthy competition for the winners, or if we still have work to do, or if we should never have been in this competition in the first place.

6. Cut out the saccharine rejection notices. No, I don't think you will seriously keep my images around for further consideration. No, I don't need to know the competition was rigorous and the gallery space limited so that many worthy pieces had to be excluded. All I need to know is, is my work in or out, and, maybe, when the next opportunity to submit might come up.

5. If my work is in, be clear about delivery of accepted work, including how to deliver it (framed or unframed, etc), how to pack it (if you don't want work packed in peanuts, let me know), and how to cover return shipment (cash, check, credit card number, prepaid mailing label, etc). I know its coming back. The chance of your selling it is absolutely miniscule, so I need to plan ahead.

These would seem to be basic matters of courtesy and professionalism. Of course, if they were widely adopted even more people would apply, the competition would get even more rigorous, and I would get even fewer pieces accepted. But, hey, I'm in this not to show my work but to get the rejection notices.

Work in Biennial Show at East Carolina University

2010-12-07T08:37:00.000-08:00

My piece, 30% Off (Bologna 2005), has been accepted for the Biennial Photography Show at the Wellington B. Gray Gallery at East Carolina University. The juror this year was Keith Carter. The show opens January 13th, 2011 and runs through February 19th, 2011.

Carter, who is the Walles Professor of Art at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, will give a Juror's Lecture at 5:00 pm on January 13th at the Gallery. The Exhibit's Opening Reception will follow.

Hope to see you at the opening!

Work in This Year's High & Dry Show

2010-11-15T14:52:00.000-08:00

My image Beggar Woman (Jaipur 2008) is in this year's High & Dry show at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, opening this Friday, November 19th, 2010. This is an annual show at Texas Tech, sponsored by the International Center for Arid and Semiarid Lands Studies (ICASALS).

The juror this year was Roy Flukinger, Senior Research Curator of Photography and former Department Head and Senior Curator of Photography and Film of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

I had work in this show in 2008 as well. That year, my image, Man with Cap (Mexico 2007) won first prize.

Meredith Show Ends November 14th

2010-11-13T18:09:00.000-08:00

My show at Meredith College closes tomorrow and comes down on Monday. Anyone interested in hosting it? You can see all the images on my Flickr site here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jnwallphoto/sets/72157624591947917/

Review of Meredith Show

2010-10-27T12:12:00.000-07:00

Max Halperen says some very nice things about my Meredith show in the current issue of Raleigh Downtowner Magazine, free at downtown venues, or you can read it online if you go here

http://tinyurl.com/2a5j9ss

and click on pages 12-13 at the bottom of the site. My review starts at the bottom of the middle column on page 12 and continues at the top of the right column on that page.

Or, you can read it here:

Max says,

At Meredith College's Rotunda, John Wall has mounted a massive show of photographs titled Living in the Gaze. It reveals a perceptive eye that often finds the world at its most ironic. One of the most arresting is "Shoe Merchant" where a lovely, well-rounded woman sits, looking pensively outward, but one learns quickly enough that she is a carefully-carved, well-rounded dummy. The joke is on the viewer. In "Penelope," an elderly woman, walking alone, stares at a tall advertising kiosk in Paris, where a huge poster advertises "Penelope!" and sports three very youthful and gleeful women. Men gaze at women and images of women, women gaze at dressy female image and dummies. In "Shoe Merchant," we are the gazers. Wall is as astute technically and creatively as his subjects appear, but the images are beautifully focused and composed.

"Perceptive eye," "astute technically and creatively," "beautifully focused and composed" -- I'll take that any day.

Meredith Show Now Open!

2010-09-13T07:31:00.000-07:00

My show Living in the Gaze is now up in the Rotunda Gallery in Meredith College's Johnson Hall, through November 14th. Good, friendly crowd at the Reception yesterday. Shannon Johnstone, a professor of photography at Meredith (and a Southern Photographer We Look Out For on my Southern Photography blog), just sent me this image she took at the Reception. Shows my wife Terry, and me, and my friend Carson Boone (also a photographer of great accomplishment).

Living in the Gaze Show Forthcoming at Meredith College

2010-07-14T12:28:00.000-07:00

I'm having a show of my work at Meredith College, opening with a reception from 2-4 pm on Sunday, September 12th, 2010, in the Rotunda of Johnson Hall. This will be a show of about 40 images that explore how we see and are seen by others and how we learn to present ourselves to be seen, performing before others both our desires for attention and our delight in our skill as performers.

