Mateo Gómez García

Mateo Gómez García was born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1988. In 2007 he moved to Buenos Aires to study cinema and photography but after 5 months he decided to dedicate himself only to photography. He met there his mentors Juan Travnik, Ataulfo Perez Aznar and Alberto Goldstein. In 2009 he returned to Colombia where he has dedicated himself to develop documentary projects around the Colombian culture from a perspective removed from the stereotype of violence and drugs, focusing in cultural and psicological aspects native to the colombian culture. His work has been feature in Little Brown Mushroom and Vice Mexico among others. He has also exhibited his work in Foto Fever Festival and Arles Open Salon.

Artist Statement: A Place to Live 

“Small and modest things disappear, as well as small and modest images” 

Wim Wenders, The Urban Landscape

There is an ideal place to live. However, there's a conflict between ideal and reality. The city assumes the ideal position by offering work, cultural and intellectual diversity, but at the same time the reality is costlier, impersonal, routinary, controlled and accelerated. That is the reason many prefer to live in the suburbs and outskirts of the city in order to have the benefits of both the tranquility of the country and the opportunities of the city.

Bogota proves to be in unstable territory as the city grows rapidly. In 1930, the population stood at 300,000 people while today, it extends to 8 million inhabitants. The periphery of the city is always a place with development potential. It is always expanding and the continuous appropriation of space is inevitable. One's behaviour changes with landscape and the city imposes a domestic stereotype of a better life that can only be defined as controlled; the contradictory hope of progress. For 11 years, I have lived in La Calera, one of 18 districts on Bogota's savannah.

La Calera acts as a familial weekend destination to visit the countryside, eat the famous fritanga (a tray with blood sausage, potatoes, chorizos, steak and more) or to visit a mirador (view point) to look at Colombia's chaotic capital. Things have changed with the passing of time. New residential projects, country clubs and shopping malls have invaded this beautiful rural environment causing a social and environmental disequilibrium. Water is becoming scarce and what one once saw as beautiful valleys are now residential projects.

After seeing these drastic changes in such a short time I felt the need to produce a photographic record not only of La Calera but of some other neighboring districts which are suffering the same fate, if not worse. Part of my interest in this project is to propose an illusion of progress and development, the happy family and an unpromising future from an ironic and pesimistic point of view.

Thomas Gardiner

Thomas Gardiner graduated from Yale with an MFA in Photography in 2012. He earned his BFA from The Cooper Union, during which time he began working with a 4x5 camera to document the small communities he grew up in around Western Canada. During his studies at Yale he switched to 8x10, and began documenting working-class cities in the Northeast around New Haven. In his first year he was awarded Yale’s Schickle-Collingwood Prize and in his final year both the Leeds-Marwell Photography Scholarship and the Tierney Fellowship. He currently lives in Vancouver.

Untitled, USA

I grew up in the isolated, hinterland regions of Western Canada. Economic life in these working class communities revolved primarily around resource extraction industries such as oil, potash, uranium, and farming. Far from large cities and the cultural centers of the world, I desperately wanted to leave the small towns of Saskatchewan. When I did eventually leave, I found photography. Returning home after several years living in Vancouver and then New York, I saw the people and places I left behind in a totally different light. Through the camera, Saskatchewan seemed like a place from another era, yet at the same time it felt more familiar than ever before. Now living in the US, I find myself searching the towns and cities of this new country for the places I knew in Canada. 

When I photograph, the most important thing I look for is a kind of visual complexity in a space. I tend to find and return to urban communities where industry or manufacturing once thrived, ending up in back alleys, empty parking lots, behind strip malls, and in neighborhoods lost in the seams of the interstate freeway system—economically neglected places that reflect the nation’s disinvestment in its working people. Many of these environments— like the towns where I grew up— seem frozen or forgotten in time. Yet beyond any simple nostalgic attraction to these places, a contemporary theme is located somewhere within the challenging relationship of a visibly aging infrastructure in America versus the overwhelming crises of the modern world we live in today. Despite the apparent frozenness of these neglected spaces, time is still moving forward. 

