Truth to Light

Photos and Blog by Pete Ambrose

Out of light comes truth. It allows us to tap into our deepest imagination and reveal the world's surreal emotional hues.  Visual potential is dictated by what the formal aspects of a photograph can emote and executed through the intense spirit of the information made available to the viewer's eye.  Photography is about capture, a framed eulogy of moments ever-present, but immortalized through the everlasting.  Most importantly, it's a facility for which to transfer, transport, and access individual sentiment within each and every soul who takes in the reality it displays.  I explore, observe, create…light.  The summation is my aesthetic attempt to bring light to truth and my conceptual attempt to bring truth to light – blending layered meaning, focused statements rearing opinion and allowing opinion to rear itself. 

No previous series I've worked on has allowed me the opportunity to explore the extraordinary visual potential of the straight photograph as much as the series I reveal today.  I remind you of the straight photograph…the captured image as is, produced by the camera – no digital alterations other than simple color correction.  With this series, I remind you of the endless possibilities and the power it has over any photograph with digital padding and effect.  Reactive make-up/paint, light and wardrobe were used as the aesthetic drive to bring these images to life.  Using those devices, along with the technical allotments and limitations of the straight photograph, the goal was to create works of Art rooted in the modern movement, grown out of contemporary glamour and dipped into a colorful world of surrealistic expressionism.  The designs, angles and artificial light ask the viewer to challenge their own emotional digestion of the visually antagonizing images, their perspective within the medium as a whole, and the photograph itself as a stand alone work.

Art allows for existence to be categorized by alternate explanations – where scientific holes exist, its creation fills those voids, both emotionally and subconsciously.  I don't want the viewer merely to bask in the images' formal aesthetics, but to derive a wide range of emotional relevance to their own experience of ecstasy, fear, melancholy, passion, pain, power, sensuality – the organic chemistry produced from Art's solidifying synergy of tangible expression, technical prowess, and inexpressible visual sensation.

These images are meant to breath, pulsate, and bloom – to reinvent their own context for which they exist and were created each time they are looked upon and each time they are ignored.

In the greater scheme of the project, it's meant to be a utter rejection of the contemporary conventional reliance, a sign of faith to the human mind, to the camera – a technical and stylistic tip of the cap to Adams, Arbus, Lange, Weston, Mann, Eggleston, Wall, Ritts, Sherman, Goldin and the other masters…all of whom ventured fearlessly into a hurricane of conceptual risk, a majority rule of rejection against their visual grain.  What reigned supreme was the confidence they possessed in their own vision, their own ability to see above and beyond the "industry standard".  They loyally wore their respective cameras (ironically many were defective and technically deficient ranging in format from 35 mm to 8 x 10) as the defining symbol of their talent, and a reminder of why they were influential – why they were great.  To me photography is a piece of clay.  I didn't sign up to be molded, but rather to mold, to honor the medium with utmost deference for what came before and what can still be after today.

The base techniques of the project were set forth upon this rejection and the realization for the visual potential of what could literally lie in front of us waiting to be captured.  The lights used were highly unconventional to the medium or any other for that matter, mainly because of their high unpredictability and immeasurability with regards to exposure.  I've always been a fan of texture.  Some photos should be smooth and some you should feel the grain of the work, like visual brail, without ever running your hand across the image.  I shot at a high ISO to contradict the otherwise smooth and surreal results – break away from any emotional gloss, creating an aesthetic struggle similar to the complexities of the human mind.  We used make-up that was supplemental to the light, and of course wasn't really make-up at all but rather a form of paint.  The application of such was meant to be unpredictable, haunting, breeding shape and form atop human shape and form, and alas, atop human emotion.  The chemical reaction created where the paint met the light allowed one of the most important aspects in all model-based photography to be eradicated – the eyes.  Lost are the windows to the soul, the indicators of emotion, and the guide to why the rest of the picture exists in exhibition at all.  This forced the models to emote on an equal plane with the paint and surrounding backgrounds, but furthermore, it provoked emotional revelation through body language, gesture, arms, hands, lips, and furrowed eye brows.  The results alone display a clear delineation of communication from the subtlest and often overlooked supplements to our visual cortex.

It was my utmost pleasure to create this project in a highly collaborative effort and environment with wonderful artists.  First and foremost my Make-Up Artist…scratch that…Artist, Stephanie Lawrence.  Her unique vision, detailed designs, and ability to understand the end goal of both the single image and project as a whole became a staple of what was created.  She used an airbrush, stencils, paint brushes, her hands and other tools of the trade and many others to turn the model's bodies into a canvas of creation and expression.  Rare is it to come across an artist so technically gifted on the one hand, yet so diverse and solidified in her ability to create different looks upon the body and face using a multitude of materials while creating an equally exponential range of visual endpoints.  Stephanie…thank you for supporting my vision and being an equal partner in bringing it to life. 

Along with Stephanie was Ryan Gray, who lent a tireless hand, creative wisdom and helped facilitate these successful shoots.

The three models that subjected their bodies to the project were courageous, experimental and as energetic a group as I've ever worked with.  Midori, Kari, and Emily were true artistic soldiers and accomplished models in commercial fields ranging from high fashion to glamour, willing to participate in a project that was purely for art sake.  Their open mind, energy and professionalism will benefit them greatly (and has) as they ascend within their own medium.  They are symbols of my own adage that all truly great models are great artists…

On a small side note, the next direction I'm taking my work is again unlike anything you've seen from me before.  In the midst our current social discourse, especially within our country, I am going to be focusing on a handful of bodies of work laden with explicit social statements and juxtapositions.  They have been my most complex undertakings, having been in conceptual construction since January.  Be prepared for another photographic exploration…this time to mirror who we are as a society and who we all have the potential to be.  Expect these projects to be unveiled in early June, with a post of continued work in May.

Enjoy the new images in the album of the same name along with continued work in other series.