I'd make the case that we long for safety and companionship; we conceal ourselves within roles as well as costumes to cover the poor, bare forked animal with the garments of display. In a world rich in the technology of visual display, we are surrounded by images that provoke desire and model for us ways to express and achieve it. The dream world of beautiful images enables and confines, for it defines the cost of hope, the price of desire, the terms of solicitation. In the midst of it all, we make our own way, knowing that we may be freed or trapped by how we play the game.

As a photographer, I am implicated in the giving and taking of visions and revisions, of offering, of display, of performance or of self-definition. The artist sees, responds, frames, records, shapes, presents and therefore participates in the gaze.

These images document my observations, even, sometimes, recording my own presence in the scene. They make it possible for viewers to join in the gaze, to share in the delight or shame or annoyance. These photographs also distance us from what is before us, making the body – and the performance of its display – available for reflection as well as observation or participation.

You can check out the show in advance if you go here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jnwallphoto/sets/72157624591947917/

Hope to see you on September 12th, to see how all this works out.

Mexico Work at Blue Line Gallery

2010-01-27T07:23:00.000-08:00

Work from my portfolio of images from Mexico, including Police Woman (Mexico City, 2008), will be part of the 33rd Annual Open Show at the Blue Line Gallery of Roseville Arts!, in Roseville, CA, opening with a reception from 6:30-9:00 pm on Saturday, February 20th, 2010.

The show is up through April 9th, 2010. Blue Line Gallery is at 405 Vernon Street, Roseville, CA.

The juror was Shelly Willis, Public Art Administrator for the City and County of Sacramento, CA.

Opening Night at the B. Complex

2009-10-07T09:01:00.000-07:00

Opening night of the ME.MY.SELF.EYE show at the B.Complex space in Atlanta, Saturday, September 26, 2009.

My image -- "The Artist Creates in MOMA" -- is the image to the right on the white panel to the left.

The show is up through October 17th. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Honorable Mention in NC Photography Biennial

2009-09-13T16:20:00.000-07:00

My body of work from Mexico, including my image Tortilla Chef (Santiago de Anaya, 2008), was awarded Honorable Mention in the North Carolina Photography Biennial Show which opened today at the Frankie Weems Gallery at Meredith College, in Raleigh, NC. The show is up through November 1st, 2009.

The juror was Deborah Willis, currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts of New York University.

The Artist in MOMA in Me.My.Self.Eye Show

2009-09-11T17:17:00.000-07:00

My image The Artist Creates in the Museum of Modern Art has been selected for ME.MY.SELF.EYE, a show of self portraits at the B. Complex Artists Cooperative in Atlanta. The show opens Saturday, September 26th, 2009 with a reception from 6 to midnight and remains up through October 17th.

The jurors for this show included Stacie Lindner, Managing Director, the contemporary; Susan Bridges, Director/Owner, Whitespace Gallery; and Steve Aishman, Faculty, Savannah College of Art & Design, This show is part of Atlanta Celebrates Photography 2009.

This image was made in MOMA in NYC in the spring of 2008, during a show called TAKE YOUR TIME featuring work by the installation artist Olafur Eliasson. Eliasson's room-filling works included elaborate play with shadow, color, light, and form and were all very interactive, putting viewers inside the work while making their shadows and movement part of the art work itself.

Eliasson is a photographer as well as a sculptor and designer with light. From my point of view, one of the most interesting moments in the show was moving into a space where, as I suddenly realized, the lighting was such that the world -- and the people around me -- looked as they do on black-and-white film, with no color, only tones of grey.

One of the installations -- called Space Reversal -- was a mirrored cubicle that extended outside the building, several stories up in the air. Here is another photographer's take on the same space. Combining windows with mirrors, the space provided the experience of being outside while inside, offering multiple perspectives on the observer and the observed.

This space also provided me the opportunity for an image for my "Artist-in-Museums" series, making art at the moment of experiencing art as well as documenting the enabling as well as disabling roles of art institutions as they bring art to us while separating the world of artists into those who exhibit at MOMA and those (like me) who don't. Or at least not yet.

Live Your Life in SPARKcon

2009-09-10T14:18:00.000-07:00

My image Live Your Life has been accepted for artSPARK, a gallery show in conjunction with the Raleigh arts festival SPARKcon open September 17-20, 2009 in downtown Raleigh. Check it out at 230 Fayetteville Street, opening at 6 pm on September 18th.

