May is finally here...

May started out with sub-freezing temperatures and a heavy, wet snowfall. At least it appears to have finally straightened out. I've been working through it, continuing to photograph the Loess Hills region of Iowa and Fontenelle Forest, and reworking my South Omaha series.

Here are three images from the past few weeks...

from Fontenelle

from The Magic City

Council Bluffs, Iowa

The Magic City at the Hot Shops

The first exhibition of photographs from my series on South Omaha is up and ready to go at the Hot Shops. The spring open house runs today from 12-8 and Sunday from 12-5. I'm going to do my best to be around for most all of the open house so stop by and say hello.

Framed images are priced at $100 (16x20) and $70 (11x14). If you're interested in the smaller size, please be aware that you will receive a matted image. There was a mix-up in the mats I ordered, so the photographs on display are framed without mats. So it goes.

I'll also have a selection of 6x9" images from the series and some greatest hits for sale for only $30 in a very nice string-tie envelope.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's the artist statement for the project:

The Magic City
Photographs of South Omaha

After being founded in 1884, South Omaha grew to be a city of 8,000 people by 1890 and 30,000 by the time Omaha formally annexed it in 1915. Because of this remarkable growth, South Omaha was nicknamed "The Magic City."

I moved to South Omaha a few years ago and have fallen in love with this area of the city. This photo project is a an exploration of its neighborhoods and a tribute to its rebirth over the last decade. It serves as a visual document of South Omaha's details and landscapes as it exists at this particular moment in history.

I'd like to thank Kate Saroka, Kelly Adams, Les and Deanna Vavak, Jeremy Hanson, Nic and Kaeli Swiercek, and Bill Hess for their help and support in my endeavors.

The State of the Artist: 2012

Now that 2012 has begun, I thought it would be a good time to talk a little bit about my photographic pursuits and what I have planned for the near future. I now find myself nearing the completion of my bachelor's degree and, with it, the completion of another chapter of my life. What follows are a few plans and insights about my place in this crazy world, camera in hand..

This May marks five years since I first set out to photograph Nebraska for what would become ninety-three. I've developed three goals for the series, one of which I achieved with my first exhibition at Hot Shops in 2010. Next is the publication of all 93 photographs as a photo book. I received the first copy of the book this week and will be finalizing all the little details in the next month or so.

Photo books have been a big influence for me as a photographer. I started with Robert Frank's The Americans and moved from there, finding tremendous amounts of inspiration from image after image displayed in this very intimate artform. Paging through my first attempt, I felt an immense pride in the work, a feeling that I had in many ways lost after sifting through the photographs for so many years. I'm very excited for others to get a chance to see the whole series in this format.

My South Omaha photographs will be titled The Magic City, a nickname that the city earned in the 19th century due to its remarkable rise in population almost overnight. While I'm not sure the project is too near completion at this point, I will be showing many of the images at the Hot Shops Art Center in a small two person show with my friend and photographer William Hess. Our photographs will be on display throughout May with an opening at the Hot Shops' Spring Open House on May 5th and 6th.

The Magic City is similar in a lot of ways to my prior work, a collection of details and random color photographs taken throughout South Omaha. I do feel, however, that the work is different in other ways from what I've done before, building on that foundation and expanding further. This growth is what keeps me growing and coming back to the camera again and again.

The future is still very much in the air. I'm researching a few large projects and hope to have something settled on in the coming months. As I've found before, the best laid plans often are the least productive while the results of happenstance are far more successful. I look forward to stumbling into another subject that consumes me as much as ninety-three has.

For the time being, I'll keep taking other photographs that will be published on my Flickr page, so check back often.

Thank you for your support. 

Keeping busy

It's been over a month since I last posted anything on this blog. While I've been busy with work and school, I have also spent quite a bit of time photographing South Omaha. The lack of immediacy from shooting film doesn't really allow for consistent blog entries with photographs.

I am looking forward to revealing much of the South Omaha project at the Hot Shops Art Center in Omaha this coming May. The winter will be spent scanning negatives and organizing the series. I'll have more news soon.

Pictured above is the view of the Veteran's Memorial Bridge and Missouri River from Mandan Park.


---------------------------------------------------------


ninety-three is nearing completion in book form. I've been sequencing the photographs and working on getting a cover design figured out. The book should be available from Blurb in the next few months.

