Artschwager
Whitney Museum of American Art: Richard Artschwager
I had the interesting opportunity to photograph some archival documents, posters, paintings, etc at the residence of artist Richard Artschwager for an upcoming Whitney retrospective. Nothing too different in the photography, though I tested out a nice new portable tilt photo table (new meaning: my construction). Barring hauling a studio column this makes poster size flat works manageable on location with just a tripod. Also, though ceilings were not a problem here, the tilt table allows a shorter ceiling height. Anyway, it was a privilege to photograph the work and meet such an art luminary (lunch was great!). I can’t post any inside tour pics, but the converted church residence was a trip.
 Artschwager |
 Artschwager |
 Poster |
 Blip Stencils |
Walker Evans Polaroids
Walker Evans Polaroids: Summertime Fun
Alright, here it is, summer project 2011. Soooo much fun, well a little work.
I had the privilege of photographing 716 Walker Evans Polaroids over the course of two weeks. Kind of a hired gun situation (pardon the metaphor, remember I don’t shoot things!), but I wasn’t going to pass this up. Thanks to John ffrench, Josh Chuang, and the helpful PPD staff for having me, and helping me get through this many objects in only two weeks!
Cozy summer cave:
 Studio Layout |
Closer
Some closer views of the photography stand below here. Lights were cross polarized and Polaroids were held down under glass.
 Photography Stand |
 Glass Hold Down |
The Trick, ‘er Method
The trick (or more professionally sounding, the studied method) for this type of high volume / high quality project is a consistent, smooth workflow. Objects are batched out in chunks that make sense for both equipment and human attention. I’m pretty good at estimating how long something will take me in the early project planning phase (i.e. estimate of cost for client), but there is always a slightly panicky “rubber meets the road” period in the first day or two. I plan quite a bit and do test shooting on prop objects if needed. The goal of this project was high quality human inspected color correction (not what is often referred to as “rapid imaging”) for each object. The objects have been fading and changing over time and photographing them now as faithfully as possible at least creates a record for this time that will last.
 Line 'em Up |
Lots More and Images Below, Read more…
Keyboard Behind the scenes.
Made my first visit to the Musical Instrument Collection at Yale University. I spent the day with the very friendly curators Nicholas and Susan photographing some keyboard instrument art and sound boards.
Here is a quick behind the scene panorama with one instrument up on a table to photograph the sound board.
 keyboard setup pano |
Same instrument as finished image.
 Instrument Soundboard |
Fun group and day, can’t wait to come back again!
Cg
Jules Olitski Paintings
The three Larry Rivers paintings I photographed a couple years ago had been the largest canvases I’d photographed, but I’m bemused to say I’ve topped them thanks to the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. I photographed a smaller Olitski work in western CT and then this monster in Boston for the upcoming exhibit: “Revelation: Major Paintings by Jules Olitski” and accompanying catalog.
Jules Olitski’s Third Indomitable is all of 18+ feet long. The kind folks at FAE Boston unwrapped and provided a space large enough to photograph. Aside from masking off the shiny ducting above nothing was too difficult aside from backing up far enough and getting an even light spread. In the uncropped image below you can see the painting leaning against the warehouse wall on foam blocks.
 Jules Olitski, Third Indomitable |
Cg
American Miniature Portraits
To quote from Robin Jaffe Frank’s book Love and Loss: American Portrait and Mourning Miniatures, “Portrait miniatures, small enough to fit in the palm of the hand, are uniquely personal works of art. From colonial times to the age of photography, they were often commissioned to commemorate births, engagements, marriages, deaths, and journeys.”.
I had the opportunity to photograph 38 of these “Minis” as they are known for short. This was a similar collaboration with the Yale University Art Gallery as I’ve done in the past, like 1000+ Ancient Coins and Swid Powell. Three weeks were spent photographing the objects, recto and verso (front and back). Some of the objects were the same published ten years ago in Robin’s book Love and Loss at the early stages of digital photography. The reason to re-shoot many of these objects years later was to capture them as high resolution original RGB files that can be properly managed and archived. Unfortunately, in some cases the images retained from ten years ago were CMYK converted files and of only 1:1 resolution. The images I made of course are wide gamut 16bit RGB tiffs, often with a possible magnification of 5:1 if printed (300dpi) and even larger when displayed at screen resolution (72dpi). The remaining images are newly photographed objects on long term loan or as promised gifts.
Photographing these unique objects provides not only publication quality images, but also highly valuable research possibilities with high resolution reproductions. The Art Gallery is also planning to use these images at digital exhibition kiosks next to the originals on display. The public will be able to see both sides of the Minis and zoom digitally in to minute details.
Below are a couple choice objects. Check out the Minis project page , where you can see some zoomify examples (see detail up close) and more images. Unfortunately I can’t show all images (loan or promised gift objects are excluded).
