Last week I had the privilege of attending Medium Photo in San Diego as a portfolio reviewer. I spend a lot of time at my computer writing about photography and events like these are a wonderful way to make personal connections with the people who make up the photography community. The photographers who sat at my table presented completed and in-progress portfolios in a wide range of genres and processes. Most of the photographers I met with were eager to have discussions about how to develop their works in progress, and approaches to marketing completed bodies of work. Although 20 minutes isn’t a lot of time to fully delve into the complexities of art-making and the art market, I hope that I was able to provide helpful critique and advice.

In addition to the one-on-one reviews, Medium organized a portfolio walk on Thursday evening where each photographer displayed their work to the public and made themselves available for questions. Here are a few portfolios that I enjoyed.

Lesley Nowlin Blessing — Twin Elements 

Some four decades ago, I came into this world three minutes before my twin sister. The complexity of our relationship has been a focal point in my series Twin Elements and has helped me communicate the different facets of life as a twin.

My subjects are photographed in a natural state that is choreographed to accentuate elements of movement, beauty and inner connectedness. I show the likenesses and, more importantly, the subtle differences of each person, striving to bring an ethereal, surreal and darkly affectionate quality to each piece of art.

With alternative processes I’m able to bring a historical and tangible quality to the relationships I’m portraying. This series is platinum on vellum, gilded with copper, silver or gold leaf before varnishing. The finished piece is multiple platinum prints “stitched together” to create an overall engaging experience that is viewed best in person.

Jay Boersma — Simple Truths (and Complex Lies)

“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them... well, I have others.”  —Groucho Marx

In 1987, I decided take a divergent path from my usual approach to photography, a path that would allow me to be less subtle, more playful, and to take more risks. The Simple Truths (and Complex Lies) project is the result.

Simple Truths is a blend of inquiry and absurdity that borrows from post-modernism, Dada, and sixties experimentalism with some Ernie Kovacs, Spike Jones and Mad Magazine thrown in to keep things moving. 

While diverse in materials, methods, and presentation, these pieces share a common goal which is to present information to the viewer in unanticipated ways. Sub-themes within the overall project investigate self-portraiture, sexual relationships, sacred cows, regular cows, the history of art and photography, and a few uniquely human attributes such as greed, lust, pretense, and regret.

Much, but not all, of this is enclosed in a layer of ironic humor that may help buffer steadily increasing evidence that nihilism actually makes a lot of sense.

(Or not.)

Molly Peters — Anima

Anima, the Italian word for soul, refers primarily to an individual’s true inner self, spirit, and life-giving breath. It functions in contrast to the idea of a persona, or the outward-facing part of someone’s being.

Recently, I returned for an extended period to Martha’s Vineyard, the island where I was born and raised—a place that was both changed and unchanging, but no longer home as I remembered it. I was temporarily occupying a life I’d never expected to return to. My spiritual, emotional, and psychological journey in that time was marked deeply by witnessing a series of events in my close friend’s life. She embodied a mythical phoenix, dying and rising repeatedly from the ashes, as she experienced a mysterious energetic and metaphysical transition.

The photographs in this series are born of this experience and serve as a distillation of a distinct time period where my spirit was tested by events which were inherently undefinable, traumatic, and otherworldly.

Paula Riff — Blue Is Not the Sky

Blue Is Not the Sky is an exploration of color, form, and design through experimental and cameraless photography. I use the historic processes of cyanotype and gum bichromate to imagine the universe through the world of abstraction, as a place where all possible shapes, forms, and colors coexist.

I am inspired by abstract painters and the experimental photographers of the early 1920s who created abstract images with the intention of moving beyond the medium’s ability to reproduce reality. My vision is to create a different reality by letting go of any preconceived ideas of photography. I seek to consider art in its purest form by looking at the fundamental elements of shapes and lines while giving homage to the beauty and simplicity of abstraction.