Kodak Ektar 100

My prior experience with color film was largely with Fujifilm's now defunct NPS 160. It produced a low contrast image with a lot of exposure latitude, something that gave images a certain look that I was really into at the time. This look stuck with me as I began shooting ninety-three. Over time, my tastes changed (and my processing skills improved) and I've settled on a bit different look for my images.

Recently, I've been shooting with about as new of a color film that exists in this now digital world. Kodak Ektar 100 was introduced in the fall of 2008. Ektar is an unusual sort of film, a negative film that behaves a lot like a slide film. It's more forgiving than most slide films, but offers a lot more contrast than typical negative films.

I have recently found myself drawn to the Kodachrome images of photographers like William Christenberry and Saul Leiter rather than the sort of pristine perfection of someone like Stephen Shore's large format work. With this in mind, Ektar has been the perfect film for a somewhat sloppy photographer like myself to come back to. It's not as picky about exposure as slide film, but has a certain look that is pretty much exactly what I was looking for.

Ektar is very sharp film with a fine grain structure. It appears to scan well from what I've seen so far, although I'm without a scanner to really dig into just how much detail is there. Even the machine scanned files look pretty good printed at 18x12, if a little short on resolution upon close examination.

I've settled on Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas for film processing and basic scanning. The quality is top notch and they offer a fast turn around. I send a few rolls out in a Priority Mail flat-rate box and I get a package back in the mail a week later. The wait has taken some getting used to, but it's been worth it. The results are great and it's immensely satisfying to carry around this tiny camera and lens that are worth less than $100 altogether.

I'm looking to debut the South Omaha photographs sometime next year, perhaps in May at Hot Shops Art Center. Stay tuned for more details, as they say.

Independence Day

This 4th of July finds me once again searching South Omaha for photographs. It's a fantastic day, not entirely too hot, and just enough clouds to make for good images. Everywhere I walked, the loud bang of a firework was never too far away and sometimes close enough to startle me. You never know how people will react to a strange bearded guy wandering around with a camera around his neck.

The project is slowly moving forward. I was happy with much of the last four rolls I got back from Dwayne's and have another three ready to go out in the mail. Above is a photograph of the back of some of the businesses along 24th Street.

At this point, I'm thinking I'd like to have a small show to reveal the work. It's been too long since I've exhibited anything.

June

It's hard to believe June is already two-thirds over. Time has a way of really getting away from me.

I'm still at work photographing South Omaha. So far, it has been a bit of a struggle for me. The first camera had a wonky shutter and I keep forgetting to set the dial back to aperture priority on the second one. It's unbelievably frustrating to look down and suddenly realize you've shot half a roll of film at 1/60th of a second. Rather than admit defeat, I say a few impolite words in my head and go right back at it. I'm also finding the small area I've chosen to focus on to be more restrictive than I had imagined. In most cases, I just set out in the car and go for hours. This subject requires more thought and depth, more time spent walking and searching.

A few days ago, a friend asked me why I'm continuing to attempt something that I find to be so frustrating. I find that I need to work in a different way and develop new skills, no matter how much I want to go back to what I know best. It's the only way I can get better and evolve as an artist. So I press on.

I am sending four rolls of film off to Dwayne's in Parsons, Kansas tomorrow. New photographs soon, U.S. Mail and old Minolta camera willing.

---------------------------------

Also, don't forget that I'm posting three images of Nebraska to my Flickr account every day this month. I've enjoyed going back through all the images from ninety-three for what feels like the thousandth time. There's always something new to be found...

www.flickr.com/photos/josephvavak

Including the photograph of the sandhills and sky of Arthur County, Nebraska that is now on the front page of my website.

www.josephvavak.com

Happy (?) accidents

The aforementioned shutter problems lead to some interesting results. While I like the spontaneity of some of the mistakes, as illustrated above, I'm sending the camera in for repairs. I think I would get more and more frustrated as I saw more otherwise good photographs ruined.

South O

It took a little longer than I had expected, but the first two rolls of film of images from South Omaha are back from a photo lab in Texas. The good news is that the ol' Minolta works well for the most part, although the shutter appears to lag occasionally. Working from film scans will take some getting used to, but I like the results thus far.

For now, enjoy a few images from Sunday afternoon, May 8th.

A new beginning...