Though there is certainly a documentary impulse throughout my work, even more important to me are the possibilities for the deliberate creation of a scene. The 8x10 view camera I use is traditionally regarded as a tool for exquisite detail, harnessed for its mimetic ability, for its higher descriptive fidelity. Yet my interest is in rendering those things generally less-easily seen: human desire and the interior dramas within individual lives. By using an 8x10 camera, I want the meditative attention to detail, but also I want the energy of the decisive moment, as is most commonly associated with smaller, faster, lighter cameras. My goal is always to attempt to overcome these limitations of the larger, slower 8x10 camera, and I feel it’s when I come close to this goal that the images are most satisfying to me. The result is a photograph with a unique kind of drama that is both fixed and transient. 

Once a person has agreed to let me photograph him or her, I feel we have become co-agents in a kind of script. The individuals I meet have a concrete relationship to the environment where my camera is placed. My contribution to the script, however, comes from murky memories—psychological, visual, social, and more— of my own past. The people I photograph are in this way cast into those memory scenes, yet simultaneously their actions and decisions infuse the scene with new meaning. The photograph becomes a kind of dialogue, the end result often being a departure from what either photographer or subject imagined. For me, photography is a complete sensory experience. Despite these attempts to describe my photographic process, I firmly believe that attempts to spell out in words a photograph’s meaning are destined to reduce its power. While this isn't to say that writing can’t aid in interpretation, there will always be something lost in translation. That is why I want viewers to consider these images without captions or theoretical viewpoints. And so the only title can be: Untitled, USA.

Rob Amberg

Rob Amberg was born in Washington, DC in 1947. After stints in Dayton, Ohio, for college and Tucson, Arizona, where he performed alternative service for his draft status as a Conscientious Objector, Amberg moved to western North Carolina in 1973 and has been there ever since. Throughout his career Amberg has been on staff or done assignment work for non-profit organizations and philanthropic foundations. His work has largely focused on rural communities, family farms, and the environment and is based largely in the South. His photographs are regularly published and exhibited nationally and last year he began blogging at robamberg.com/blog/ He is the recipient of awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the North Carolina Humanities Council, the Center for Documentary Studies, and others. Photographs are included in numerous public and private collections and his archive will be housed at the Rubenstein Rare Books and Manuscript Room at Duke University. Since moving to Madison County, Amberg has written and photographed the evolving culture and environment of his adopted county. His first book, Sodom Laurel Album, was published in 2002 by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke and the University of North Carolina Press. His second book from Madison County, The New Road: I-26 and the Footprints of Progress in Appalachia, was published in 2009 by the Center for American Places at Columbia College Chicago. To complete the trilogy, a third book, tentatively titled ShatterZone, is in progress. He lives on a small farm with his wife, Leslie Stilwell, their daughter Kate, and an assortment of animals.

View more of Rob's work here

Project Statement

These photographs are part of a work-in-progress I have titled ShatterZone. This project is meant to accompany my previous books, Sodom Laurel Album and The New Road, as book three in a trilogy about Madison County, North Carolina. Shatter zone is an 18th-century term that refers to an area of fissured or cracked rock that forms a network of veins that are often filled with mineral deposits. The phrase took on new meaning after World War II when anthropologists and political scientists began using it to speak of borderlands. In this modern definition shatter zones are places of refuge from, and resistance to, capitalist economies, state making, and state rule. Appalachia and Madison County have always fit that definition. Throughout the county’s history, people have seen it as a place to retreat to and resist the outside world. Native Americans built no permanent settlements, but actively utilized it as a summer/fall hunting ground. Anglo settlers built lasting homes, but at great enough distances apart to insure their isolation. During the Civil War, deserters and resisters from both sides of the conflict hid out and conspired within the county’s boundaries. A century later, resisters and veterans from Vietnam, and refugees from the country’s cultural wars, found Madison to be a place to weather economic, social, and environmental upheaval in the company of a like-minded local population. Fast-forwarding forty years, Madison’s present population of locals, young professionals, artists, retirees, back-to-the-landers, developers, and primitive dwellers continue to think of it as a place of refuge and resistance. “It’s my hideout.” “It’s quiet and dark.” “People will leave you alone.” “You can live off the grid.” These are commonly used sentiments in describing the county and what draws people to it. But those same sentiments keep many people away. “You’ve got to be crazy to live out there, “ non-residents will say, and newcomers quickly realize Madison County is not for everyone. It takes a total rethinking of your relationship with community and requires new skills, new tools, and new ways of interacting with your surroundings. And while the community may be unified by an almost singular reason for being here, there are also clear points of conflict – zoning, land use, politics, religion, culture, language – with each offering potential for fracturing the community. These dynamics are the making of ShatterZone. This portfolio of images represents work from 1975 to the present.