Best,

Pete 

Life in the Death of Fashion

Photos and Blog by Pete Ambrose

In the midst of a world where popular trend dictates visual policy, fabrics and image have ultimately become the decisive judgment and stereotypical link to a person’s soul and how it’s sold.  Fashion literal has replaced fashion in the broader metaphorical scope of how it relates to the sociological evolution from person to person and, ironically, when the pendulum of one swings, the other follows.  Beyond fashion’s ability to define gender, social status, and a figure within clothes, it’s lost its ability to be a catalyst for change.  Fashion isn’t just the fabric we wear, it’s the fabric we use to evolve – to open the door to new ideas, to persuade a closed mind to try on something different to open up and find a new way with which to cloth life.  Fashion needs to regain its ability to emote, and I’m not talking about clothes.  I’m talking about cultivating a culture which today’s Avedon, tommorow’s Balenciaga – the undiscovered Yves St. Laurent dreaming design, may flourish and nurture a new bond and for fine art, fashion and commerce.

When I set out with the initial blueprint and landscape for this project it was very morbid both symbolically and aesthetically.  After the first couple of shoots I stumbled upon a vitality and energy within the images that seemed to overwhelm their deathly visual connotation in favor of a bold and surrealistic representation of life and emotion.  I’ve written many of times previously about setting a course where Fine Art photography melds within the fashion world, a process of identifying beauty faithful to reality and not to conventional ideology.  Furthermore, I’ve always tried to use latent metaphor to serve as a multiple entendre within the work’s statement.  In this series, the morose and evocative poses and expressions serve to pose fashion in a state of transition, eulogizing an uninspired contemporary movement.  The second layer of meaning serves to implicate a period of time in which the actual overarching and root definition of the term is extricated from hiding and brought to the forefront:

Miraim-Webster defines "Fashion" as such:

1 a: the make or form of something barchaic : kind, sort

2 a: a distinctive or peculiar and often habitual manner or way fashion, tell you — Shakespeare> b: mode of action or operation fashion>

3 a: a prevailing custom, usage, or style b (1): the prevailing style (as in dress) during a particular time (2): a garment in such a style fashions> c: social standing or prominence especially as signalized by dress or conduct fashion>

It’s odd that the above eerily echoes my internal mission statement for my work (see blog Visual Mission), but that was the idea, a comment on a listless fashion: Fashion – using the definition of the word: fashion.  Am I trying to sell some Gucci floss? Some D&Gesus? Maybe some Ver-silly-uninspired-sace-shit?  Am I displaying haute-couture dresses made out of bread ala Jean Paul Gautier? Nah…just metaphorically finding life within a commercial realm that literally and figuratively have become a clusterfuck of morose, surrealistic images where models have become mannequin’s, fashion has been reduced to entitled fabric – where the photograph seems to only compliment the hair and make-up and countless hours of post-production; where artistry has dissolved into suds of repetitive creation, vapid facial expressions and backgrounds, snobby gestures of resource and little of substance.

(Now a repose from the overly-serious tone this artist’s statement has maintained up to this point).

The Models and Direction

Fashion seems to love using unconventional models, odd facial structures, emaciated figures, fierce expressions, directed by vocal photogranistas. I’ll have you note I devised a unique formula for direction for the body of work after studying contemporary fashion photo direction and being unable to shake the image of my mentor, Austin Powers, on many of his quintessential shoots.  It’s pretty XYZ:  "You’re a dead (fill in properly feared and fierce Animal here)!  Yes!  Now you’re a dead (fill in even more feared and fierce Animal here!(add two to three exclamation points of vocal inflection here).  Oh, yes!  That’s (fill in supportive stand alone vain adjective with Italic elongated vocal inflection to quell model’s apprehension that the visual aesthetic isn’t ruining her career/wasting her time).  (Lastly, a conclusive idiosyncratic statement by photogranista that he has captured the image and is no longer able to take the visual beauty in front of him due to the need for five minutes of mental recess to pat himself on his ego-testicle back).  Oh, and all yeses and Oh, yeses must be tonally communicated in the form of pejorative, female orgasm (with utmost placation and insincerity – or…fake).

Most oft used example of direction: "You’re a dead cobra!  Yes!  Now you’re a dead mongoose!!(!) Oh, yes! – That’s Beeeautifull.  We’re gravy.  Get me an Evian." – Pete Ambrose

To piss on convention like a geriatric diaper, I choose talented models whose looks were quite conventional or classic on first impression.  However, once surrounded by statement and given the opportunity to express apart from the constraints of common fashion/glamour practices (and my convoluted explanations of the project), I found exotic, emotive, and elegant model-artists thrown into a new realm of creation and a unique representation of life in death.  Underneath the first reaction from the base heavy-handed gesture is a subtlety of posture, an endearing, yet lost, facial expression, a beauty only beginning to define itself…

(End self-deprecation and bad humor here…time to get serious again.)

The Make or Form of Something

The idea quite simply was to fashion something new…fine art can be as asinine and dramatic as contemporary fashion, so why not re-introduce the two, high-maintenance, drama queens to each other in an attempt to re-certify each’s creative license.  Yeah I’ve seen pictures of people meant to be posed like their dead…looks as if I’m ripping others off, right?  The idea was to create poses whether on the ground or standing to emote a quality that felt as if the model were neither alive nor dead, but somewhere in between – lost in a void…a void that’s emblematic of the contemporary movement in fashion.  The added layer which is meant to be evoked are the formal qualities of expression and posture, the details which tell a story beyond the wardrobe or lack there of.  The idea is to persuade through art and to form social if not commercial change.  Can fashion be about anything other than the exterior elements on the model?

In my opinion, fashion was never about the clothes, it was about the attitude that wore them.

A Distinctive or Peculiar and often Habitual Manner or Way

Fashion implements social and cultural change because analogous to the mode of human evolution, what survives stands out.  The fashion to survive is often the fashion which endures little opposition after its ascension.  Yet throughout history, fashion has faced some form of mutiny within itself for the nature of trend requires change…if even just for what we wear and far below how we conduct that code of creation.  Yet the habit contemporary trend has lead us to is one in which the changes in fashion are relegated to  primitive substance (clothes) – the art that presents this substance has flat lined and is dying.  When fashion photography’s guidelines became rules, when that medium dedicated itself to maintaining the standards of one another, the fashion underneath ceased to have a vessel for true change.  Every year commercial imagery seems to absorb into one lineage or status quo, similar to the corporate structure overarching the creative decisions passed down to the photographer.  This then passes down to the professional free-lance photographer shelving creation in favor of being "sellable", which passes down to the amateur fashion photographer, who stunts and desensitizes his or her aesthetic growth because Photoshop can create the perfect lie, like plastic surgery, (shameless, but apt Nip/Tuck reference) and enhance inexperience through technical wizardry – making her shoot look like the pros do…fake Louis Vuitton in small town Kansas. 

