Scenes from the ImageObject symposium. The day got off to a great start with a wider perspective given on contemporary photographic art practice by Lyle Rexer. It generated some lively discussion in the Q&A session afterwards, making it a perfect way to start the symposium. Jillian Offenbeck from the Archive of Modern Conflict (one of the event’s sponsors) gave us an interesting insight into the collecting of contemporary daguerreotypes by Amc, something close to the heart of the event. Takashi Arai gave us a fascinating and personal insight into his daily daguerreotype project and how it was influenced by the tsunami and the following reactor meltdown in Japan. I gave an account of my daguerreotypy of Maori culture in New Zealand, and spoke about my mobile darkroom facility. Breaking new ground for the ears of contemporary daguerreotypists in the room was Mike Robinson with his revelatory talk on the “Colours of the Daguerreotype”. The content of the talk is part of Mike’s ongoing research for his PhD dissertation entitled “The Techniques and Material Aesthetics of the Daguerreotype”. Once published it will be of great assistance to all those making daguerreotypes and we look very much forward to it.
Our aim with the IO event is to help expand the genre – to have more people making more daguerreotypes. We hope by holding this annual event we can further what cdags does online, and we are already looking forward to next year: IO-2.

Scenes from the opening night of ImageObject, exhibition space on the third floor , food and drinks on the 4th floor in the North Light Gallery.

With the exhibit installed, the next step on the calendar was to have the jurors visit and judge the prize awards in person. Lyle Rexer came at a different time to the other two jurors (Chris Mahoney and Jerry Spagnoli), but all reached agreement after some lengthy discussion about the works and the genre. Wine generously donated by Daniel Kuczynski to the show was provided to the jurors with a platter of fresh fruit and cheeses to facilitate discussion.

In the first of a series of posts about the ImageObject event, I thought I would give some insight into what went into making it.

In the one and half years since I floated the idea for the event, I have sent and received somewhere in the region of 2000 emails, and in the end we raised just over $4800 to pay for some of the costs of the event.

I arrived in NYC on the evening of 24th of March, and first thing the next morning I started the 6.5 day installation of the show. Images below show the progress over the first two days. My initial plan was to create a dark band of color around the walls to provide a dark reflection for the viewing of the daguerreotypes – the idea being when you look at a plate on one wall you see the dark reflection from the wall behind you. So first thing that morning I was off around the fabric district in NYC to get a long bolt of dark fabric, something I was used to doing back when I lived there and was hunting for case making velvet.

In the gallery space, though, it quickly became apparent that more fabric would be needed to gain a decent amount of reflection. The Center for Alternative Photography uses the space for other exhibits and it wasn’t an option to paint the walls black, then labor with trying to paint them white again. After hanging the initial fabric, I transferred the artworks from the CAP office to the exhibition space.

I had designed the display cabinets in Google SketchUp and had them cut on a CNC machine in North Carolina, then shipped as flat packs to CAP. After putting the first one together I handed over the job to Vishnu, a staff member at CAP, who assembled the rest of them and painted them black. For the internal lighting of the cabinets I used LED strip lights, which I found at Canal Lighting in Chinatown, to make maximum use of the internal space in the cabinets.

All of the installation work was very time-consuming and even by the end of the second day, when I had unpacked all the artworks (that took three hours!), I felt a little overwhelmed as a one-man installation crew. With the sequestering of Erica, a CAP staff member, and with some late nights, the exhibition was installed and ready for the the arrival of the jurors to judge Best in Show (next post).

After a lot of work over the last year or more and a intensive 6 day installation, ImageObject has opened to the public. The opening event was very well attended, two floors of the Center for Alternative Photography – the gallery and skylight studio ones, were packed with people who were very enthusiastic about the show. We will post images of the opening soon but here is the news of the prize awards the jurors arrived at.

Takashi Arai was awarded first prize for his daguerrotype “Miharu, Fukushima”, Binh Danh was awarded second place for “In Memory of our troops: 6371, Dec 25 2011” and Nate Gibbons was awarded third place with “Debris-logs”.

The jurors also awarded three honourable mentions; John Hurlock – “Tunnel View, Yosemite”, Jerome Monnier – “Le Vert Galant” and Curtis Wehrfritz – “As Above, So Below”

The catalogue is available online through Blurb.com, please consider buying a copy, proceeds go towards cover some of the costs of creating the show.

59 of the 74 artworks on display at the exhibition have been made available for sale and can be purchased solely through the ImageObject online store –

http://www.imageobject.com/buy

Now available for purchase at Blurb.com – the catalogue to IO-1

http://www.blurb.com/books/4153198-io-1

An update from the IO-1 exhibition space (wi fi enabled) as I burn the midnight oil…

Symposium speaker schedule change
– Due to illness preventing him from flying, Marinus Ortelee will not be attending the opening and giving a talk at the symposium. this means that the afternoon schedule after Takashi Arai will be Alan Bekhuis at 2pm and Mike Robinson at 3pm, our day concluding around 4pm.

Installation
Since Monday I have been hard at work making the exhibition space daguerreotype viewing friendly and installing the artworks. Center for alternative Photography staff are most excited by the event and have been a great help and support to the event, a very big thanks to Eric, Jeffery, Christine, Erica and Jessye.

Catalogue
I have made a blurb.com book for the catalogue of the show. We will have 10 advance copies available for sale at the opening but they will be publicly for sale at blurb.com on tuesday afternoon.

Purchase daguerreotypes online
Also from tuesday afternoon for the two weeks the exhibit is up will be a online store on the ImageObject.com for those wishing to purchase the submitted daguerreotypes made available for sale during the show. I hope to offer again this feature during the year for limited times so that funds can be raised for next years event, through the 10% sales commission.

Pictured below are the catalogues, the gallery cards and business cards of your IO management team.