Tamara Reynolds

Tamara Reynolds graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts degree and continues to develop personal projects, one of which was exhibited at the Nashville Parthenon in 2009 entitled Nashville’s Soul. Currently she is working on a photographic project entitled Southern Route that recently made the Photo Lucida Critical Mass 2013 Finalist List and a representative image of the series made the “Selected” to AI-AP 29 Photography Annual.

She is represented by RepGirl. You may view more of her work at www.repgirl.com and www.tamarareynoldsphotography.com

Ashley Kauschinger: How did you begin your series, Southern Route? 

Tamara Reynolds: While traveling the back roads of the south I saw many things that were a time warp of sorts and very nostalgic. I have been sorry to see some of the South’s unique flavor disappearing (many cities are becoming generic and homogenized), but then I also felt relief for the changes. Some things were heart warming and comforting to see, some things shocking. I felt an urgency to record and understand what the south is/was to me. I am a collector of many things and I have this belief that collecting can capture, stopped, and possessed time.

AK: Do you have a complicated relationship with the south? Has this work expanded your ideas of the south?

TR: As my statement suggests I no longer feel conflicted because I do accept that the relationship is complicated. The work has given me more appreciation for the south’s beauty, even in its brokenness. Where it (the people, the culture) lacks in sophistication, it shines in its common sense of life.

The experience of talking with everyone I met along the road, thinking about the work’s direction, reading books and listening to history lectures on the South have enlarged my view and helped me appreciate it more deeply than ever before. I don’t know if it was this project that created this affinity or just my maturing naturally that created more compassion for the South and life in general?

AK: What was the process like of finding your subjects and locations? Did it happen naturally? Do you work alone? How long do you spend with each subject, etc?

TR: My process is sometimes methodical but mostly free flowing. I did not purposely go out to find my subjects or locations in many cases. As the project started taking shape I would look for what might help define my feelings but mostly I photographed what moved me along the way. I travel alone and much of my work is alone and contemplative as mentioned earlier. I work best undistracted, unencumbered and free to come and go as I please. But shooting alone puts me in an emotionally vulnerable place. I find comfort in shooting and connecting with people. I also love the tension/adrenaline rush/stress of meeting new people, exploring new places. It is a love/hate relationship working and shooting alone. It gives me the freedom I’ve learned to love growing up the youngest of 5 to older parents (they gave me a long lead) but then I get so heavy hearted and lonely. It is in that “lonely” that I learn so much about myself. It was how I came to love photography In the first place. When I was in high school I went on an Academic European Tour and I was so painfully homesick. I didn’t want to go on the trip but I knew I had to if I was ever going to see the world. I couldn’t let fear keep me stuck. I had to understand, push into uncharted places and grow. The only thing that gave me comfort during my weakest was taking pictures with my little 110 instamatic. It was then I decided to become a photographer. This whole process of pushing myself past my fears applies to this project. To learn, to understand, to grow we must push past our preconceived ideas and fears.

I am Southern so I feel there is inherent ease of conversation, transparency and familiarity. Being a woman has its advantages as well. People are not intimidated and since I am open I think they feel comfortable. This could mean an hour or two or maybe three hours spent with my subjects. But there are other times when a subject is so striking that is it not about the conversation but about the selfish need to record the emotion I get from seeing whatever it is I encounter along the road. I just have to shoot it. I only ask for permission and they give me what they have time to give.

AK: Why do you think the south has such an undercurrent of tension running through it?

