Some photography seen at the Uptown Art Fair

On rainy Friday, August 7, Nancy and I attended our first Uptown Art Fair in Minneapolis. We went early and were able to fine one parking place four blocks from the Hennepin Ave. end of the show. After reading and dozing in our cozy parked car while rain fell, we then made our way to a good deli for lunch. The rain began to abate and we started down the rows of EZUp canopies. There were a goodly number of interesting nonphoto exhibitors, but here are some of the photographers that caught my eye. (This was all a month ago so I may not recall all the details).

The first booth we came to was also the most atypical. Allen I. Teger (www.bodyscapes.com) of Vero Beach, FL, was showing a large collection of black and white photos of female nude torsos in angular light in such a view that they looked like a cross between sand dunes and a monochromatic view of the TeleTubbies lawn. On these bodies were placed small realistic toys shown in profile to create various tableaux. The prints were very well crafted, and, the artist reassured, were not digitally modified and were not created on the tabletop, rather, uh on the dermis. He didn't explain if the models were ticklish. It was strange, but we walked on.

David Korte ( http://home.earthlink.net/~dkortephoto/html/25words/index.htm) has a mailing address in Silver Spring, MD, but, according to his website, studio in Lansing, Michigan. He also has business "cards" from chopped up copy paper. However, he must be putting all his resources into his images which are delicate, sometimes ethereal, beautifully seen images from all over the world in either selenium or sepia tone. I could not decide for sure whether they were digital or film based silver gelatin until I saw his quite reasonable print prices. They're digital, and worth having.

Jay Anderson, of Cambridge MN ( http://www.jayandersonphoto.com/), has beautifully realized and executed, if somewhat standard, digital work approximately 75% color. His images of Santorini (has there ever been a bad picture of that island?) and rural landscapes are especially charming.

Kelly Povo ( http://www.kellypovo.com/kelly.html ) is a lady from Lakeville, a Twin Cities suburb who does diverse, often quirky images in black and white with some hand colored. She has a series of girls in playful poses, and a series of '50s memoribilia. But there are also really interesting landscapes and natural abstractions.

Richard La Martina of Earthtones Photography ( http://www.lamartinaphotos.com/) works out of Gays Mills, Wisconsin. He apparently works from color transparency film, but he must process digitally because his images, mostly of rural landscapes and atmospheric drama, are unnaturally sharp and supersaturated. They are mostly beautiful, although to my taste, one or two of them approach Thomas Kinkaid kitsch. Nonetheless they are very nice to look at, and his newest works should be of interest because they are panoramas, one of which, Meadow Lace, deserves a long look.

Michael Cole ( http://www.colesnaps.com/list.html ), is based at wherever area code 253 is, another printshop-deficient locale, because his business card and artist's statement was a full sized xeroxed sheet of copy paper, which indicated his technique as, " Gelatin silver, high quality papers, oil pigments and tar are some of the materials I use in my images." He wasn't very verbal and did not elaborate on the above, but his rather foggy, strangely brown toned (?tar?) images had a spare, moody, bromoil-like impression that did create some intrigue.

Barry Hendrickson ( http://www.irelandinblackandwhite.com/) provided the most affecting images of my visit. His portfolio show, Ireland in Black and White, features dramatic, moody pictures which are cast in that twilight that must exist in that special land we usually think of in tones of green. They do, like so much of work processed with the tempting tools of the digital workshop, carry drama to the very edge of excess, but just short of too much. I chatted with him for a while, a very pleasant exchange in which he let out his past with film imaging. I also told him about the digital plugin for black and white that Byron displayed in one of our earlier meeting. He seems like a very hard working artist, but he seems to work his family, too, because the next day we visited Irishfest in St. Paul, and there was an equally elaborate booth of his works tended by his wife.