From Houston With Love

installation view of Hurry Up & Wait at HCP

A Warm & Humid Southern Welcome!

Houston left an everlasting impression on us, one we wish to never forget. The folks in Houston are paramount examples of southern hospitality. We had a great opening with a wonderful talk given by Katherine Ware.

"Many of the photographers in the show are engaged in work about assessing our lives now, marked by a time of transition and change. They are composing little love songs to that which is disappearing or to that which is proliferating. My sense is that they are seeking to understand and accept more than to criticize, perhaps with a little sadness and sometimes with humor. Farmers, ranchers, truckers, and itinerant preachers are all a lot less common than cubicle workers these days."

The pleasure was ours to meet and greet with several of the artists along with everyone from the Houston Center of Photography. Some of our new friends and participating artists include:

Composition # 112, 2008

from his Composition series

© Ryan Bush

Crude 6, 2007

from the series Oil

© Sonja Thomsen

Ponce, 2007

from the series Jockeys and Exercise Riders

© Ellen Rennard

Davina, 2008

from the series 17 Stories

© Jason Reblando

Hurry Up & Wait

Moto Mart, Perryville, MO 2008
from the series Hurry Up & Wait

We are excited to announce that images from our latest and ongoing series Hurry Up & Wait will be shown this summer:

Houston Center for Photography - Houston, TX
10JUL-23AUG
27th Anniversary Membership Exhibition
Juried by Katherine Ware
Curator of Photography
New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe
Exhibiting artists include: Dave Jordano, Ellen Rennard, Brad Moore, Alejandro Cartagena, and more.

Host Gallery - London, UK
24JUL-5SEPT
Foto8 Summer Show
Juried by: Diana Ewer, Director, TAG Fine Art
Richard Kalman, Director, Crane Kalman Gallery, Brighton
Simon Norfolk, Photographer
Andrea Stern, Head of Images, Victoria and Albert Museum
Graham Wood, Director of Photography, The Times Magazine

While we're glad to be home and in time for some proper summer weather, we are off to hit the road again, this time in a plane to Houston!

HST II

Love when we stumble upon great blogs, here is the latest one!
And thought this future design to be the most pertinent to us as of late.
While we can't complain as we've rode in our own Peterbilt, Freightliner, and Volvo, we still wish we had one of these while we were on the road!





HST II is a concept long-distance road haulage envisioned to transport high volume containerized and palletized cargo units with a proposed overall 29 meters of length and 65 tonnes of maximum gross combination weight. If you still remember our post about HST, than you can see that HST II is a better version from the previous HST Truck. This vehicle can be operated with a comprehensive yet straightforward computer just like a modern passenger car. The large 2.90 meters long cab provide a comfortable living and working environment that cannot be imagined in the contemporary trucks. Aside from the considerably larger size, HST II is different from usual articulated trucks by extraordinary fuel efficiency, a higher level of safety, extensively improved driving experience, enhanced infrastructural and environmental considerations.
(Future Technology)

Sleeping, grinding, and dreaming of Tim Burton

Our blog has been quiet lately, only because we're trying to make a smooth transition from eighteen wheels back onto our own hoofs. It took over a year of planning to begin this project, and is also taking quite some time to find our way back to 'reality'. The series, titled Hurry Up & Wait, is not completely finished. We plan to continue as experienced patrons of the American trucking culture, rather on our own terms without the pressure of on-time deliveries and the long haul.

We're busy preparing for a show, hoping to give our site a new makeover, and will begin posting some images from our year on the road.

Also, something exciting to think about and anticipate: a Tim Burton retrospective at the Moma. Sweet!

© Tim Burton
Untitled (The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories)

Self Portrait : Tarek Al-Ghoussein

In his "Self Portrait" series, Tarek Al-Ghoussein (born in Kuwait) photographs himself dressed as a Palestinian terrorist. Causing him to spend time in an Arab prison, his series illustrates how profound and far a stereotype can acclimate.