TR: The South, I feel carries a shame still and it overcompensates in many ways because of it, such as rebelliousness and self-righteous pride. Anyway, I think there is undercurrent of tension in the whole country. But there is a humility the south has because of our history that I do not see in the rest of the country.

AK: What are your thoughts about southern stereotypes?

TR: We are more than our stereotypes. I have many qualities and characteristics, qualities and characteristics that sometimes contradict one another. I think this holds true for everything and everybody. How boring life would be if we were all so predictably one way.

I have come to accept the stereotypes placed on the south. I understand the limitations of those that judge, (lack of knowledge, lack of compassion, lack of understanding) myself being included. What I have learned is that people who judge another usually based on a limited view tells more about them than those they are judging.

AK: What is your process of self-promotion? How do you balance living life, making money, and creating work?

TR: I promote both my commercial and fine art work persistently and consistently the best I can financially. Only within the last year have I been promoting my fine art work where I have been promoting my commercial work since 1995. Southern Route is the first project I felt was promotable. It has been a challenging and fun process and it has kept me passionate about my photography during the down turn in the economy.

I started watching other photographers’ growth in the market, going to portfolio reviews, attending lectures and workshops at festivals, entering contests and group shows and, of course, reading blogs, books etc. I haven’t realized a living at my fine art to have it self sustain. I am getting some recognition, though. It is validating and it gives me the courage to speak up with my personal work.

I have been fortunate to be able to live organically, rather than having the typical 9 to 5. Every day is different for me. Although I need routine to stay sane, I need the frenetic energy that photography seems to offer me. I wish I could get more at ease with the down times that comes with the territory of being self employed. Each year I learn to be a bit more comfortable with the unknown. I certainly had the opportunity this past couple years. But in the down time I was able to explore the South more thoroughly and with more humility necessary to create this body of work. I was following my passion and learning about myself in a new light. My motto has become “If you can’t feed the chickens, go out and plow the field.”

Ashley M. Jones

Ashley M. Jones is a large format photographer practicing within the broad genre of social documentary photography. She is originally from Largo, Florida, and now resides in Savannah, Georgia. Jones received her MFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design and her BA from the University of South Florida. Her work has been featured in American Oxford, Incandescent, ToneLit, and New Landscape Photography. She is actively exhibiting nationally and internationally in both group and solo exhibitions. She is also the Co-Curator and co-editor of Tathata.

View more of her work here 

Frogtown to Victory Project Statement 

The mass production and relative affordability of the automobile in the early 20th century resulted in considerable changes to our nation’s infrastructure and the need to intersect highway systems with urban neighborhoods. As a resident of Savannah, I am fascinated by the rich history and historic architecture of the city. However, there is a stark division between the restored and legally protected buildings within the central National Historic Landmark District and the struggling, run down neighborhoods that surround it. I am specifically interested in the at-risk neighborhoods along Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard and the ways in which they have been impacted by the construction of the Interstate 16 flyover. This elevated section of Interstate 16, the Earl T. Shinholster Bridge, held it’s official ribbon cutting in 1967. The construction of the interstate coincided with several other large-scale urban renewal projects including the construction of Kayton and Fraiser homes south and east of the flyover. It intersects with the Westside of Savannah in the historically African American “Frogtown” neighborhood—a neighborhood that has been on the decline since the interchange was completed. In 2010 I began photographically documenting the homes, businesses, and churches in the area immediately surrounding the flyover. My documentation has since expanded to include neighborhoods south of Frogtown and extending several blocks south to Victory Drive. This area includes Cuyler-Brownsville, a neighborhood similarly impacted by connection of 37th Street to I-16. My photographs depict the current state of this community and the architectural structures that remain to provide an understanding of the historic and contemporary contexts of this community. I am further exploring local movements to renew and revive Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard and the neighborhoods immediately impacted by the Interstate.

Michael Ernest Sweet

Michael Ernest Sweet is a Canadian award-winning educator, writer and photographer. Michael's written work has appeared in such iconic publications as The Evergreen Review and English Journal. His photography is widely published and was most recently featured in Popular Photography and Black and White magazines. His first full-length art monograph titled, "The Human Fragment" is forthcoming from Brooklyn Arts Press in 2013. Michael Sweet is a national recipient of both the Prime Minister's Award and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Award in Canada for significant contributions to his country in the field of education and the arts. You can follow Michael through his website at michaelsweetphotography.com or on Twitter @28mmphotos.