The creations and presentation of fashion in the commercial world seems to tighten the noose on raw creativity, most particularly in photography every year.  Many photographers would argue with me…that the new realms of technology and the "inspired" leadership of many haute-couture and high end labels love the push the envelope of chic expression.  As costs go up the marketing demographic becomes smaller catering only to those who can afford – oft the aesthetically acute, but thematically retarded.  Who has the will to change the course?  The revolution has started with rash of start up "Indie" avant garde magazines aiming to bring back the original aesthetic of the medium.  I’m on board and/am want/willing to take the wheel.  Anything is marketable, it requires critical thought to sell change from the ground up through social and visual influence and fashion is the closest commercial photographic relative to fine art.  Most of all, it requires the time to roll up the sleeves and dig, to break ground…to find life…

A Prevailing Custom, Usage, or Style

Hidden beneath the visual context, wardrobe choices, even the models throughout the body of work, is a satire of custom and the attempt to assert style.  I want the viewers to feel obligated to relate, if nothing else to a composition of rejection, through the rocks, trees, pavement, graffiti, sea, forest and urban realities that access both our universal subconscious visual penchants.  By no means do I think this series will inspire the current fashion hierarchy to accept my view, but I want it to be one voice in the process that can embalm the standard – allowing for the birth of an overall acceptance to a broader range of imagery and not an advertising structure solely adherent to marketing principles set forth void of allowance for more than one monochromatic hue within a vast spectrum of visual potential.

To prevail, the fashion community must allow for a new style to reduce the medium to the taken photograph, free from constraint, and not the oppressed, produced expression…to emphasize the everyday beauty – flaw in skin, human emotion, reverie and desire.

In all honesty this body of work might as well blow…but regardless of what the verdict may be, it’s an attempt to try out a new light – a blind date with un-expectation.  It was spawned, if nothing else, so a future generation of innovators can continually know it’s okay to experiment with the persuasion of pop culture, to allow and emphasize photographs in a portfolio that don’t strike you like the bite of a cobra, but rather overwhelm you as the venom of depth informs and satisfies your soul over time.  We can create a prevailing custom sheltered from the contemporary laziness and desensitized critical minds beyond their attention’s deficit, and away from eyes equipped only to react to what they know looks like an Armani campaign.  I took a violent stab into the ground with my shovel in an attempt to rediscover the wealth of the never-ending treasure of originality. 

It may be wholly ineffective as a gesture, but again, at least I took a stab. 

Best,

Pete

The Spirituality of the Subtle: Found (Sky) Art and Passing Face(s)

Photos and Blog by Pete Ambrose

Spirituality and subtlety of emotion make for duo rarely found to be in cahoots, but then again, neither would found art in the sky and clusters of people roaming the street.  In my first two fine art/documentary bodies of work for 2008, I’ve aimed to draw a relation to both the intangible feelings of faith, fate and beauty in two ideas that couldn’t be more dissimilar aesthetically.  While their effect on the viewer and thematic concept differ and remain separate, they were spawned at the same point in my life and examine the same emotion I secrete when I observe both.

Expressions: Found (Sky) Art 

Sometimes we take a look at the sky and see clouds form recognizable objects, often neglecting the surrounding colors, or using them only to compliment our own Rorschach  reverie – eyes turned to the heavens yearning to connect with something void of definition.  In a point in my life in which I’ve felt extremely comfortable expressing and creating abstract-scapes of the earth to serve as metaphors for my own personal conflict, insight and faith, I stumbled upon a most mystic and evocative light and structure spanning the sky across the San Francisco bay over Christmas break.  After the first day, I couldn’t turn away and new I had to find a way to capture the essence of what I was seeing – an energy of shape, color, light, sheen, and depth.  Each day for the rest of the break I spent photographing what I saw.  

I’m not ashamed to say the underlying theme in all of my work is to capture the things in life we miss…to focus on the little things, to crop a vast landscape of imagery in an effort to find the leaf supporting the bead of water with the answer to our unfathomable, complex existence.  Each day I was able to repeat, but more importantly recreate a new vision simply by paying attention to what the sky had to say – the protective umbrella that illuminated the human playground, communicating its own linguistic expression of visual emotion.  I forged a deep connection to a spiritual voice I could speak to without saying a word.  It was as if I saw the moment when the sky assured all that is below that it came to be on account of the beauty latent within the unknown – offering all that roamed beneath the opportunity to explore in an attempt to know.  I don’t even think I was trying to capture a different take on the visual aesthetic of the sky.  I simply felt the need to document, capture and allow the painfully communicative lines to seep into my heart and submerge it beneath a well of indescribable comfort – all that could never be answered with clarity as long as it beats on.

Passing Face(s)

Everyone loves to people watch, but not everyone wants to take the time to observe what they are seeing.  Often times I can place down in a heavily populated area and just observe human movement, expression, gesture – watch human emotion play out, create and dissolve into the past.  People speak with their bodies, the way they dress, their attention and consideration for their surroundings and others, but no where on the human body can communicate with the same depth or volume as the face.  Many people aren’t able to displace themselves from their own struggles or hardships, the important day to day tasks that consume earth’s most complex and capable species.  Even if they do, time proves unyielding, rarely lasting long enough to understand those same struggles and complexities from another’s perspective. 

So as I sit in Union square, armed with my weapon of choice, watching hundreds upon thousands of people pass or walk alongside each other at inches distance, I saw the library of memories, the unique characteristics, experiences, talent, possession, compassion, power and helplessness that existed in each individual vanish from such close quarters over and over again, every instant…

Time to capture the instant(s).

I started shooting the nameless faces, the lives who shared one moment together, unaware of this interaction.  As hundreds walk along the same path, and hundreds walk the other direction…the fusion of thought remained as unharmed by the traffic as the visual evidence of the separate entities wandering the streets.  When I started to look at what I was capturing…I saw despair, laughter, cultural connections, oxymorons, morons, kids who looked like adults, and adults acting like kids…all in one frame, all crammed together sharing the same sixtieth of a second.  It was something that they’d all forget instantly, yet remain a piece of them I’ll never let go.