This project began with thoughts of Sisyphus. I was drawn to the apparent similarities between the Myth of Sisyphus and what I have observed to be a growing “myth” generated through the Western media, specifically the myth that all Palestinians are terrorists and that the Palestinian intifada, like Sisyphus, seems condemned to an endless cyclic struggle. Even the “tools” of the myths have similarities. Sisyphus is condemned by the gods to push a stone up a hill for eternity only to have it roll back down when inches from the top. Since the mid-1980s the news media have associated the Palestinian intifada with stone throwing and other acts of violence. Transcending media representation has been an ongoing “uphill battle” for Palestinians. The work represents a commentary on contemporary Western media representations of the Palestinian as terrorist. The series of self–portraits recontextualize the “trademarks” of the intifada (stone and scarf) using the light box, a medium traditionally reserved for advertising and the promotion of consumer goods. The process of producing these photographs resulted in my detainment in an Arab country outside the UAE. This has made me realize that perhaps myself and other Arabs need to question our own associations with the “scarf”. It has become a symbol of terrorism in its own right.
April, 2003 Tarek Al-Ghoussein






all images © Tarek Al-Ghoussein

In Tandem : BCXSY

BCXSY is a collaboration between Boaz Cohen and Sayaka Yamamoto. Currently based in the Netherlands, the Israeli and Japanese couple met in Holland and started BCXSY (a clever combination of their initials) in January 2007. A combination of art and design, the two mix function, aesthetic and emotion in their hand-crafted work.

Destilled Nature

Being partners in life and work could indeed cause many complications, but we believe that through common care for each other it is possible to join our forces and create something which can be even greater than the work of a single person.

Little Bird

Inspiration can be, and is found at anytime, anywhere and in anything, and our challenge is to recognize it and be able to bring it into our work. Passion is essential too - it allows us to fully follow what we believe in - our professional decisions are often based on our feelings towards our work, and we believe that this is eventually expressed as a personal character of the end result, which can create a stronger bond between the product and its owner.


Napkin Placement
all images © BCXSY
interview from Drome Magazine

Farm Contacts

Some quick farmer portraits off of our contact sheets from our latest shoot upstate for Code Magazine. Mind the quality and markings.


Kevin, Regeneration CSA


Lindsey, One Earth Farm


Jacob, Esopus Creek Farm

Made it to Jersey, Missed NY

Atlantic City, NJ
© Zoe Strauss

Last week was the anticipated NY Photo Festival which we shamefully missed for a second time, but were surprised to learn from other photo blogs that we may not have missed much? We promise ourselves to make it out next year when we should be NYC residents once more. Made it back last week for a few days, but ended up in Atlantic City instead of NYC for some family fun at the casinos and boardwalk. We haven't been to Atlantic City in years, maybe even more than a decade. Though much has changed, the overall seediness lingered. The fancy Borgata can't hide the reality of its inhabitants nor the surrounding neighborhoods you drive through just to get there. It was tons of fun and felt as if we were transported to another place and time, almost like a virtual reality tour through Zoe Strauss' America.

Dollar General

Been seeing a whole lot of these lately as we've been moving nothing but Dollar General product these past few days. Literally moving as we've also had to unload the truck....poor James! This discount variety chain store is usually found in small towns not quite big enough for a Walmart. It's been a crazy drive on back roads, through mountains, in small rural areas with populations less than 1,000. It's a nice break from the busy interstates, showing us how town folk really live and that the small town feeling has yet to be vanquished by popular culture and indulgent consumerism.

The Telephone Chair

We've almost hit our year mark trucking and are already thinking about building our new nest. Our 6'x6' apt on wheels has given us our fix of claustrophobia. Here is the one and only piece of furniture we own and recently acquired. Who knows when and where we'll end up, but you can't live without a telephone chair!! Oh, the good ol' days when you actually had to stay put and have a real conversation.

Sun/Moon Roof

'through our windshield'

Countryside

'through our windshield'

In Tandem : Los Carpinteros

Los Carpinteros are Cuban artists whose works begin with playful and thoughtful watercolors which then often unfolds into sculptures and installations.


Untitled, 2009

For Los Carpinteros, drawing has played an integral role as a mock technical draft or form of a blue print that suggests not only a process of artistic elaboration but also a form of architectural or carpentry plans.


Alto Parlante Solimar, 2007


Altoparlante Solimar, 2008

The Havana-based collective Los Carpinteros (The Carpenters) has created some of the most important work to emerge from Cuba in the past decade. Formed in 1991, the trio (consisting of Marco Antonio Castillo Valdés, Dagoberto Rodríguez Sánchez, and, until his departure in June 2003, Alexandre Arrechea) adopted their name in 1994, deciding to renounce the notion of individual authorship and refer back to an older guild tradition of artisans and skilled laborers. Interested in the intersection between art and society, the group merges architecture, design, and sculpture in unexpected and often humorous ways. They create installations and drawings which negotiate the space between the functional and the nonfunctional. The group's elegant and mordantly humorous sculptures, drawings, and installations draw their inspiration from the physical world—particularly that of furniture. Their carefully crafted works use humor to exploit a visual syntax that sets up contradictions among object and function 
as well as practicality and uselessness.


Dos Camas, 2008
all images © Los Carpinteros

Audio Teaser V: Bill The Trucker