View more of his work here 

Michael is also a member of the photography collective, Noise

Ashley Kauschinger: Can you talk a bit about your Coney Island series? What is your thought process behind these images?

Michael Ernest Sweet: Coney Island was a homage, a pilgrimage even, to the most religious site photography can offer in the US. From Weegee to Gilden they have all been to Coney Island, they all have "Coney Island photographs". I wanted mine. I also wanted to be different. I wanted to capture a modern feel, I wanted to capture the Coney Island of today. It's an "edgy" place. I think that comes through in my work. I also think that I was reasonably successful in making photographs that are unique and different but also have that homage that I speak of. People are vulnerable when they are on the beach in their bikini or speedos. It's hard to get in so close and then fire a flash (as I often do even on the beach in sunlight). I'd always get home in the evening and be both exhausted as well as anxious and shaken. You get told off a certain amount there these days too. But, in the end, I'm happy with how the series finished. If it is finished. Let's see.

AK: What attracts you to a moment or composition? What is the editing process like for you vs when you are out shooting?

MES: I'm not sure, actually. I just act. It's instinct I guess. I don't think much when I am photographing in the streets - It is organic. The editing process is also kind of organic. I delete many images immediately after taking them. It's part of being trigger happy. I then delete more on the way home on the subway etc. That evening I will delete more. In the end I will have a couple images per day maybe. Again, after a month or two I will delete more. I shoot about 300 images in a typical afternoon on the streets. Yet, after four years of serious shooting my hard drive has about 400 images. That should tell you everything. I'm not a pixel collector. If the image is not one of my best it's garbage. In the old days photographers would periodically burn their negatives. Sometimes all of them. A purge, a creative reset. I do this. Sometimes I will go into my archive and just delete. I think it's a good habit. Others will argue that you should keep every image. So it goes.

AK: Does the history of street photography influence you? What (or who) are some of your greatest inspirations?

MES: The history of street photography does influence me, of course, but to a limited extent. I'm not really a street photographer, I suppose. Not in the way people think of that term today at least. I rarely shoot faces anymore. They don't interest me. Who cares about Peggy and her grocery run or her big ass sunglasses. Who values this photography. I don't see much of it in galleries or museums or whatever. I think that type of street photography is largely bullshit - largely an incestuous audienceless racket. I'm more a photographer who simply works in the street a lot. This brings me to some of my influences I guess. Chiefly among them would be Daido Moriyama, Mark Cohen, William Klein and also Nan Goldin. There are many others. I spend a lot of time looking at the work of others. I try to respect that photography is a community and a conversation. I try not to get too absorbed in my own work. I buy a lot of photography books too.

AK: You wrote "The Street Photography Bible". If you had to summarize what you think to be the most essential qualities of shooting street photography, what would they be? What advice do you have for photographers nervous to shoot on the street?

MES: The most essential quality is probably courage. Go in for the shot. Apologize, or fight or flee or whatever after the shot. Don't be one of those that say I should have or I could have. Do it. Shoot. The worst that has ever happened to me (and I work close, like inches away from people) is that a woman hit me with her handbag and swore at me. Big deal. I was over it in no time. My advice for people who are nervous to shoot in the street is to not shoot. Seriously. Maybe it's not for you. Try photographing cats or do portraits. If you work in the streets and are not comfortable it will show in your work. Your work will be shit. There is way too much crap street photography out there for goodness sake spare us.

AK: Your monograph, "The Human Fragment" will be published by Brooklyn Arts Press in late 2013. Can you talk about what this process was like from beginning to end? What do you think about your images' transformation into book form?