Mexico Portfolio in NC Photographers Biennial

2009-08-31T18:15:00.000-07:00

Four images from my Mexico portfolio, including Man with Cap (Santiago de Anaya, 2008) and Police Woman (Mexico City, 2008) have been accepted for the North Carolina Photographers Biennial Exhibition opening September 13th and running through November 1st 2009 in the Frankie Weems Gallery at Meredith College, in Raleigh, NC.

The juror was Deborah Willis, currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts of New York University.

Basket Maker in Slow Exposures Show

2009-08-31T17:29:00.000-07:00

My image Basket Maker (Farmers Market Series, 2005) has been accepted for Slow Exposures 2009, a juried show Celebrating Photography of the Rural South, up September 18-20 and 23-27, 2009 in Pikes County, Georgia. The juror was Tim Barnwell, a photographer based in Asheville, NC who has published several books documenting life in rural Appalachia.

This image is part of a portfolio documenting the people who buy and sell at the NC State Farmers Market, where North Carolina's past as a rural and agricultural state addresses its current transformation into an urban, multiethnic, and multicultural region. For more images from this portfolio, go HERE.

The Cost of One's Art accepted for the Far from Home Show at Vermont Photography Workplace

2009-08-31T13:59:00.000-07:00

My image The Cost of One's Art (Barcelona, 2003) has been accepted for the Far From Home Show at the Vermont Photography Workplace in Middlebury, Vermont.The show, at the PhotoPlace Gallery, runs from August 18th to September 8th, 2009.

The juror for this show was May Mantell, who teaches photography at Middlebury College. You may see the images in the show by going HERE and scrolling down the page.

Man with Cap also in the ONWARD 2009 Show at Project Basho

2009-08-31T13:45:00.000-07:00

My image Man with Cap (Santiago de Anaya, 2008) has also been accepted for the ONWARD 2009 Show at Project Basho in Philadelphia. The juror was Peter Barberie, Curator of Photographs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

This show is up through the month of January 2009. You may see the images in the show by going HERE and following the links.

Man with Cap wins First Prize in High + Dry

2009-08-31T11:44:00.000-07:00

My image Man with Cap (Santiago de Anaya, 2008) has been awarded First Prize in the 8th annual High + Dry Show, sponsored by the International Cultural Center, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX. The show will run December 5 to January 16, 2009.

The juror was D. Clarke Evans, director of the Texas Photographic Society.

This image is part of a series of portraits of people living in the high desert of northern Mexico, in the small town of Santiago de Anaya, in the state of Hidalgo, near the city of Actopan.

Male Gaze also in Love & Fear Show

2009-08-31T11:16:00.000-07:00

My image Male Gaze (Malta, 2001) has also been accepted into the Love + Fear Show at the Kryder Gallery of Contemporary Art in Dahlonega, Ga. Dates for the show are October 1 - November 23, 2008.

This show is part of Atlanta Celebrates Photography (2008). The juror was Atlanta artist and art educator Hank Margeson.

To view this image, see below. To view all the the images accepted for the show, go HERE.

Archway Series in Winter Show at Green Hill Center

2009-08-31T07:57:00.000-07:00

Four of my images in the ongoing archway series have been accepted into the Winter Show at the Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art, running the month of December 2008.

This image, showing the chapel at one of the colleges at Cambridge University, is one of an ongoing series of images showing archways, doorways, and buildings sited through archways.

Fire in the Belly at Cultural Arts Center

2009-08-31T07:32:00.000-07:00

My image Fire in the Belly (London, 2005) has been accepted into the National Juried Exhibition at the Cultural Arts Center in Douglasville, GA.

This is the Cultural Arts Center's 21st Annual National Juried Exhibition. The juror was William U. Eiland, Director of the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, GA. The show is up from November 1, 2007 to November 30, 2007.

This image documents one moment in the life of a fire-breathing sculpture evoking the power of rock'n roll, perhaps evoking Bruice Springsteen, on exhibit in London in 2005. It has also appeared on a poster advertising SPARKcom, the annual festival of creativity in Raleigh, NC.

Male Gaze at Main Street Gallery

2009-08-31T03:59:00.000-07:00

My image Male Gaze (Malta, 2001) has been accepted into the National Photography Show at the Main Street Gallery, Groton, NY.

This is the Gallery's fourth juried fine art photography exhibition. The jurors were Stan Bowman, emeritus Professor of Photography at Cornell University, and Roger Smith, Director of the Main Street Gallery. The show is up from October 25 - November 25, 2007.

This image, which documents a window display in a department store in the city of Valetta, on the island of Malta, is part of an ongoing body of work about gender and performance in western culture. It was also included in the HandsOFF show at the 621 Gallery in Tallahassee, Florida, earlier this year.