© 2010 Alexa Meade – www.AlexaMeade.com

Sometimes the best way to incorporate an art historical trope into your artwork is to turn it right on its head. The term trompe l’oeil (French for “trick of the eye”) is traditionally used to describe a painting technique that is so meticulous, so beguiling that the viewer is left wondering if the rich, hyper-realistic tableaux before them is actually 2D. Washington, D.C.-based artist Alexa Meade takes a different approach.

Indeed, Meade’s expressionistic portraits are not paintings, but photographs. And her “special effects” are the results of applying layer after layer of acrylic paint directly to her sitters’ skin. She coats her models (and sometimes their surroundings) with rich, tonal brushstrokes, emphasizing their expressions and adding a painterly quality to their faces and clothes. Untouched eyes and hair playfully contrast the paint around them, adding to the overall effect. The illusion is so utterly flawless that you can’t help but second-guess what you’re looking at (particularly when Meade poses with one of her painted subjects or photographs them colliding with the real world). We’re also digging the transitory nature of Meade’s work – her ability to throw herself into a painting that will only exist in its raw form for a matter of hours, not to mention her willingness to let her subjects wash her masterpieces off in the shower.

—Rachel Wolff

© 2010 Alexa Meade – www.AlexaMeade.com

© 2010 Christopher Wahl – www.ChristopherWahl.com

In his “Newspeople” series, Toronto-based photographer Christopher Wahl captures persistent (not to mention intrusive) lensmen in their natural habitats – i.e. clustered behind red velvet ropes, lurking outside of courthouses, and on the heels of a tabloids-worthy celeb. These “paps” (as they’re called in the biz) are a ragtag bunch. Most wear sneakers and jeans; all are willing to get up-close-and-personal with their subjects if it means getting a great shot. But Wahl saw something deeper at play. “My images do not depict news stories,” Wahl writes in his artist statement. Instead, they focus on “the process of manufacturing the news” thus “enabling us to see the figures depicted as isolated characters caught up in an apparatus much larger than themselves.” Basically: these guys are just doing their job. It’s a great point – though we’re not entirely sure the likes of Lindsay Lohan would agree.

—Rachel Wolff

© 2010 Christopher Wahl – www.ChristopherWahl.com

© 2005–10 Amy Stein – www.AmySteinPhoto.com

In the grand tradition of car culture legends like William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, New York-based photographer Amy Stein finds her inspiration on the road—well, on the side of it, if you want to get technical. Stein jets off for weeks at a time, driving all over the country and photographing the stranded motorists and passengers she encounters along the way. “Finding subjects is a matter of chance,” she says. “And every encounter is tense because of the unusual circumstances of our interaction and the inherent danger of the roadside environment” That tension reads in Stein’s images (milky shots portraying mostly sullen motorists tending to their broken-down cars or waiting for someone else to do so for them). But there’s also something both universal and timeless at play – that in spite all of our outsourcing and in spite of everything your iPhone can do, it’s probably still worth it to know how to change a tire.

—Rachel Wolff

© 2005–10 Amy Stein – www.AmySteinPhoto.com

On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested inside the offices of the Democratic National Committee on the sixth floor of the Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C. The burglary aroused suspicion and media attention because of the unusual circumstances of the crime. The men were found with $2,300 in sequential hundred-dollar bills, walkie-talkies, lock picks, door-jimmys, a police scanner, two cameras along with 40 rolls of unused film and sophisticated recording devices. One of the men was a former CIA agent and current security guard for President Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President. Notebooks found on two of the men contained a phone number followed by the inscription ‘W House.’ Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein researched the case and wrote coverage of the story over a period of two years eventually uncovering evidence that implicated members of the Nixon administration. Woodward’s secret source for much of the information was a highly placed official within the Executive Branch, code name Deep Throat. Only Woodward knew of the man’s identity and the two would meet in this parking garage to relay information. – Century Plaza Towers, 2040 Avenue of the Stars, Century City, California, 2008

You know when you hear a really crazy story – one that’s full strange characters, and unbelievable circumstances – and you think to yourself, “Is this real? Is this something I heard on the news? Or is it something I saw in a movie?” It’s happened to the best of us because fact can, indeed, be stranger than fiction. And, in turn, movies become so ingrained in our minds and in our culture that they themselves can take on lives of their own. With his series “American Histories,” the Tennessee-based photographer Joshua Dudley Greer seeks to explore these fine lines between fact and fiction. From 2004 to 2009, Greer traveled the country photographing unusual sites and relics seen in American history, popular cinema, and, sometimes, a combination of both (JFK’s “grassy knoll,” for example). Greer uses text to complete the project, describing both fact and fiction in the same straightforward and news-like tone. Here, a selection of the photographs with Greer’s original text. We’ll let you guess which came from the newspapers and which from the silver screen. (A clue: be sure to pay attention to each image’s locale…).

