Marketing Photos with Mary Virginia Swanson

A Presentation about the surreal self-portraits of Natalie Dybisz’s alter ego MISS ANIELA

When: Thursday, October 28th at 6:00 pm

Where: Lyceum Theatre Gallery, in Horton Plaza, Gaslamp Quarter of downtown San Diego

Cost: Free

Natalie Dybisz is a fine-art photographer based in London, UK. Self-taught in photography, her passion began with creating high-impact, often surreal self-portraits as ‘Miss Aniela’, Natalie’s alter ego and the subject of her self-portraiture. First noticed through the internet (Miss Aniela currently has five and a half million views on Flickr), her work now sells as limited-edition fine art and is exhibited worldwide.

In her talk, Miss Aniela will be speaking about the various factors that intersect through the modern circumstances in which her work exists: the role that the internet, the digital age, her gender, and her repeated use of self-portraiture have played in the popularity of her images. Miss Aniela also discusses the place of ‘meaning’ and criticism in art, how the internet and the digital age have reshaped the roles of artist and gallery, and shifted notions of ‘fine art’ and ‘commercial’ in the contemporary photography scene as we know it.

Miss Aniela’s self-portraiture began with spontaneous impulses to shoot portraits ‘starring’ herself with improvised lighting and simple set-ups. Her work has been compared to the work of Francesca Woodman and Sam Taylor-Wood, and the comparisons to Cindy Sherman are also obvious. However, Miss Aniela constantly seeks to explore and remix her multifarious inspirations to contextualise herself into different imagined narratives, intended as both personal and universal. She takes her inspiration from a variety of sources: from dreams and childhood, to literature and Dutch paintings.

The work she will be presenting: Her ‘Self-Gazing’ series uniquely brings together self-portraits from various series of the artist’s five years of work. A number of the images are related to Miss Aniela’s ‘Tricks’ series (The Smothering, Sprung, The Adrenalin), looking at the neurotic behaviour and symptoms of instability concerned with the anxiety syndrome. The series ‘Multiplicity’ (Their Evening Banter, They Gathered to See) are composited ‘group shots’ made up purely of the photographer herself – challenging the conventional relationship between ‘looker’ and ‘looked-at’.

‘The Smothering’ is currently exhibited in the Art of Photography Show, chosen from nearly 14,000 entries by Natasha Egan, the Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.

Directions to the Lyceum Theatre Gallery: www.artofphotographyshow.com/lyceum.html

Parking: Park at the Horton Plaza parking structure and receive a 3 hour validation.

Check out the upcoming events in our “Where Great Minds Meet” Speaker Series here.

For more information, contact the Producer: Steven Churchill
Email: steven@artofphotographyshow.com
Phone: 619-825-5575

Thursday, October 28th at 6:00 p.m. exhibiting photographer JAMEY STILLINGS will be present to discuss his most recent body of work on the building of the the bridge at Hoover Dam, a project he began in March of 2009 (the bridge officially opened this week).

The exhibition will be on view from October 29th – January 23rd, 2011.

PATIO GALLERY at Springs Preserve

333 S. Valley View Boulevard, Las Vegas, NV  89107.

MARTINE FOUGERON will be speaking in NYC on the evening of October 21st

Martine Fougeron began her Tête-à-Tête project in 2005 as a student at the International Center of Photography. In this series of intimate portraits of her two adolescent sons and their friends in New York and in France, she reveals the face-to-face engagement of the mother-photographer with the private world of two brothers and their teen tribe. Curator and critic Charlotte Cotton has called the project “one of the best biographical stories that photography has crafted in the 2000s.”

A Q&A session with the artist will follow the lecture.

The Camera Club of NY (CCNY) Lecture Series is presented in conjunction with SVA’s BFA Photography Department. Admission is free for SVA students and staff and CCNY member, $3 for other students, and $5 for the general public

Michal Chelbin’s exhibition “Strangely Familiar” opened at the PRC early September and continues through October 31st.

She will be give a public lecture on OCTOBER 19th at 7 pm in room #206 of the Photonics Building, 8 Saint Mary’s Street in Boston.

From the Photographic Resource Center’s e-blast:

Michal Chelbin: Strangely Familiar
September 7 – October 31, 2010

Artist Lecture: Tuesday, October 19, 7pm
Photonics Building Room #206, 8 Saint Marys Street

Michal Chelbin, Jenya in My Hotel Room, Ukraine, 2005 color coupler print

“Because I shoot portraits I can say that people are my first inspiration. They are intriguing, mysterious, and unsolved.”
—Michal Chelbin (from 9/4/2008 interview on Nymphoto)

“Michal Chelbin (born 1974, Haifa, Israel) started making pictures when she was 15, and honed her skills as a photographer during her compulsory service in the Israeli military. Following four years of study in Haifa, Chelbin began pursuing personal photographic projects and traveled in Russia, Ukraine, England, and Israel making the portraits that appear in Strangely Familiar (also the title of her 2008 Aperture monograph; The Black Eye, her new book, is forthcoming from Twin Palms). The body of work on display at the PRC this fall demonstrates Chelbin’s search for those displaying a “legendary” quality, which she describes as “a mix between odd and ordinary.”

Her photographs depict mostly young people who carry their livelihoods with them, often in the very form or function of their bodies. Her subjects are members of itinerant companies— dancers, acrobats, and carnival attractions—and athletes. Chelbin’s work, typically made of individuals in off-stage repose, reflects both the intensity of their pursuits and the fatigue engendered by being constantly on the road and almost always on display. Her photographs are staged, in the sense of being made by arrangement between artists and subject, but not manipulated or otherwise altered post-exposure.

Exhibition organized in collaboration with Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York City.”