It was almost a year ago that I found myself happily unemployed and toyed with creating a document of the South Omaha I had come to love since moving to this part of town. After a somewhat feeble attempt at starting the project, I put it on the back burner and continued to put a bit of polish on ninety-three instead. Today, I spent the afternoon photographing South Omaha once again, restarting what I hope will hold my attention and bring inspiration to me.

I have decided to shoot color film for the first time in a few years. Pictured above is the Minolta XD-5 SLR that I purchased a few weeks ago along with 35mm and 50mm lenses. It was manufactured in 1979, the same year I was born. The hope is that the older camera will seem less conspicuous than an all black, modern DSLR and people will be a little more comfortable around it.

As I worked with the Minolta today, I remembered why I like these simple manual focus cameras so much. The viewfinder is tremendous, the subject snaps in and out of focus smoothly as I turn the lens' focusing ring. It's a bit like driving a car with a manual transmission. The operator feels more connected with the machine, more involved in the process of taking a photograph. The XD-5 doesn't have all the bells and whistles, but it feels solid and the lenses are wonderfully small and well-built.

After shooting with digital for so long, I found returning to film to be a bit of an adjustment. There's no confirmation as to whether you got everything right or if something went horribly wrong. Thirty-six exposures seems both small and large at the same time. The last frame can come up right in the middle of a burst of creativity. Or it waits off in the distance, taunting you to find enough potential subjects to finish the roll. I can't decide what is worse, wasting the last few frames or leaving a half-shot roll in the camera, anxious to see what magic you captured, unable to develop the film until it reaches its end.

Cross your fingers for me. I'll (hopefully) have some images later this week, thirty-year old camera permitting.

For the photo nerds in the audience who care about such things, I'm trying out Kodak's Ektar 100 film. It's supposed to be as close to transparency film as print film gets, with the least grain of any color film. This is actually the first time I've ever shot Kodak color film. All of my older projects were shot with the now defunct Fujifilm NPS 160 film.

Yes, there used to be a ballpark right here

Tonight was the last baseball game at venerable Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium. I mentioned the ballpark's demise a few months ago on this blog. The game itself was fairly uneventful, with the Omaha Royals getting out to an early lead and coasting to an easy victory.

I'll be sad to see the place go, mainly because it was such a wonderful place to catch a game on a summer evening. A baseball palace on the hill, a throwback to days that now have passed. The crowds seemed to be getting thinner every year, numbering no more than maybe a few hundred on some weeknights. And so, progress marches on, a new ballpark with all the extracurricular amenities for people who just don't seem to have the patience for the pace of baseball in this modern world.

Play Ball

Perhaps the most well known of South Omaha's landmarks, Rosenblatt Stadium has hosted the College World Series since 1950. 2010 marks the last summer for the ol' ballpark. A new park is being built north of downtown to host the Series starting next June.

I love the place, if mostly for sentimental reasons. The stadium itself isn't all that charming. For example, the gray concrete concourses beneath the seating are about as uninviting as a person could make them. But it's a great setting for baseball and I'll miss spending lazy summer evenings in the stands watching the Omaha Royals play.

On this Monday night, all the scoring came early and the game wound up tied 2 to 2 after 9 innings. Former University of Nebraska standout Alex Gordon, recently demoted to Triple A to learn the ins and outs of left field, drove in the winning run with a single in the bottom of the 11th.

The Magic City

A few months ago, I moved to a house on 13th Street right near the South Omaha bridge. In a matter of just a few weeks, I fell in love with this part of town. There's just so much character and revitalization everywhere you look. The people of South Omaha have changed over the years, from the Czech and Irish immigrants of the early 20th century to the Hispanic immigrants of today, but the spirit of the community continues to thrive.

Today begins a new project for myself, an attempt to document the neighborhoods, details and people that make up South Omaha. It'll be a learning experience for me. I've grown used to traveling hundreds of miles to find potential photographs. Now I've confined myself to a space little more than eight miles north to south and even less from east to west. While something like ninety-three was understandably superficial in nature, this subject requires much more depth to be successful. I'm looking forward to the challenge (and the frustration).

The old South Omaha bridge was demolished in February. Last week, the new bridge opened for the first time. While the new bridge doesn't have the charm of the old one, it's bound to be a lot safer. The photograph above shows what little remains of the old bridge alongside the new construction.