MES: It was interesting. Thankfully I have a wonderful publisher and editor. I dislike the loss of control that inevitably comes with publishing a book. But you have to realize that the publisher is investing a lot of time and money in you and they need to control their investment to an extent. It's a give and take. That's hard for an artist though. I love the idea of my work in a book. I am a book photographer. My work is not for gallery walls. I have no interest in that at all. I've always known my work was destined for books. I photograph for the page. I see images in a book when I photograph. I never imagine my work on walls or in frames. That's so foreign to me. So this is a process I will need to get used to I guess - this bookmaking thing. I'm working on developing a relationship with this publisher. I hope to continue with them and do my next book there also. I think developing a relationship with a single press is crucial. It becomes a two way street. You support and grow each other. One of the most challenging aspects is when a book comes to completion. It's a very final feeling you get. It's like okay, what the hell do I do now? You almost feel as though you're done - that you should retire or something (laughing). I totally needed some time away from the camera after that project went to press. I'm just now (a couple months later) starting to think about what's next. I'm interested in trying color maybe. I'm also interested in low-fi digital. I don't want to use a filter app though. I want to actually work with a shit camera. If I could get my hands on a 2MP cell phone I might have something. Let's see where I go next. It will be a surprise for both of us!

Carl Gunhouse

America Statement 

“Under their rule, the federal government is permitted to throw hundreds of billions of dollars around on a misguided bank bailout, but if a banker like John Thain spends $1,500 on a wastepaper basket then all hell breaks loose. Dazzling personal consumption is out. Middle-class drabness is in. It’s sad, but there’s nothing to be done” –David Brooks (02/02/09 Op-Ed column in The New York Times) One way or another, everyone grows up believing in the American dream, an unspoken contract that if we work hard, behave ethically, spend within our means and put some money aside, we will be rewarded with economic security, a significant other and aspirations within our reach. A dream that has been augmented in recent years with the promise of smart phones, 3-D plasma televisions, eco-friendly luxury cars, and most of all, a new home with a sizable yard in pristine suburban neighborhood with good schools. This desire for security and consumer luxury has become so ingrained that these goods feel like entitlements due us for our hard work and sacrifice. And over the last decade, these dreams have been stoked by banks offering pre-approved mortgages, stock portfolios promising minimal risk, and car loans with no money down -- all the tools needed to live the good life. But as American society indulged its desires, the economy imploded, leaving us with empty homes in half-finished subdivisions near malls with the stores that are coming soon to sell merchandise affordable to fewer and fewer of us. The country is caught in suspended animation, littered with enticing ads, large car dealerships and lavish Las Vegas fountains, all the more desperate to attract whatever disposable income is still out there. Meanwhile, the product of this uncontrolled spending lingers in the half finished construction projects, abandoned suburban cineplexes and foreclosed homes that have become all too familiar. Consumption has destroyed the American dream and the earnest assumption that an ideal life is guaranteed by hard work, a college degree and playing by the rules. Instead we are left with entry-level jobs, no opportunity for advancement, no benefits, inescapable debt, and the cold comfort that we avoided a Depression. Our desire for something more has brought consequences visible in every corner of America. In these spaces, we can see the America we have become."

Carl Gunhouse was born in 1976 in Boston, Massachusetts, but he spent his formative years in suburban New Jersey. Growing up, he developed a love/hate relationship with suburbia that led to the angst familiar to most suburban youth. With this unrest came the discovery of the anger and DIY ethics of hardcore punk rock. Yearning to be part of the hardcore scene, he started photographing bands, which began his love of photography. To escape suburban New Jersey, Carl enrolled at Fordham University in New York City. While completing a BA in European History at Fordham, he discovered that photography could be something to pursue a career so he decided to simultaneously complete a BFA in Photography. After going on to earn his MA in American History from Fordham, Carl concentrated on street photography. In hopes of developing and refining his photography work, Carl completed his MFA in Photography at Yale University. Since graduating, he has found a great deal of personal satisfaction teaching as an Adjunct at Montclair State University, Marymount Manhattan College, and Nassau Community College. He has also gained some renown for his straightforward writing on photography for such web sites as Searching For the Light, Lay Flat, and American Suburb X. His photography has been shown nationally and internationally. As an artist, he has produced a body of landscape and portrait photographs by driving around the United States to expose the little visual bits of America that give voice to our shared history and experience. Carl currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

View more of Carl's work here 

Carl also writes for www.seacrhingforthelight.net