Technically, I tried to capture moments of repose, laughter, a pair of eyes locked into the camera, onto each other…drama and banality, race and visual discrepancy –

all within a "busy" frame.  I want the viewer to be able to scan across the image and identify with how delicate and forgettable human emotion can be – the scope of their own life in the bigger picture (pun intended) of the world.  I chose to use the "widescreen" aspect ratio to emphasize the claustrophobia of the moment to center the attention on the emotional aspects surrounding the faces and to emphasize the distance in which this fusion of different emotions buzzed around like the atoms that made them up.  The images are meant to capture the colors of souls and their relative assembly into a subtle, spiritual refraction of the human condition.

Of People and the Sky…

Together these small bodies of work are meant to associate and capsulate the world around, above and most importantly inside all of us – the stratosphere’s radiation of unexplainable form and color atop the conglomeration of culture seen on the busy, complex faces moving toward a desired destination of inner-peace and ultimate nirvana.  There is no need to be explicit about the connection of what I saw or the relative statements within both series…life sometimes can be self-explanatory without self-explanation.  A spiritual state of mind can inflict upon a pair of eyes an ability to digest intense, unrelated light – involuntarily sentiment, the power to express faith…

…faith in the ground we walk on, the sea that surrounds us, the people that pass us by unaware, the answers without question, the intangible knowledge we are surrounded by a beauty, however minute, worth recognizing and most importantly worth preserving.

Best,

Pete

Note: please check out the above-mentioned bodies of work in the albums of the same name.  Let me know what you feel when you see them…and what you recognize about your own spirituality…

A Visual Mission

Blog by Pete Ambrose

Change.  It's a word that consistently haunts as much as it defines my work.  However thorough the visual concept or breathtaking the candid capture, it's an idea that's both of utmost significance to the medium and to the ever-growing gap between originality and reproduction.

I've been thrust into many visual worlds, while riding on the coat tails of my expression of choice.  No other medium is exhibited with such volume.  It's an unfiltered art, allowing the talentless to stand with the talent in equal dimension to both the medium's benefit and detriment.  Centered within my own world is the insatiable drive to define my vision and not let other's visions define me.  The embrace of convention within photography is the orange, fake tan underneath the pure, gold sun.  I am a devout purist.  Even with my conceptual gestures the photograph is still taken with the snap of the shutter.  Abundant re-touching destroys art, and lies about (hides) the photograph (truth) underneath.  Many disagree, many turn their polished, digitally enhanced photographs into something more than they are…

Simple distortion.

This is what photography is to me:

Texture, color, light, form, emotion, intelligence, inquisitive,  investigative, surreal, truth whimsical, reality, expression at it's naked core, opposition to fiction, profound supporter of culturally superficial beauty, snobby contemporary art, and commercially viable humility.

Art is a complex gesture of truth defined by many aesthetic genres of expression.  To me photography offers a simple palette, but an endless well of attainable emotional depth:

Aperture, shutter speed, the ability to understand light and color, the ability to compose a visual symphony that is structurally thoughtful and unique to the individual eye.

I used to define my mission within the medium to capture the world differently, to exhibit, accept, and play with the variance the base aesthetics the camera and lens have to offer.  Things for me have changed a tick since I set out.  Influence has dwindled into confidence of personal gesture.  Rejection of convention has turned into a will to create it, defy it, then create it again.  Fashion and glamour are silly, cyclic forms of photography which generally choke originality in pandering to specific demographics.  Candid, social depth in documentary work can enact candid, social change.  Fine Art photography is a window into core of the human condition – it's about conscious and subconscious emotion, desire and despair displayed within an unexpected composition.  I shoot all of these, my way, without apologies, for what they signify, but always cognizant of when my images slip into replication, displaying shallow, depthless…nothing.

The Mission Statement

This year I've set forth to break ground within my own work and compile a stand alone portfolio that will truly and undeniably speak for itself.  I aim to impart a social context and position within my work, to continue to satire and parody current practices I disagree with, to enliven and embrace the aesthetics of texture and color in photographs, the opportunity to further capture the essence of the people I photograph, the ideas that shape who we all are and who we will be down the road.  I have set forth on a mission of potent visual truth…no more, no less.   A shutter click called as it's seen, an artistic gesture molded from a state of humanity and photography in the present for preservation of the future.

I do not forge, I create.  I embrace flaw, understanding its significance in recognizing how it endears us to the human condition and how it enables us to part the sea of commercial beauty.  Allure is a subtle emotion and only equipped to be captured by the focused eye perceptibly nestled within the focused lens.  Tapping into the subconscious alone to produce visual masturbatory results can only yield a purely aesthetic reaction.  I choose to use my brain.  I choose to plan, to conceptualize, to think. 

I choose to apply and summon a visual unity of thought and creation. In 1,000 lifetimes could never sit down and gloss that over.

It seems I have projects that could take me well into 2009, but I know that there will be a point where enough is enough and it is time to sell my vision to the world, if not for only to put food on the proverbial table.  This is the year.  I fully believe in my journey to have my voice heard and am willing to challenge any obstacle for the sake of change.  Photography needs to be cleaned up.  I've rolled up my sleeves and am no stranger to a hard day's work.  More so, I have no doubt that all of those days will snowball and create an intimate legacy, if only for myself and my loved ones – for perspective never needed validation, just the will to dispel vision's inertia.

Of Nearly 19,000 Possible Reactions in 2007…

Blog by Pete Ambrose

18,700.   Random I know, but it's the amount of times my right index finger fired the shutter and the amount of moments that are now captured forever from a single year.  A lot of challenges lie ahead in what I hope to be a long and fruitful career, but for one moment I sit typing a loyal eulogy to a year of artistic growth, but more importantly a year that allotted me a chance to interact, share and create with so many unique individuals.

Every artist must at some point ask themselves…why do I really do this?  Why do I have to express myself in such an idiosyncratic way?  A recent mentor-like figure and friend in my life would say, "Pete…you think too much.  Just let it come out of you, there is absolutely no need to ask questions ever."  But that question drives me because I know the answer and understand why that answer forms the foundation and fountain of creation that will be eternal.  It's you.  Yes, the person reading this right now.  It's my mom, my dad, my sister and all of my close friends.  My good friend would then pose "Pete, do people tell you to your face that you're a genius?"  Of course the answer is no…and of course they, nor I, believe that to be the case.  How would it feel to be the next Picasso?  Hmm…it would be great, to innovate and produce so prolifically that artists centuries on either side cannot fathom one mind's ability to re-invent not a single medium but Art itself many times over.  Is that what I want?  2007 could not answer that question, but it answered a far more important issue in that regard.  It is not what I need.  I'm a young artist who continually falls on his face with hit or miss gestures…but an indelible and youthful will to separate from the pack – I'm competitive and an incredibly harsh critic of my own work.  Yet photography remains fun, inspiring, my kindred spirit.

