Once again it’s been too long since I blogged. My day job is insane right now, and it means I have very little mental space and energy for things photographic. I’ve also been trying to keep up with the books I have out of the university, without much success. The one book I’ve been really enjoying is Photography After Frank by Philip Gefter, former Picture Editor for NY Times. One of the reasons I’m enrolling in school next semester is that I really want to learn more about the history of photography, and the essays in this book are really all about that. I’m only about a quarter or a third into it, but I can confidently recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about the last 50 years of the medium.

I’ve also been obsessing over the purchase of a new (to me) camera. I’ve been noticing that the best portraits are often made with large format cameras, which require a very slow process to create a single image. I find working a digital SLR, especially for portraits, has pros and cons. It’s fast so you can capture actions and moments really well. But it’s also a big black machine that I have to have up to my face to get those moments. And I’m generally very impatient, so the speed suits me. But I want to slow down a bit, to become a bit more deliberate. And I want to have the ability to make pictures without a big black machine in front of my face. Also, I’ve been loving the square aesthetic lately, and although I can crop my digital pictures to square, I like to frame very carefully while I’m shooting, and I can’t really see the square that well. So for all those reasons I’ve decided to try medium format, with a twin lens reflex. I’ve been losing auctions left and right on ebay and checking out stuff on craigslist and kijiji. So far no camera, but with any luck I’ll have some kind of Yashica Mat soon. They have a waist level viewfinder which reverses the image left to right so that should slow me right down, along with the manual exposure and the possibility of not even having a meter in camera. No doubt I will experience extreme frustration in the beginning, but hopefully I’ll get through it and my photography will improve.

I promised a while back that I’d give details about the Mother/mother- exhibit and opening reception when I had them, and I’ve had them for a while. The exhibition opens on Dec. 2, and the opening reception is on Dec. 3. I believe it will be up for the month of December. I’m still trying to decide what we’ll do. Originally I’d planned to go up with my whole family but now that I’ve looked into prices, I’m not sure. I find it slightly horrifying that a few nights in NYC will cost at least as much as a week or two in the Dominican Republic, to which my sister and her family just moved last week. So now I’m wondering if perhaps it makes sense for me to find a friend to travel with. I’m even considering not going (I’d feel out of place! What would I wear?! I’d have to pretend I’m smart and gregarious!), but I’d like to meet Jennifer Wroblewski, who’s curating the show and who has been very supportive of my work. I’d love to experience NYC with my husband, but the idea of leaving our son for a few nights kind of terrifies me. Anyways, I’ll figure out something.

Thanks to that exhibition, another opportunity has opened up. It’s looking like the two pictures that are being included in Mother/mother- will also be included in The M Word: Real Mothers in Contemporary Art. I find this very strange. I’m all for being in a book about real mothers, but me? IN contemporary art? I don’t know… Anyways, you can pre-order the book, which is being published by Demeter Press, a very cool publisher out of York University focused exclusively on motherhood.

I’ve had so many rejections lately that I find I don’t really believe these good bits. But a wise friend reminded me that all arts generate more rejections than acceptances, and you just have to guard the acceptances fiercely, which is easier said than done. But I’ll try.

So that’s all for now.