—Rachel Wolff

Melanie Daniels was boating across this bay when she was unexpectedly and violently struck in the head by a passing bird. The incident was the first in a dramatic series of unprompted bird attacks that plagued the town of Bodega Bay in 1963. Witnesses reported massive migrations of sparrows, seagulls, and crows overwhelming people and property on ten separate occasions. The birds seemed to deliberately attack in waves, resulting in dozens of injuries and the deaths of at least three people. The birds’ behavior could not be explained. – Bodega Bay, California, 2008

Professional daredevil and motorcyclist Evel Knievel attempted to jump this canyon using a rocket-powered Sky-Cycle on September 8, 1974. The $150,000 craft which was built specifically for the jump had never been successfully tested. Despite the danger, Evel decided to honor his agreement with ABC’s Wide World of Sports to broadcast the event live on that particular day. Almost immediately following takeoff a parachute deployed prematurely from the rear of the vehicle catching winds and causing the craft to drift backwards into the canyon. Knievel fell over 600 feet down onto the rocks below, narrowly avoiding the Snake River and sustaining only minor injuries. He would never attempt the jump again. – Snake River Canyon, Twin Falls, Idaho, 2008

In 1984, the head librarian at the New York Public Library was filing away books when she reportedly encountered a ghost. Greatly shaken from the event, officials at the library called in a team of parapsychologists to investigate her claims. They interviewed the witness and ran scores of tests on materials found at the scene, including a foreign substance dripping from book shelves and card catalogs. While conducting their tests, the scientists claimed to see something which they described as a “free floating, full torso vaporous apparition.” Despite a rash of similar sightings all over Manhattan in the following months, many believed the team of scientists to have perpetuated a widespread hoax. – Rose Reading Room, New York Public Library, New York, 2007

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed during a parade through Dealey Plaza in the city of Dallas, Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested just hours later and charged with the assassination. Authorities suggested that Oswald acted alone, firing three shots from the sixth floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository, which overlooked the parade route on Elm Street. Fifty-one eyewitnesses, who were present at the time of the shooting, reported hearing additional shots coming from behind this fence. – Dealey Plaza, Elm Street, Dallas, Texas, 2005

79-year-old Stella Liebeck ordered a cup of coffee from the passenger’s seat of her grandson’s car at this McDonald’s drive-thru on February 27, 1992. Her grandson stopped the car so she could add cream and sugar and in the process of removing the lid, Stella spilled the entire drink into her lap. The coffee, which was served at a temperature over 180 degrees, caused third-degree burns and scalding over 6% of her body including her thighs, groin and buttocks. Stella was taken to the hospital where she stayed for eight days while undergoing a number of painful skin graft operations. Stella Liebeck initially sought $20,000 to cover her medical expenses, but McDonald’s refused to settle. A product liability lawsuit was then brought against McDonald’s and in 1994 a jury awarded Liebeck $160,000 plus an additional $2.7 million in punitive damages. The final figure was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. – 5001 Gibson Boulevard SE, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2007

© 2004-2009 Joshua Dudley Greer – www.JDudleyGreer.com

© 2010 William Hundley – www.WilliamHundley.com

The indeterminate blobs hovering over railroad tracks, beaches, and parking lots in William Hundley’s photographs may look like ragtag UFOs hovering, flying, and floating down to earth. But they’re actually people, wrapped in quilts, fabrics, and flags, jumping up into the air while keeping their limbs and faces carefully hidden (“floaters,” as Hundley calls them). It’s a fun technique (that produces equally fun results) but the Austin-based photographer hopes to go a touch deeper. The series is called “Entopic Phenomena,” which in medical terminology means a visual effect—a spot or a blob—that’s source is within the eye itself. “My aim is to follow the ‘floater’ through its journey as if it were unrestricted by the singular viewer’s perspective,” Hundley says. “While in truth my ‘floaters’ are merely persons underneath fabrics, the phenomenological effect of their actions as captured within the photograph is that of seeing something decidedly non-human.”