I unfortunately cannot create then suppress, which tells me at the end of the day, I don't express for myself but again, for you.  Yes, the person reading this right now.  I need you so see my work, need you to experience the world through my eyes.  I need you to know my effort to create meaningful and lasting work is a wheel that spins tirelessly in my head.  If I could only let you see the colors I do, the subtleties – that's what drives me…the pain to not pull someone right into my head at the moment I see fleeting beauty no matter how odd or obvious, obscure or obtuse.  I want you to experience visual and psychological truth the way I do.  It's a completely self-serving venture and in many ways the irony remains my art aims for balance, an attempt to claim that my eyes can do just what I want others to do…enter another mind, another perspective and take in the beauty from the eyes of another – validating the outside world's take on itself.

The Reaction

It's what it is all about and all it will ever be about.  Whether it's a car wreck, a touchdown, a masterpiece or a master piece of shit…I create for the reaction.  For at that very moment I am interacting, sharing, allowing a youthful soul to run around imagination and truth with another whether the conclusive thought is positive or negative, misconstrued or profound.

Maybe I should care about money more.  Maybe I should find it unacceptable that I'm okay not being a genius.  I am young and so is my art and encyclopedia of personal experience, but nothing feels better than watching someone react to my work – to see the subtle raise of their brow the moment the image takes shape and reveals itself to their eyes.  Then the suppressed grin when the conceptual poison, the meaning, has subverted a once empty cavity of experience and filled it with thought that had never been there before.  It makes me shiver just thinking about it.  Then the appreciation or criticism, both enliven me the same.  Whether my blood boils to defend or boils to purr over the affection of those who enjoy my creation, the endorphin is the same and it's effect is will continue to unleash and inspire work forever and ever and ever.

To scale back from all the haughty language above I want to say a couple of things to you.  Yes, the person reading this.  It has been my utmost pleasure to let you into my world and lend you my eyes.  I am flattered that you decided to take a moment out of the complexities that make up your own life to let your soul dance a lil' with mine.  I cherish every new friend, acquaintance and peer who have expressed there thoughts and shared a bit of themselves on this page and about the work.  I blush consistently from your compliments and strive to learn from your critique.  2007 has allowed me to work with amazingly talented individuals…but more so to laugh with them, enjoy creating with them, relate…relationship…collaboration.  Art good or bad is a soliloquy of experience.  And at the end of the day, I'll never stop reacting to sharing that experience with you.

Lots of new work today in many of the albums, most specifically in the fashion soup and rebel wonderland series.  As always, it would be my pleasure to hear from you.  I've got a challenging slate of ideas and projects for 2008 so hold on tight…

Hope everyone has a happy holidays.  Peace and see you next year, cocked, locked and ready to rock…

Best,

Pete

Fashion Soup: A Post-Pre-Post-Modern Series

Photos and Blog by Pete Ambrose

Disclaimer:  All of the images in this body of work are straight photographs.  Other than basic color correction, no alterations have been made to the images whatsoever. Furthermore,  all of the images contained and described in this page, blog and the 143 magazines, art galleries, and bathroom stalls to follow are not to be taken more seriously then you take yourself.  (note: This may vary per reader).  Any references to the watered down fashion/glamour world are purely in-coincidental, spiteful and  whimsical. 

Welcome to the new face of fashion…composed of photographs that were captured by the camera and not created by the mouse. (This disclaimer's poor humor excuses the even poorer attempt at bravado, vision and pretention which all remain cool words.)  If you choose to continue reading the below you may become drowsy or bored because you'd rather look at shiny images void of meaning.  Please accept in advance my apology for trying to call out an encyclopedia of images that don't want their picture taken anymore and for attempting to find true beauty that exists without the need to airbrush the pimple on your plastic tit.  Thank you.

A Body of Work Birthed

This body of work was born out of frustration, but then again what piece of art hasn't?  After I flipped through my 1,000,000^th magazine page, viewed my 1,000,000^th portfolio solely composed of bikini imagery, I digressed and digested every possible conventional cliché.  I felt something needed to be done: 

1. Beauty needed to be seen in a new light (or an old one for that matter), clicking the proverbial fashion refresh button if you will.

2. Photography is begging to get it's mojo back (or in English: making a silent plea for a return to the aesthetic and conceptual groundwork that separated the medium from painting, graphic design, and the point and shoot, can't expose or light, but I can fix it in post and create some surreal shit crowd that call themselves…"photo(shop)graphers".

3. We all need to laugh more often. 

Technically, I broke down the conventions of fashion and glamour photography…the angles, settings, make-up designs, wardrobe, prop use, etc. and decided to satire, parody and sometimes pay homage to work from the past that both wrecked the art form for commercial conformity and dignified a youthful era in commercial art and photography by employing subtle technical and conceptual references.  To me, neither satire nor parody works if it's too blatant and it must attempt to mask itself behind a replication of actuality.  Therefore, my visual decisions are three fold:  create images that reference convention, make unexpected or "rebellious" technical decisions, and allow for my images to maintain the aesthetic pleasure of the original images being mocked.  I didn't want to spell it out.  I wanted you to read between the lines….but also between the expressions, the colors, the scars, the dirty imperfection posing as perfection but defined by a confidence and gesture that is as flawless as captured reality – no retouching, odd environments, embracing "error" as an aesthetic (shadows, grain, etc.), debunking the "industry standard" – all of which isn't uncommon to my previous attempts but now presented with a sarcastic smirk below my big ass nose.

