Thank You Kyle! We have lots of new content planned for 2023. Stay Tuned!

That’s Awesome!! Thank You!

Thank You! Much Appreciated!

Thank You!!

Thank You Will 👍

I believe it’s a D4 with a 24-105.

Good point. He never mentioned 1:41 seeing genocide in the Native American’s face here huh? Not for a moment. I guess that wouldn’t sell too many prints in the gallery? And this odd 3:27 aestheticized fashion shoot with makeup applied directed by the photographer’s desire for aesthetic appeal to him rather than any historical accuracy is telling. This fetishized nostalgia walks right up to the brink of kitsch … technically proficient and borrowing from some of the best examples of fine-art photo style. But dangerously close to kitsch just the same. I’ve seen a lot of comparisons between Avedon “In the American West” and this man’s work. I beg to differ. Avedon was constantly concerned about the possibility of stepping over the barrier between documentary fine art portraiture and exploitation of his subjects. This photographer here doesn’t seem ever to consider that what he’s doing might transcend art and become exploitative of his subject matter. Another profound difference, related to the above, is that Avedon never romanticized his subjects “In The American West”. One of the reasons he consciously chose the white or light gray background for studio portraits was to AVOID romanticizing his subjects and their social position. This guy here makes it his entire approach to 12:55 romanticize these “anachronisms” as he calls them. He even admits as much right here 12:50. If he was genuinely concerned about these people and their plight and their future, he wouldn’t be concerned about their “soul” 14:25 he’d be concerned about the material and economic and political (not “cultural” BTW) forces making their lives more and more difficult to live. Don’t look at this guy as a hero. He’s a collector and purveyor of an aestheticized version of an already almost entirely vanished past. His “aw-shucks” demeanor while perhaps even honest doesn’t change this fact. Avedon was had the political conscience of a true believer in the importance of the power of the unromanticized image to make a political statement. This photographer here is trying to tell you he’s accessing these people’s souls so you too can share in collecting them with him before they are gone. Avedon’s portrait work inspires political questions that demand answers. This guys work inspires cultural questions that provoke romanticization, collection and commerce. Avedon was a genius who could flip a switch and even using sometimes the same overall aesthetic approach to the image make commercial photos of fantasy worlds that provoked commerce and then the next day create probing portraits whose political effects ranged from so subtle as to be missed by the commissioners or subjects themselves (like famous Coco Channel and the background Nazi poster portrait, or the huge series of American political and power figures for Rolling Stone (“The Family” (1976)) to overt and obvious … like the portraits of napalm victims (“Vietnam” in The New York Times Magazine (1971)). This fetishized portraiture might be associated with a friendly and unassuming artist but it lives in the same world of denial about the plight of working people in his states right around him, as well as denial of the genocidal history that created the romanticized cowboy and Indian imagery he’s pretending is still there all around to capture if you just go look for it. Go look at the images and the videos associated with Avedon’s In The American West if you want something that’s even still a little dated … but honest and caring and respectful of its subjects, compared to the clear commodification of a long gone fantasy world that never actually existed.