 Mini Portrait |
 Verso |
 Mini Portrait |
 Verso |
 Mini Portrait |
 Verso |
 Mini Portrait |
 Verso |
 Mini Portrait |
 Verso |
 Mini Portrait |
 Verso |
Thanks to the helpful Art Gallery staff and especially Robin Jaffee Frank, Alice and Allan Kaplan Senior Associate Curator American Paintings and Sculpture at Yale University Art Gallery.
Gilead Room
A very rainy day, but it was dry inside a huge ex-Bayer building on Yale’s West Campus. This is the conservation and pre-assembly of the Gilead Room from the Young’s family house, from Gilead, Connecticut. Photographed this for a future published story on the West Campus complex. I’ll hopefully have more on that later this spring/summer.
The Art Gallery art handlers had just recently put all the main pieces together and removed cardboard that had been protecting the floor boards. You can see all the parts pre-assembly here (scroll down some, not my image so come back). The framed in room will be taken apart after some more conservation and reinstalled at the Yale Art Gallery in a year or two. The open wall sections and ceiling will be plastered in once reinstalled. Cool!
Thanks to Emily, Eric, and Tom for letting me into their secluded workspace.
Chris
Bone Rocking Chair
Ooooh! Precious. I mean it.
Nothing like photographing a glass dome in someone’s living room with windows on either side. Now you can’t tell that can you! Right that’s me job. No fancy black box, high ceiling museum studio here folks.
This Bone Rocking Chair by the artist Charles LeDray was photographed for an upcoming, and then traveling, exhibition at ICA Boston. Actual object will not be in show, but my image will be used in the show catalog and publicity. Show is called “Charles LeDray: workworkworkworkwork”, and is at the ICA Boston, Whitney Museum of American Art, and then Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
First image here is one of my final images (made three). Middle image was emailed to me ahead of arrival. And last, granted a snapshot out of a book, the image I was improving upon, previously published.
 Bone Rocker, Charles LeDray |
 Reflections on Glass |
 Previously Published Image |
Bone Rocking Chair is in the collection of Samuel R. Peterson (Connecticut), and thank you to him for allowing me into his home.
1000+ Ancient Coins
1000+ Ancient Coins is my second “move-in” project this summer. I spent 3 and a half weeks at the Yale Art Gallery’s Coins and Medals Department creating obverse and reverse images of two collection segments and other greatest hits to fill out a total count of about 1050 coins. Phew. Thanks to William Metcalf, curator and especially Jane Miller, museum assistant, for all their assistance getting me through.
Images were captured with the relatively simple setup as seen below in the production still gallery. The coins photographed varied from about 4cm to .5cm in diameter. Print size (aka indication of image resolution) from my captures was on average over 16cm. Obverse and reverse images were combined into one final image with a reference scale. Varying amounts of extension were required from about 56mm to over 200mm. As can be imagined depth of field was nearly non-existent and so for many of the smaller coins a post production technique called focus stacking was employed to get sharp images of lumpy objects.
 Macro Setup |
 Viewfinder |
 Tiny Coin |
 Tiny Coin 2 |
 Mobile Setup |
 Gold Coin |
Update: Check out the project page I made for the 1000+ coins where you can see some zoomed details, project specs and a wall of coins.
Swid Powell Collection
I have two “move-in” location projects this summer. This is the first. I spent two weeks wedged (in the most comfortable way) into a small studio, photographing 80+ objects from the Yale University Art Gallery’s Swid Powell collection for general museum use and in preparation of a planned symposium in the fall. You can find out more about Swid Powell here, as explained from a 2007 exhibition. The collection includes objects designed by including Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Stephen Holl, Richard Meier, Robert A. M. Stern, Stanley Tigerman, and Robert Venturi, among others. The symposium is to be held November 12-13, 2009 at the Yale School of Architecture.
Thanks so much to John Stuart Gordon for having me and all the effort polishing all the silver. The project was a pleasure.
 Capture Screen |
 Object with shrouded lens |
This nutty piece was shot with two different light set ups and pieced together to remove highlights on the green glass vase (as seen in single capture on monitor above), but keep some additional light on the large metal gold bowl.
 Finished Image |
I could post many neat looking design objects like Steven Holl’s Oil Can creamers or the Tigerman building tea service. Maybe I’ll post a link with a special Swid Powell gallery if I get a chance. UPDATE: Link to gallery of Swid Powell objects.
Anyway, keeping with the behind the scenes theme, there were many a single plate (charger) to photograph. My secret thanks goes to Tony DeCamillo, a staff photographer at YUAG for a perfect plate back drop. Plates were photographed safely on their back and then dropped into the background. Oh my god, this made blazing through about 40 plates a breeze.
 Behind the Curtain |
 Mappelthorpe design, finished image |
Chris
Early European Paintings
Just got back from two days in NYC photographing beautiful early European paintings. Images will be for exhibit catalogue and promotion next year at Yale Univ. Art Gallery.
Early European paintings
Thanks to the collector for letting me into their home and especially John for handling all the art and Linsey from the Art Gallery.