Lampin' it in Chicago, brohemians.

It's been kinda nice being around in Chicago lately. Hanging out with everyone again. I think the travelling has made it somewhat easier to photograph in Chicago.

Updates: Our house is becoming a hostel for the summer. The residency count is going from 5 to 8 people...in a 3 bedroom. Chaos? yes. $120 for rent? yes.

Yesterday Trev and I photographed people taking pictures of "the bean." Probably the strangest most fun experience I've had in awhile. People throw their inhibitions to the wind because of a large reflective art piece in the middle of a park. And they all call it 'the bean', which kind of sucks for the artist, Anish Kapoor, who originally named it Cloud Gate. I'm pretty positive I haven't heard anyone call it Cloud Gate. I'll update some shots from yesterday when I get the film developed.

We photographed with no plan at all last weekend. Just to shoot, it was nice.







Everyone should go check out Versionfest, it's open 'til May 6th. It's excellent.
Versionfest '07

Peace yo.

Review.

We made our last trip of the semester this past weekend to Madison, Wisconsin. There will be plenty more trips, we're just done for the time being. It's been a wild few months. Here's some more photos from the past couple months that never made the first cut. Have a good one guys, good luck with the finals-time chaos festival.
















I still have a roll to develop from Miami, i should probably do that soon.

Here's some other portraits from that Pro Printing final.





And here are Victor's hands



that made the photographs on this website:

Victor Yanez.

Latuhz.

Suburbia.

This past weekend I headed out by myself to visit my Mom for Easter. It was a good time and I made some photographs I like a lot. The Kodak Scholarship application is now in, which takes a lot off my shoulders and it's full speed ahead for these finals now. The money situation may actually be semi-kind of figured out. Which means I can get my 16x20 forte warmtone and 100ft roll of epson luster or semi-matte and actually get these images on paper finally.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the reasons I make art because of the questions I've been asked recently. (I think the artist statement for my Studio I final project that I turned in for the Kodak is what initiated this thinking.) And I've had trouble with this question. Since I like to believe the art is mainly self-fulfilling, it was difficult writing an artist statement in a certain way that would most effectively get my idea across and obviously making my work more understandable for others. So it's a strange balance between my own satisfaction with my creating work but also my attempts to convey the ideas I want to. I think the more strange part of this realization was the part where I figured out what that project was about 4 months after making it, not exactly having a grasp of the concept when actually making it. I guess I brought this up for no other reason but to ramble and maybe spark some thoughts. I think it has to deal most closely with what I'm interested, which brought me into another thought about how I think I'm much more interested in the power of the ideas that can be expressed through picture making than photography itself. I guess I don't have any complete answers really, just lots of incomplete ones. But I do enjoy thinking about it, it's fun.

Here's what this weekend brought:







-Matt

Catch Up.

My apologies about the lack of posts since the vacation. I've been very busy since we've gotten back and we made a trip out to Dekalb, IL to visit Steve and Davenport, IA to visit Olivia this past weekend. I had a really good time. It was good to visit my friends at NIU and revisit St. Ambrose for a trip down memory lane.


I'm not posting everything from the trip South, that would be far too much, but I will post some highlights and call it quits for posts for that section of the project. So here we go! Pretty out of chronological order...

Daytona Beach, Florida:






Hobe Sound, Florida:





I don't really know:




Miami, Florida:






Nashville, Tennessee:



And finished. Kind of. Here's some of the portraits I've taken for the project I've been working on along the way. Again, out of order. But here we go.


Aaron
West Lafayette, Indiana


Andrew
West Lafayette, Indiana


Bob
Hobe Sound, Florida


Brandie
Davenport, Iowa


Brittany
Jacksonville, Florida


Susan
Chattanooga, Tennessee


Tony
Juno Beach, Florida


Trevor McNaughton
Dekalb, Illinois

just kidding, Trev's not really in it.

Ha!
Enjoy your week guys.

Oh, and if you have time, check out some excellent photographers:

Craig Cowling

Photograph by Craig Cowling


and!


Cameron Wittig

Photograph by Cameron Wittig

Take care guys.

-Matt