China is Going to Fuck Us Up (economically speaking)

It's certainly a perilous time for both the world and our country.  As trivial as commercial photography can be, any artistic gesture can socially define a culture through the visual guideline it creates and become an emblem of attitude for our youth and the rest of the world to see.  "Apathy is a disease!  Now cup your boobs and look at my lens sensually."  I said to one model.  Okay…so art isn't for everyone and trying to explain "arty" concepts to the commercial middle is like trying to teach an armless man to play guitar.  "Play with your teeth, like Hendrix" I say.  Bottom line is this, the more we retouch the beautiful, the more the beautiful retouches us– noses turn up, individuals dissolve as quickly as pores on the skin of commercial photos.  This work isn't a plea for plus size models to be viewed as beautiful or a stab at the objectification of women.  It's not a call for millions to gather around the Adobe headquarters and burn a big pile of the collected software that has in many ways enlightened and enlivened the medium as much as it's hurt it.  The work is a gesture of whimsy, a suggestion of course correction – an attempt to ingratiate the art and some sense of vision back into commercial photography.  Politely and in equity I offer: "Fuck you Maxim.  Fuck you MOMA.  Now kiss and make up and so we can massage our collective egos fireside with some Perrier and caviar while debating the genius of Sir Warhol and the gears of his factory."

Socially speaking the communicative possibilities of selling "fashion" and beauty are endless.  Fashion and glamour photography have always been the land where Art could hide as commercial and vice versa.  Wasn't there something both striking and revealing in Avedon's work – something that went beyond the brand he was selling?  Warhol submerged us in our own popular culture.  He sold, sells, and says….a lot…about us.  Images that don't evoke lose their ability to communicate.  Images that regurgitate convention or repeat for the sake of proving marketability or technical prowess are simply empty gestures and only serve to piss off Iran and North Korea even more (okay, just wanted to see if you were still paying attention with that last part).

Turning the Tide One Unconventional Image at a Time

Nothing changes without risk.  My feeling is that I've taken one.  These images if nothing else hopefully define my voice within that world and walking the tight rope between commercial and art is just about all the floor I need to stay balanced and inspired.  Personally, I can't imagine defining my work by creating an image that I don't make my own.  Derive all you want but the ensemble of influences should only support and not dictate the artist's unique voice within the piece.  Whether the image is purely whimsical or a serious jab at reshaping or creating new fashion conventions, all the pieces in this series are aimed at evoking an emotion or feeling and cushioning the sensory pleasure at it's core with a defined yet subtle gesture of meaning.

If you need your beauty to be validated there are a wealth of photographers out there that can stamp your forehead with some gels, a sexy wardrobe, and a couple hundred-thousand clicks of the mouse.  If you already know you're beautiful and want to explore the shrinking visual stratosphere for its last unique treasures, come with me.  I'm not in this for the house in the hills or the lavish day job.  I'm here to break ground and mold. 

Photography gave me a piece of clay to work with.  I looked around to see all the other students who were given the same piece, yet they all chose to mold the same figure.  With this series I smiled at my piece of clay and started to mold all of the students – a portrait of what it looks like to see creatives creating the same thing.  

The Series' within the Series: Damn, Now That's Clever

Colorfully Contorted: Stoned Fashion

This series of images is an attempt to meld figure study fine art with high fashion poses and compositions while employing unconventional lighting techniques in the way of color and shadow.  It's meant to allow form and color to get their fair shake in high fashion while the "accessories" of the image become the wardrobe itself, supplementary to only to the formal considerations of the body and image.

The Color of Night

This series of images are shot at night using flash.  The models are set in unsafe, unconventional and frankly, dirty environments (alleys, trash cans, playgrounds – anywhere you would least expect a fashion shoot to take place).  The physical environment in the compositions are as much the subject of the photograph as the model.  A strict adherence to wardrobe complimenting or synchronizing with the given environment and a bold confidence of expression that the models display tonally replaces the need for the studio or golden hour in favor of a grittier, blue collar take on beauty and color.

"That. Is. Gorgeous!  OMG!": The "Glamourous" Headshot

This series of images are referential to the hoards of surreal headshots that have become staples in many photographer's portfolios.  Surreal, pointless make-up and even lighting are the norm and of all the listless forms of commercial photography, this one takes the cake with regards to the tired and worn out imagery I wish to put down for good.  The irony is the potential for amazing imagery is endless with the headshot, a chance to peer directly into the soul of beauty at inches distance.  I chose to reference the imagery mostly compositionally.  The make-up techniques/designs in all of the images take on different levels of meaning.  The tools and bruised face headshot are metaphors for the physical and pshychological "destruction for construction" beauty the model generally under goes (ie nipity/tuckity).  Most importantly, the images are untouched, straight photographs and each freckle or bump on the skin remain in plain daylight.  What does this say about the models?  They're beautiful and real.  The plate and utensil headshot signifies the mass consumption from the public of this commercial style of photography and surreal beauty that is the standard for which we perceive.  Other headshots such as the abstract designs are meant to satirize the many ridiculous empty designs and gestures of "bad art on the face" this sub-genre of glamour photography creates.  Each headshot is referential but all are meant to hold their own unique beauty and statement.

Available Light = Evocative…most of the time

This fashion/editorial and maybe my favorite sub-series is defining to the style and grit the overall series employs.  Borrowing from the environmental considerations of the Flashing Black and White and The Color of Night sub-series, these images were shot at both day and night using only practical or available light to editorialize and evoke a narrative in the images.  Subtle plays on pose and wardrobe in the fashion and glamour world created an odd mix of shadow, gesture and color.  The images also seem to create a hopperesque view of urban loneliness and confusion similar to the middle-class starlet series.  Most important here is the visual aesthetic hasn't made it's way into the fashion world as of yet (the noir feel and purposeful use of grain and black to propel the images).

Flashing Black and White

This sub-series is similar conceptually and certainly with regards to environment as The Color of Night sub-series.  The difference here is the homage to vintage rock and fashion photography of the late 60's and 70's.  Certain fashion staples such as Guess took on this aesthetic with much success throughout the 90's.  Here I am again placing the models in unsafe environments but emphasizing the structural patterns of the image to enliven the rich blacks and highlights of the imagery.

The Household Prop Imperative

The most whimsical sub-series in the overall body of work.  These images are plays on the ridiculous, sometimes surreal, and trivial use of props in fashion/glamour photography. >Even more so, these images take on an ambiguity in it's conceptual gesture of gender roles as the models are left solely to handle banal household objects such as pots, pans, brooms, hair dryers, even bathing in laundry baskets.  Meant to have the classic feel of an Avedon and the visual whimsy of a LaChapelle, the viewer should look nothing more into the image then what they want to get out of it.  A laugh, pleasure in the color, light, form or use of props…you choose.  This series pretty much sums up the attitude and tone of the overall body of work.

