Micah Walter

I was recently searchign through flickr for Holga images (my new “toy”) and came across this shot of a Borofsky sculpture. Very cool!

Link: flickr.com

Thank you Kendra, I love it!!!!

Well, it’s official, I am moving into an apartment in the CopyCat building in a couple of weeks. The CopyCat building is actually a big warehouse that was converted into apartments for artists. The apartments range from shared living spaces to private apartments. The building is pretty rough and the apartment I am taking will need some initial work when we first move in, but I decided that it would be the perfect base of operations for the next two years.

I really wanted to live in a place that was inspiring to me, and in a space where I would have room to think and room to do my work. The apartment is about 1100 sq. ft. of open floor space. It actually has a small bedroom and bathroom built in the back, but the rest is all open. In the photo above (which I screen-shotted from an article published in The Urbanite Magazine) you can see the exact same apartment unit I will be moving into.

I really like how the previous tenant had decorated and arranged the place and I hope to do something similar but in my own way.

I have heard all sorts of bad things about living in this building, and I have come up with all sorts of reasons to not live there, but in the end I decided to go for it. My father went up to check it out for me, and we have discussed the possibilities at length. It’s sort of hard to say where the final decision came from. I initially envision living in a small row house in Canton near the harbor, but right now I am really feeling the warehouse life.

Regardless, I am really excited. I have already been sketching out floor plans and shopping for Pianos on Craigslist.

Next week we fly out of here. Just about everything is in order and I almost can’t believe we are going to pull this off. A friend of ours who is also moving a dog back to the states has conspired with us to save a whole bunch of costs by flying ahead to receive all three of our dogs at customs. This will negate the need for a pet daycare person to come pick them up and take care of them as well as the need for a customs broker to deal with them at the airport.

The dogs fly the 15th direct to Miami on Amerijet, and we follow behind them on the 16th on American, via San Juan. One night in Miami at a hotel and then a long drive in a rental car full of luggage, and dogs up to Luray where Kendra’s parents live. It is sure to be quite the journey! Of course I will be sure to blog from the road…

Ladies and gents, I have just launched a new website called Entropy Art. This site is actually based on the idea of a social networking website like Facebook or Myspace, and will be an online community centered on a long term art project I am working on.

I initially was going to either blog about this project here, or even launch a new separate blog, but the idea of creating a community based site was just too appealing. By using this website everyone can contribute in some way to the project.

Eventually I will post tools which will allow users to contribute their own photos and process them using the same software I will be developing for this project.

For now please sign up for the website. It only takes a few seconds. You can create your own page, link to friends, leave comments, upload photos and video and all sorts of cool things.

For now the site is located at entropyart.ning.com, but eventually it will be located at entropyart.org.

Stay tuned and SIGN UP NOW!!!

View my page on Entropy Art

WIRED magazine has a really cool interactive piece about information art. They must be reading my mind or something.

“The principle of art is to pause, not bypass. The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke. This requires a moment of pause–a contract with yourself through the object you look at or the page you read. In that moment of pause, I think life expands. And really the purpose of art–for me, fiction–is to alert, to indicate to stop, to say: Make certain that when you rush through you will not miss the moment which you might have had, or might still have. That is the moment of finding something which you have not known about yourself, or your environment, about others and about life.”

-Jerzy Kosinski

So this afternoon I spent some time looking through my Aperture library. Way back in the beginning of the stack I found a small set of images that I shot while in Israel for the first time. It was a guided tour type trip called Birthright Israel and I didn’t take too many photos. In fact, I was only entertaining the idea of becoming a photographer at this point.

The odd thing is, I can remember exactly what type of camera and film and lens I used. It was a Nikon n90 that I borrowed from a friend at RIT, and he had also loaned me a 20-35 f/2.8. I shot about 10 rolls of Velvia on the trip and this is a small selection. If you click the main photo you will be able to see the rest in the set.

Sometimes it is really nice to look back and try and find something you shot when you were in a different place in life. I wasn’t a photographer at the time. I really didn’t know what I was doing, or what I wanted to do, but I do remember being passionate about photography. I remember thinking about taking pictures all the time, and I remember actually doing it as well. Sometimes when you get into other types of projects and find yourself in other places in life you can easily miss what you have left behind. I need to get out and make photographs. I need a new “scene” as someone I know would say. Something to jump-start things is very much needed.

Click the pic or click this link to see all the pics.

Happy birthday Miro!

I thought today’s Google logo was quite fitting to this site. So I grabbed it. Joan Miro must have been born today. Check him out at Wikipedia.com. I have always been very pleased with the efforts of Google to post new and fitting logos on their site each day. Maybe someone should make a blog about them.

I think it is all beginning to come together now. So this will just be a quick connection type post today. I had been reading a bit more on Duchamp and the Dada people and noticed one of the most famous Duchamp pieces, the Toilet, was photographed in 1917 by none other than Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz, one of my all time favorites, a revolutionary photographer who basically invented the word “candid,” was married to Georgia O’Keefe, and was apparently part of a small community of artists whom Duchamp encountered on his arrival to the states.

Duchamp’s Picabia, 1914

O’keefe’s Flower

I can only imagine Duchamp’s arrival to the states. Must have been incredible.

Above and below, just a few pictures and links to help the connections.

Stieglitz’s photo of Duchamp’s Toilet, 1917

Photographs by David Seymour are being displayed at the Corcoran in Washington D.C. This is one of my favorites. Sophia Loren at age 19. It’s just a classic portrait in a window. You really can’t go wrong with that.

Seymour’s work has long been a source of inspiration for me and I am sure countless other photographers. “Chim,” as he was known by, had an amazing ability to capture something else that so many photographs lack. His pictures are a channel for the story of his subjects and each one of them speaks with its own voice.

Well, I am quickly trying to make plans to get down to the gallery and see the prints.

Chim at the Corcoran

NPR’s review


Photo of Sophia Loren - Copyright David “Chim” Seymour/Magnum Photos