out·take (outtk) n.

The space is really what kills people out here.  The same thing that draws them in also turns them away.  It never ceases to amaze me how much effort is given towards filling it in.  Houses and strip malls, highways, trails, paved trails, trails with lights so you can walk at night, telephone poles and information kiosks.  The mighty hand of progress has decided that the west is a blank page to be filled, a canvas to be colored.  I’m pretty sure that the eastern artists got it right when they decided to embrace the white of the paper, to let the negative space signify the clouds, the oceans, those spaces so sacred that the hand of man could not reproduce them without risking blasphemy.  On those scrolls, the white is a resting point to contemplate the relationship between the things that are painted and the things that are not.

Tomorrow it looks like I’m off to Albuquerque for a couple days.  More photographs to stash away into my drawer, a quiet love affair with the great west.  The trip winds along the forward edge of the Rocky Mountains where the expansive, open ocean of middle America breaks against a geography that pulls upward nearly three miles into the atmosphere.  The journey will close out two weeks that have afforded me yet another trip to Colorado’s northern neighbor, connecting the dots along a span of highway covering nearly 20 hours.

The images that mark off the stopping points along that line fall into one of two categories: images that are part of the unfinished sentence of a work-in-progress or photographs handed over to editors for future publication.  In either case, not suitable for the blog.  What remains are the fragments chipped away from the bigger picture and left on the floor.  Interesting, but not  quite contextualized.  They are bastard pictures, outtakes, orphans, photographs with no home.  An art opening, a stop at friend and filmmaker Chris Bagley’s Cheyenne, Wyoming home (that doubles as a live-in prop house), highway, parking lots, and the frozen frames projected of old commercials, cult movies, and everything else in between.

Here’s to another week celebrating everything in between.

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It’s not for lack of material that I haven’t shared any new work over the last week.  Just finished a trip to Wyoming with most of that material under embargo and have a few long-term gigs that fall into the same category.  Looking forward to seeing them published so that I can share them.  For the time being, it’s a waiting game.

On Wednesday I head back up to Wyoming for another project, something that is uncharacteristically under wraps.  The only pieces that I can really share is that I’m going somewhere into the middle of Wyoming to meet a secretive gang of cowboys for a week of horses and craziness that promises to give the Sturgis a run for its money.  Details (and photographs) forthcoming.

For anyone trying to reach me, I will be checking voicemail whenever I can find a decent hill.  Daily affairs and inquiries can be directed to davidbanks@luceoimages.com

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with my last quiet frame for the week, another round with Denver’s fashionista tennis contingent.

See you all next week.  Godwilling, still in one piece.

Inside Analog Photo, a radio program that focuses on traditional photographic processes, recently featured my Polaroid work for one of their segments.  The feature included an interview about the project and the process.  The segment can be downloaded from iTunes, here: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=291806626

Three of my photographs have been selected to show in the final edit of Art from the Heart, a fundraiser-benefit for The Vanderbilt Republic Foundation’s Masters project this fall. The project is a partnership with Arn Chorn-Pond and Cambodian Living Arts, and will devote four weeks to documenting the lives of the Cambodian performing masters who narrowly survived the Khmer Rouge.

The show will be in the Galleries at Calumet Photographic and curated by Audrie Lawrence & Celeste Holt-Walters of Heart Art Productions.  Donors will have the opportunity to select an unframed print from the show for their collection.

Preview the show at Calumet Photographic, 22 West 22nd Street, New York City Sept 8-9th or attend the opening from 7-10pm on the 10th.  More information available here: http://vanderbiltrepublic.org/afth/

The three photographs selected by the show’s curators appear following the page-break.

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out·take (outtk) n.

Another week of homeless frames.  Maybe part of a series, maybe filler for an essay, but most likely they’ll go to the Island of Lost Pictures, that abyss on my hard drives that is reserved for things less-utilitarian.

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(Click the image to view this video on Lo Scalzo’s Vimeo page)

If you’re a literature critic, you have so many tools to work with.  All the different paradigms you can put a text through, all the different tools that a writer uses to fix their points to a sentence.  Tone, rhythm, diction, word choice, structure, metaphor, analogy, dialogue, denotation, connotation, imagery, personification, allusion, metonymy, meter –the list is bottomless.  These subtle devices impact meaning and allow the writer a sense of sophistication and nuance that is so important to how they present their message.

Sometimes, if you look at too much of the daily pulp, it’s hard to believe that this same level of sophistication is possible in the visual sense.  At its worst, story gets mistaken for a children’s book, taking on the rote structure used to relay information to eight year-olds: beginning, middle, end, climax, resolution.  The photographs follow the same, clunky pattern: wide, medium, tight, rinse, repeat.  And, perhaps, someone chops the layers out of a photo to make a headshot, turning the photographer’s crafted statement into a rough, ham-fisted mallet.  ”It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… ” becomes ‘they were alright times.’

The thing that I appreciate most about Jim Lo Scalzo’s recent work is that it doesn’t succumb to formula, delivering emotive nuance with the directness that the photograph is most suited for.  His multimedia pieces capture sentiment, bringing the viewer into his frames and playing on the less-obtuse sense of place evoked by his subjects.  Needless to say, I’m a huge fan.  If you’re headed out to catch the new G.I. Joe movie, don’t bother looking.  But if you want to see the best of what our craft has to offer, check out Lo Scalzo’s Vimeo page here: http://www.vimeo.com/5653709

Eventually I’ll give these maps over to the healing hand of graphic design.  For the time being, it’s nothing but raw information on a map.

I have a couple new trips into Wyoming this month.  The first will take me to the resort town of Jackson near Yellowstone where the state shares borders with Idaho and Montana.  The second shoot is a little more under wraps, though I will be in central Wyoming and flexible to fit in other shoots.