A Conclusive Paragraph that Doesn't Start with the Word "Overall"

Warhol decided to make a can of Campbell's soup a piece of art as a gesture against the conventional wisdom of art itself, while still employing a satirical gesture and recognition of mass production and consumerism's affect on pop culture and vice versa.  What I'm trying to say is that commercial photography has become an endless shelf of Campbell's Tomato Soup and with these images I present to you the "most gorgeous" can of Campbell's Tomato Soup…ever.  Enjoy.  Please take sometime time to check out the images.  Feel free to crucify me with thoughts on my derivatively unique gesture and false bravado (martyrdom is cool word too).

Best,

Pete

Also, I'd like to thank all of those who participated and helped in creating this body of work.  Your efforts are the true emblem of my inspiration:

Models:  Ines Garcia Romero, Raquel Rischard, Krystal Tee, Nicole, Yara Deserbelles, Yael Lasry, and Nicole Lloyd.

Make-Up Artist:  Stephanie Lawrence (www.myspace.com/ms_steph_anie) (MM 472682)

Creative Consultant: Jess Jaworski

On-Set Muscle/Umbrella Maestro: Ryan Gray

State of the Image-maker

Blog by Pete Ambrose

For me, images process in my head like lightning.  But I need them, need to see them, understand them and even experience them the way I would a living, moving moment.  Everyday I look though hundreds of portfolios looking for images that will inspire, finding images that disgust, and seeing equivalent passion amongst a community of artists who all have very different modes within the medium.  What seems to be lacking amongst our community?

Vision. 

Oh, the irony…

So, where are we at?  I'd say our medium has grown a lazy eye, a voice with no vocal chords, and a young generation of image-makers influenced to produce solely for aesthetic pleasure and not for what evokes a timeless image, a slow sacrifice of the communicative possibilities of the captured reality.

It seems that even photography is troubled by the plague of unoriginality that seems to hamper other art forms where the claws of marketing and commerce become beneficial, tempting and unison in function.  I've always believed that all good art is derivative of pre-existing work and ideas (where would one find influence?), but where I draw the line is where concept is blurred by laziness and the images become buried by technology for technology sake.

What happened to the straight photograph?  Is it now impossible to capture beauty, universal truth and emotion without retouching?  Photographers have always manipulated in post, hell, Ansel Adams and others along the way who've mastered the age old zone system of black and white photography have found that bringing out the richest blacks, the whitest possible highlight with detail -- the most aesthetic pleasing qualities of the photographs can only enhance, make good photographs great.  But it's not the same any more.  Photoshop and the digital realm has blessed us with the opportunity to visually explore the depths of the most surreal subconscious, to replicate our wildest images…but why?  Just because?  Great answer, dude.  I guess that is what seems to be lacking in this conversation…not the modem operandi but the thought, the reason, the message.

"But I'm not about that.  I just make beautiful images."   That's been my greatest dilemma as I've grown as an artist…fighting "cool".  By that I mean the culture of "cool" in the art world.  Call it conceptual apathy, instant aesthetic gratification, but to create an image that enacts a gut reaction alone numbs the insides of our art form, leaving it solely to superficial recognition of the image itself……..and then we move on.

Granted society has changed and I can even look to myself.  When I look through portfolios, I spend maybe 20 seconds max looking through any…not allowing myself to recognize nuance, maybe neglecting the majority of the work I see.

Here is the original solution:  Don't be afraid to shoot and exhibit the photograph that exists as it is.  Defy and stand up to convention….my answer to "cool" is "please elaborate."  Critical thought is difficult…because it requires well, thought.  But to fight the stale repetitions of the same photograph over and over again you have to show me what I'd least expect…and right now what I'd least expect is to see an image that was captured as it is, left as it is, to speak as it is.  Art is defiance.  Defiance is change.  Am I referencing the basic properties of color correction, spotting and cropping…no….I'm talking about the salvation of an image in post by means of the "steroids" Photoshop provides.  The line in this only blurs when there is solid and focused aesthetic and conceptual bond….focus and meaning.

In the coming months, I am aiming to dive into a large body of work that melds the fashion/glamour world with fine art.  Much of the desensitization of imagery and the fading color of fine art photography can be linked to the repetition and consistent output of repetitive commercial imagery --  images that have become paintings in post, concepts and forms that have become as conventional as a rom-com to a movie studio.  I can't even look into a glamour magazine sometimes and realize that what I'm looking at doesn't exist.  I believe in freckles, pores, and hair strands gone astray…the things that make us individuals…the beauty again, of what exists.

I'll surely blog in more detail about the three-headed series I've just begun, but the idea is to parody, critique and fight to bring images back….beauty back, reality back, photography back.  I've got a big bull's eye in my sights and the first step in my statement has begun…Images as they are, ignoring industry standard, digging up the shiny treasure that originally sent me on this journey of passion, this art form of communication…

Lots of new work today in many of my series.  Check 'em out and leave your thoughts on my statement and the images.

Best,

Pete

Structural Familiarity

Photos and Blog by Pete Ambrose

We've all had those moments when we return home from a trip or an extended time away and our senses immediately grasp on to what we know to be familiar, the comfort that we can identify with -- home.  It's often recognized that memory's closest alley in the world of human sense is smell.  In this new fine art series entitled "Structural Familiarity", I aim to put together a group of images that take a closer look into the subconscious visual aspects that elicit our loyalty, the recognition of where our hearts claim to reside.  Generally, we are unaware of these physical aspects, often taken for granted in the day to day, but this is no different as we can only categorize memories relation to smell in an afterthought.  Well, here is your afterthought, as images.

Whether it be the odd tree in your backyard, the lawn chair that has sat uncleaned for years, your family's idiosyncratic interior decoration, or the wear of the stucco on your house, all of these visuals subtly add up to the culmination of familiarity and comfort – how Home shows ID.

Technically, my approach was to create a body of work that didn't rely on a unison of imagery in a typological sense, but rather one that got straight to the nuts and bolts of the physical elements I speak of.  Making banal imagery interesting and beautiful is always a challenge, beginning a body of work that relied on concept rather than concise visual unity is a whole other challenge.  The images that ended up working in the initial phase of the project came together from a formal aspect because of their texture and color.  Conceptually, I feel the images proposed a unique look at common and nostalgic imagery that adheres to the theme.  The photograph of the stairs for me is a good example.  The texture, color and form created by the worn turquoise stairs capsulized an image that functioned well as a stand alone photograph and one that could easily put a frame around a specific area of one's existence that was an identifier of home.

