Montage and Photographs
Ron Diorio

Librivox recording
"The error of imaginary causes"
The Twilight of the Idols
by Friedrich Nietzsche.
Read by D.E. Wittkower
www.archive.org/details/the_twilight_of_the_idols_librivox

Other audio sample
The Psalters, Home for Refugees
www.archive.org/

Copyright 2008 Ron Diorio

Brian Appel interview with Richard Prince. Not sure when it was done, but it wasn't too long ago, because Prince references preparing for the Guggenheim show.

via anaba

Black hole
Copyright 2008 Ron Diorio
Courtesy of Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art

More thoughts on this over the next few weeks.

Ron

Rob

Very interesting thread.

I agree that the right marketing materials are needed for the segment you are looking to get work in, as in Rome, well you know the saying …. I think from the reaction here this is experiment you are running is something that “pros” feel for most part valuable and certainly they respect your leadership.

However, I get the feeling in this line “It’s not that difficult to see why I would think you’re an amateur if you put your images on Flickr. That’s what it was created for and that’s who primarily uses it.” that you may be missing something of value. I would argue that by focusing on the “amateurs” and not the audience we will be overlooking a valuable and sustainable marketing opportunity. You own an audience.

This audience of “amateurs” are the same people who consume a photographer’s images in mass magazines. They are the audience. They are the consumers. The photo editors are gate keepers and curators. They are powerful filters but they are not in the case of mass magazines the audience. By perpetuating the stigma, we are keeping photographers from an audience, from the audience.

I think by not encouraging some kind of long term involvement in a photographer’s body of work that a site like Flickr can offer through the mass audience platform it provides, we diminish a fantastic opportunity to connect with the very people who consume the photographs. I am not sure if magazines can make it happen themselves they have a vested interest in their brand - not in establishing a long term connection with broadest possible audience and enhancing the value of the photographer as recognizable.

By dismissing the vernacular aesthetic of Flickr with the audience we dismiss “the audience”. I think photographers coming into the business over the next few years will have this in their DNA. A few top tier photographer’s will have other methods of direct to audience marketing. The more intimate an audience is with a photographer, the more valuable the photographer becomes to the properties that hire them.

I am not an editorial photographer but have learned much form the readers contribution here over the last few months. Thanks for this valuable resource.

As you may already know, I have created some short videos using the photographs in my stream and text and audio/sound derived from both original and other sources. Those films can be found here:

www.youtube.com/user/avproducer

My goal for this project is to push the boundaries of what I can do with multimedia tools, explore collaboration and the weaving of narratives and different voices. I am hoping to go beyond the slideshow so there is room to experiment.

The project's working title is "A grammar of motives". The title comes from a book by Kenneth Burke that I started to read back in 1979 and have never finished although I own two copies and frequently flip through them.

I am currently planning 5 sections to mirror Burke's dramatic pentad:
+ act
+ scene
+ agent
+ agency
+ purpose

More on Kenneth Burke here
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Burke

With that brief introduction to the project, this is how you can contribute.

Record an audio/video diary entry/entries about the intersections of your life (real or imagined) and the work in my photostream. The entry can be in the form of poem/letter/lullaby/rant.

Record a voice mail message to me about something that has just happened. You can report. I am open to other possibilities - pass the phone around a dinner party, dial in from a church service, a bathroom stall or call from the beach - the settings are endless.

An informal, intimate and authentic voice is all you need to bring!

You can contribute as much as you'd like and it would be helpful to me for you to identify your self at the beginning or the end of your call/recording.

To record you can call a voice mail box

646-495-9204 x 52402

or

Upload a file as MP3/WAV/MP4
URL: drop.io/rdiorio
dropio1

Click (add) File

You can email me via flickr mail with questions.

I appreciate your help and look forward to seeing what we get. I also anticipate the need to have some specific passages of text recorded and I may additionally each out to you for that.

I am hoping to complete the collection of material by mid April.

An opening reception will be held Tuesday, February 5th, from 7:30 - 9pm.

Made up of 65 images from 36 photographers depicting 27 spiritual and religious beliefs, the exhibit includes familiar religions as well as those which are lesser-known, such as Voodou, Zoroastrianism, Sikh, Falun Gong, Wicca, Santeria and Rastafari.

"The project’s goal is to remind both artists and audiences how fortunate we are to live in a city where myriad beliefs coexist in peace, and celebrate the unique and beautiful found within each," says curator Jenny Jozwiak.

More information at the library's web page.

Congratulations, Jenny!

Photography for me is a medium that seems to propel along like a car that is perpetually running out of gas. In fits and starts, surges of energy and inertia, I will have a year where I am one and Zen-like with the world and then the next year I am out of sync like someone who has spent all of their karmic savings in one moment. This is a year when I am out of sync.

This is not a phenomena that is entirely my own. If you look through any artist’s work you will see good and bad years of production. For photographers who venture out into the street in which to mediate their experiences, a bad year may mean always being one step away from where you think you need to be standing before your prey decides they need a Starbucks and betrays your intuitive moment. These difficulties in navigating the world compounded by its non-cooperation with your needs as an artist is the simplest explanation as to why there are not many photographers still working in that manner. Revelation requires spending lots of shoe leather and depending on how big the revelation, possibly even knee surgery.

No MFA, no commercial work, no editorial work just the time and space to work through awkwardness of the movement from technique to craft to style. Making this journey doubly interesting is that in my day job I have been able advocate reader participation and contribution rather than comment and rant because of my experience.

In the article there is a reference to the Hollywood "indies". This got me thinking. What makes sense to me in that the audience gathering power of blogs and social networks has allowed an artist like myself to develop a value far beyond what could have been done even 7 years ago. Not sure that is exactly what John meant but I think that this builds on the notion of an outside the system. I am not sure if I am the first photo artist to move from Flickr to a one man show in Chelsea, I know I won't be the last.

And that is a good thing.

DANA SELF
A Long View

Here is an audio download of Mysteries of the glance written by Norman Taylor and recorded by Talking Issues in Bath UK.

Click to listen or right click to download

http://www.rondiorio.com/mysteries_of_the_glance.mp3

"Around here" an exhibition by NY photo artist Ron Diorio opens January 10th 2008 at Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art with an artist reception to celebrate the publication of Diorio's first book "Around here and other work".

Diorio's work sits between memory and premonition. Bill Hunt wrote in 2005 that "The abstracted dreamlike nature of Ron Diorio's stylish studies is subdued and engaging. This is work that lingers in my memory."

The exhibition runs January 10 - February 23, 2008.

Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art, NYC
511 West 25th Street
Gallery 306
NY NY 10001
(646) 827 9890
http://www.phhfineart.com/
phh@phhfineart.com

Happy New Year

GENIUS in photography often means a knack for being in the right place at the right time.

Does Mr Johnson really believe this is true in the present tense?

Should the line have read : "Once upon a time genius in photography often meant a knack for being in the right place at the right time."

But if we read on we are redeemed

The truth is that Link’s train pictures were not products of chance but of elaborate planning and ingenious stagecraft. His process was more like a movie director’s than a photojournalist’s.

Thank you Mr Johnson and Happy New Year.

Ron Diorio
Around Here
10 January - 23 February 2008

Artist Reception 10 January 6 PM - 8 PM

Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art
511 West 25th Street
Suite 306
NY NY 10001

www.phhfineart.com

Old haunt
World Aids Day