THE VISUAL TELLING OF STORIES

THE VISUAL TELLING OF STORIES

Welcome to Chris Mullen's website, The Visual Telling of Stories. You can go to the main gate or shuffle about in the Samplers till you get some hang of the place. It was started in 1996. Material is added every day. It is far bigger than you could ever imagine. I don't blame you for backing out, with a polite cough. I'll never know.

Photoseed

Étude, 1896 by Paul Bergon from Photoseed

Bringing to Light the Growth and Artistic Vision of 19th & 20th Century Photography

SLICEDSOUP

Extrusion Map-69, 2010, Douglas Prince
I've been fortunate to have some work from "Extrusion Maps" added to SLICEDSOUP, a curated collection of art discovered online:

http://www.slicedsoup.org/

David Prifti

© David Prifti, 2009, Hannah, Assabet

David Prifti, who died on November 21st, was a photographer and teacher who for the past 15 years embraced the earliest techniques of photography. Using the traditional wet plate collodion process, which was developed in the 1850’s, David made photographs of contemporary sitters and subjects that are tinged with a sweet and haunting sense of nostalgia.

Because the wet collodion process requires exposures from 30 seconds to 2 minutes time it provides powerful opportunities for a deep inspection and engagement. “My interest lies in the power of a photograph to describe my subject clearly and with power,” Prifti once wrote. “What begins with my interest in the physical appearance of the subject, develops into an evolving exploration of the sitter and myself.”

John Currin

Thanksgiving by John Currin, 2003, The Tate Collection, London.

John Currin's artwork brings to mind the naturally lit rooms of Vermeer and the realistic, beautiful, yet often grotesque figures of Odd Nerdrum. What I see here are three women, obviously related, preparing a huge turkey for Thanksgiving, but the turkey is really the star. It is impossibly fat and huge, I have a hard time believing they will be able to fit it into an oven.

Happy Thanksgiving. Your Daily Art

“Surrealismus in Paris” at Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, Basel

La poupée by Hans Bellmer, painted wood, papier-mâché, mixed media, 1935/36, 61×170×51 cm, courtesy Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, photo © Collection Centre Pompidou/Vertrieb RMN/Georges Meguerditchian/ProLitteris.

visit  WURZELTOD  for review and more information

Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman in her studio, Pilgrim Mills, Providence, RI,1976, click on image to animate, Douglas D. Prince

Lytro

Camera of the Future of the Camera

Lori Nix

"Library",  2007,  Lori Nix

Javier Rodriguez

"The Winds & Waves that Waft to Love"

Collage on paper. 2007. 40cm x 25cm

Mark Sink

Wet Plate by Mark Sink, A-kristen_behind_blu#27B016

Kevin Sloan

"King of the World"      Kevin Sloan

Joan Figueiredo

Paintings by João Figueiredo

Title: Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men

It was much as though a blind race, after studying physics, should invent organs of sight

Alberto Baraya

The first is Herbarium of Artificial Plants for which Alberto Baraya took the role of a botanical explorer and collected, catalogued and displayed artificial plants from some of the earth's most fertile places, starting with Colombia, his own native country and one of the world's most biodiverse countries. Made out of plastic or fabric, the samples are dissected and exhibited inside botanical slides that rigorously detail the false plant parts and their characteristics.
Baraya's concern is representation, not ecological critique. "A lot of people need a relationship with nature, the good feeling of nature, but they sometimes get it through artificial plants. We need the representation of nature more than the reality" (via.)

Alberto Baraya, Herbario de plantas artificiales, 2002-2011

Alexis Anne Mackenzie

Alexis Anne Mackenzie,"The Bird with the Crystal Plumage" (2010). Hand-cut collage on paper, 30 x 22 inches.  “All of my collages are composed by hand — cut from books I’ve been collecting for years, and painstakingly pieced together as seamlessly as possible. They create themselves through a process beginning with a loose concept, followed by a series of trials and errors, subtle maneuvers, selection/elimination, harmonious unions, and happy accidents. It is a meditative process, and there is a lot of decision-making behind each element involved. My general intent, throughout all my work, is to portray the world as a flawed thing of beauty — a place that shines brightly, but has a dark side to match.”

Alexis Anne Mackenzie,"The Bird with the Crystal Plumage" (2010). Hand-cut collage on paper, 30 x 22 inches. 
“All of my collages are composed by hand — cut from books I’ve been collecting for years, and painstakingly pieced together as seamlessly as possible. They create themselves through a process beginning with a loose concept, followed by a series of trials and errors, subtle maneuvers, selection/elimination, harmonious unions, and happy accidents. It is a meditative process, and there is a lot of decision-making behind each element involved.
My general intent, throughout all my work, is to portray the world as a flawed thing of beauty — a place that shines brightly, but has a dark side to match.”
 

A tribute to Gertrude Huston and Naomi Savage

Entangled Man after GH(51), 2011 - Douglas Prince

Entangled Man after NS(66), 2011 - Douglas Prince

The credit for the image is here:  http://50watts.com/#1989087/A-Dark-Stranger
"Cover by Gertrude Huston for the 1951 New Directions edition of A Dark Stranger"

Julien Gracq is an incredible French writer who died in 2007 at the age of something incredible like 99. I think you would like his first novel, written when he was still affiliated with the Surrealists, The Castle of Argol. I have an anthology from the "View" folks (Charles Henri Ford's magazine) which is dedicated to the novel itself!

Gertrude Huston was the wife of New Directions' founder and publisher James Laughlin (they're both now dead). She designed a lot of their covers.

Naomi Savage seems to have been famous for photocopying and manipulating images, which I think is a viable form of artistic expression. Gracq and her uncle Man Ray were surely good friends, and I have no doubt she had the novel in her collection, photocopied and manipulated it. I bet she even knew Laughlin and Huston, and felt her work was an appreciation of the original book cover.
 
Will Schofield

credit for Naomi Savage image:  Flexible Images: Handmade American Photography, 1969–2002  by Robert Hirsch at  Light Research

Andrew Moore

Andrew Moore, Akademy model, St. Petersburg
from 5000 Photographs

Cristina Vergano

Please Leave When It Is Wise To by Cristina Vergano, 2006

Moholy=Nagy

László Moholy-Nagy - Lago Maggiore, Ascona, Switzerland, ca.1930

Michael Wesely

Michael Wesely: using large format cameras (4x5 inches) he captured the light of his objects for up to 3 years in monochrome or color. More than 2 years to create this time encapsulation at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin.

[…] During the long exposure times the pictures constantly destroyed themselves, by putting layers and layers of new details on top each other.

Just when one detail had burned into the negative it was erased or overshadowed by another detail. In his eyes this constant change and destruction is something that really stands for the state of our society. 

The moment is fading, all that remains is the permanent overlapping of movements of all kinds, political or personal. The technologies of our times fuel this fire of restless ‘Online-Existence’. One day computers won’t have an on- or off-button anymore. We will always be online. [Source]