The physical elements that surround and shelter us seem to act as a similar security blanket to our mind, wrapping our visual subconscious with the sense that we can let down our guard and experience life unattached to the worry and doubt that the outside world creates.  I'm loyal to the dingy brown carpet that spreads across my grandmother's house, the old pictures and southwestern pottery that line it's interiors.  I'm comfortable with the rust on the hinges of our garage, the old oak tree in the backyard.  If I could not see these elements, maybe my memory would only have a sense of smell to identify home, and frankly, that would never be enough.

Please check out the beginnings of this new fine art series in the appropriately labeled album.  Let me know your thoughts on the concept and the images.

Best,

Pete

Expressions from My Seascape

Photos and Blog by Pete Ambrose

In continuation of my expressive landscape series, I decided to further the emotional range of nature based expression by taking my camera to the shore.  The composition, form and general structure of the images are similarly representative to the landscapes.  However, unlike the veiny, land-based exteriors, I decided to shoot all of the seascapes in color.  Furthermore, I decided to texturally soften the lines and blur the angles within the frame.  Obviously, water and sand can lend well to this function as both are by-products of the planet that give each other shape, but fail to form solidity in either.  This herein lies the metaphor that expands on the previous serious.  Solidarity can only be found from within, but how one is shaped is purely reliant on your emotional environment – people.

Much of the response to the landscapes where that while the target emotion was conveyed, there was a clear and pervasive haunting nature to the imagery.  I suppose their general aesthetic quality and the slightly more glass is half empty resonance lended subconsciously to the images.  That said, it provided me with an opportunity to retain the glass is half empty from the immense challenges ahead in my life, but to soften the edge and bring some color as I am amidst some of the great moments of my life.  I recognize this…I recognize every day who I am and how important the people I surround myself with are to me.  These seascapes are the uplifting conversation after a hard day at work, the successful photoshoot after a script that is passed on.  It is the clarity of light, the true measure of success, the heart and soul of me – my friends and family.  I find me peace and myself and in them, and they allow me to walk back into the rugged, claustrophobic landscape of life, determined to fulfill my passion and live the dreams they've shaped.

I would venture to say these images are more dreamlike, which could be because those who I love have become the emblem of approval.  I came to the realization long before I even started this duel series that I don't take pictures for every gallery, I don't make movies for everyone, and I certainly don't spill my heart within my words for every pair of eyes.  When someone who I care about pulls me aside and compliments my efforts, revels in the hard work and hours of self-critique and often spiritual effort in creation, that is the true success I seek.  It is at that point in which I am quite simply understood and that is all any human being can really ask for.

Technically to make this clear, I had to look for aspects on the shore that were subtle.  Color had to come through as if it were just another part of the frame, form had exclaim it self with a simple period and not an exclamation point.  It is human nature to get caught up in one's self, one's drive, and neglect the root of why we create – which is not to speak truth, but for truth to be recognized in one's work.  These photographs are a subtle gesture that I do see that, I do love you all -- all that inspire my work, inspire my loyalty, inspire my drive to be the best.

Please check out the pictures in the appropriately labeled album and leave me your thoughts.  Don't be afraid to disclose a bit about your own relationships in relation to the imagery.  My ears are always open.

Best,

Pete

Expressions from My Landscape

Photos and Blog by Pete Ambrose

The formation of this small body of work developed from my own personal psychological state at this given point in my life. Artistically, it derives its inspiration from Sally Mann's wet-collodian landscapes and that delicate period in art just before expressionism became purely reliant on abstraction, while still allowing the viewer to engage with the energy of recognizable form and the raw emotion that line, shape, and disharmony can convey.  I chose to form a group of images grounded in nature but expressive of issues that are not just centered around myself, but universal to driven individuals of my age. 

Personally, I am at a juncture in my life where I am working incredibly hard to chase my dreams without much return, and without a guarantee of success in any of my chosen fields.  The silver lining is the fact that I can see the metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel, though I cannot gauge how far I am from reaching that very light.  There are moments when I doubt my ability or my ability to be blessed with the luck and happenstance required to affect successful ascension within my fields.  This is absolutely normal.  The hard part is accepting this while maintaining balance and patience. 

This became my impetus to shoot on black and white, as I wanted to capture that doubt in the rich blacks but to emphasize that white light at the end of the tunnel as a reminder that my of stubborn, unbreakable will.   the hope, the underlying confidence that it's only a matter of time before my dreams and my reality become a common synergy. 

The body of work aesthetically captures an ethereal quality or dreamlike state, almost a glimpse into the subconscious that is purely metaphorical and expressive of a common twenty-something facing the real world, ingratiating oneself amongst the environment -- thickening of skin, construction of character, solidifying permanence of integrity borne from struggle, early success, more struggle, and just flat out living void of regret. 

Visually I chose to photograph landscapes that were vainey with trees and branches, claustrophobic and contained, though peaceful and unharmed at their core.  The black and white provides an almost x-ray like quality to the expression as if it were they were taken directly from my insides.  At the same time, I wanted to allow the viewer some sense of balance, recognition of the physical environment in its literal sense to center the body of work within a photographic genre and define it's gesture within medium. 

Technically, I wanted to find extremely high contrast situations, aiming for the much of the pieces to fall in the whitest/blackest zones, while allowing the subtle grays to dictate the form and delicacy of shape within the frame.  All of the images are straight photographs and I chose not to crop, re-angle, nor extensively touch up the imagery.  The inherit disorientation from my chosen compositions are symbolic of the difficulty latent within navigating a path that is never consistent and relies on the viewer to dictate their way through the frame.  I tried to avoid sharp diagonals and other devices that naturally lead the eye.  I instead wanted the viewer to allow their own personal psychology to react to the disharmonious structures and forms, and to find a separate peace with what I feel to be very "quiet" photographs despite the intense detail imposed within the frame.

The eight posted landscapes are aimed at allowing the viewer to be comfortable within such a visceral environment.  They are images that require self-sufficiency and focus, but allow for imagination, beauty and hope to reign supreme --  kind of like life.

Please check out the photographs in the appropriate album in my pics section.  Leave me your thoughts about the snaps and about your own personal journey into the light.

Best,

Pete