photographers without websites: shawn gust

Ben Huff tipped me off to Shawn Gust, another photographer without a portfolio website yet...but with a blog.

i not only like Shawn's photos, but i really appreciate his perspective. i asked him about the difference between a website and a blog. he said: "I think the blog is good way to keep up in the photography world in a kind of real time way. My blog is quite personal and I understand that this is a fine line to walk if I were using it to get work. At the same time, I think the personal approach creates an relationship/connection that a website cannot fully convey. I will be putting my work up in a simple form of a website in the months to come. This will be a sort of final edit of my work. A process that I need to do for myself."

i think its true that these types of sites function differently. the blog is more diaristic and more interactive. but at the end of the day, i think the final edit is important too.

the photos above would make my final edit -- they are titled "Jacob . Lacrosse Ave . CdA, ID . 2008" and "Bernadette, bartender . Coeur d'Alene, ID . 2007." of his portraits, he writes: "How do my subjects feel when I make their photograph? Why would this guy want me in a picture?...The subjects that I work with are mostly strangers. Their environment, or mine, or the way I see and use the surroundings, is very much a part of what I find interesting at first sight..."

photographers without websites: dash snow

another photographer who came to mind for this theme week is Dash Snow (he's also a graffiti, collage & installation artist, and a muse to Ryan McGinley—who does have a website).

as New York Magazine put it in the opening of their much-discussed profile of Snow: "The artist Dash Snow rammed a screwdriver into his buzzer the other day. He has no phone. He doesn’t use e-mail. So now, if you want to speak to him, you have to go by his apartment on Bowery and yell up."

there you have it. i don't think he'll be commissioning a personal website anytime soon. but luckily, his gallery, his friends, and Gawker have got him covered. and he seems to have no shortage of interesting subjects in his life doing crazy things.

photographers without websites: mikaylah bowman

i might have forgotten one reason why some photographers today might not have personal websites: because websites are totally over.

as the Slate article "The Death of Email" reminds us, things like email and informational web 1.0 sites are quickly becoming the sole territory of the 30+ set. (why sit down and compose an email to someone when you could be IMing, texting, blogging, updating your Myspace, or writing on a wall in Facebook, all at the same time?)

case in point, the work of 18 year-old Mikaylah Bowman. i really love what i've seen of her photos. i posted some of my favorites above, but there were several more that i wanted to include. her take on portraiture seems to naturally run to the cutting off of heads and feet, photographing people from behind, isolating their shoes, accessorizing them with slabs of meat, and dressing them up into other personae... in short, turning classic portraiture on its head is definitely second nature to her.

now, i don't mean to hold Bowman up as a symbol of what i suppose her generation to be, but you've got to admit that she might not have a personal website (with boring static things like a portfolio and contact information)—but she has got a lot of links.

and here they are. and you should check them out:

http://flickr.com/mikaylahbowman

http://oldrecipe.livejournal.com/

http://fjordphoto.org/mbowman/

http://www.myspace.com/breathingproblemproductions