—Rachel Wolff

© 2010 William Hundley – www.WilliamHundley.com

© 2010 Matthew Gamber – www.MatthewGamber.com

Matthew Gamber, a photographer and imaging technician at Harvard, has found a way to make two nearly bygone technologies fresh again by combining to make something new. The first: the photogram, the cameraless photographic technique that uses light to transfer images to photosensitive paper. The second: cathode ray tube televisions (i.e. the boxy, bulky TV set you traded in for your shiny new flat-screen). “The images are a direct transfer of the light radiating from a television’s cathode ray tube,” Gamber says, explaining his technique. “By pressing photosensitive paper directly against the glass, you can collect the traces of light that remain when a television is turned off. What remains is an artifact formed by an illusion.” Indeed Gamber’s fuzzy black-and-white photograms are apparition-like – fleeting moments, abstracted forms, and a reminder that what we’re watching is pure manipulation of light. We’re also pretty sure we spotted some television legends in there – one image looks eerily like Johnny Carson, and, if the hairstyle any indication, another might very well be Eddie Munster.

—Rachel Wolff

© 2010 Matthew Gamber – www.MatthewGamber.com

© 2010 Matthias Geiger – www.MatthiasGeiger.com

Illustrating the space-time continuum is one lofty goal (for starters, it requires an understanding of how something like that actually works). Yet with his series “Tide,” California-based photographer Matthias Geiger seeks to do exactly that. Geiger photographed heavily populated areas that he encountered throughout his travels (mostly through Japan). The photos succeed at capturing past, present, and future – quite poetically, no less. Here’s how: Geiger took a series of photographs at each locale then layered them electronically and reduced the figures in each shot to translucent silhouettes. The resulting images depict a fleeting, fast-moving culture and remind us of the many people and places we leave in our wake.

—Rachel Wolff

© 2010 Matthias Geiger – www.MatthiasGeiger.com

© 2010 Luke Burke – www.Luke Burke.com

There’s something a bit magical in New York photographer Luke Burke’s “Spinning Portraits.” With the help of some friends willing to get dizzy for him (and, presumably, a super slow shutter speed), Burke produces teetering, toppling, luminescent images of people becoming twisted, contorted, and seemingly aerodynamic mid-spin, their brightly-colored clothes glowing as the light hits them just so. We’re digging the white background too and the way it creates this sense of chaos and order. Our only hope is that Burke schooled his subjects in the art of avoiding fall-down-crashing-into-walls-dizziness—i.e. spotting.

—Rachel Wolff

© 2010 Luke Burke – www.Luke Burke.com

© 2010 William Lamson – www.WilliamLamson.com

There’s a bit of magic in William Lamson’s “Intervention” series. Using the most basic of materials (multi-colored balloons, cinderblocks, string, and found detritus like discarded boxes, tires, and mattresses) the Brooklyn-based artist builds transitory sculptures on empty streets and parking lots, then photographs them. The sculptures are precarious and playful; they have a certain “yin and yang” in their simplicity and balance; they intervene with their surroundings, adding a touch of whimsy to the otherwise mundane; they’re sculptures that last seconds, minutes – hours, at most; and they’re works that live on in Lamson’s stark photographic documentation. The photographs, of course, are artworks in their own right. Lamson’s chosen vantage point (set back, as if he’s just coming upon the work himself) reminds us how absurd, beguiling, even uplifting it might be to encounter an intervention like this in person – and that with a little ingenuity and a lot of patience, it’s possible to activate, beautify, and enliven even the most unremarkable sites and spaces.

—Rachel Wolff

© 2010 William Lamson – www.WilliamLamson.com

James Nubile – Fallen Statue of Stalin, Moscow, September, 1991 Courtesy of JGS Inc. Permanent Collection

The US and Russia have always swayed in a tango of territorial tensions, technological competition and mutual espionage – the Cold War is solid proof of that. Unfortunately, American pop culture – via movies like “The Kremlin Letter” and “From Russia with Love” – has idealized Russian espionage, an industry nowhere near as exciting or as prolific as it once was.

This past June, when the FBI uncovered a dormant Russian spy cell, journalists nationwide covered the eleven sleeper agents’ capturing with great fanfare. “Hurray! We’re still worth spying on,” everyone thought. One man, however, steered clear of the Hollywoodian take on things. Once again, Thomas Friedman was the Forward Thinking one.

In an op-ed for the New York Times, Friedman explains how, had it been Singapore, Hong Kong or South Korea spying on us – all global leaders in efficient bureaucracy, financial markets and technology respectively – then it would, indeed, have been the case for a “Hurray! We’re still worth spying on.” But Russia (or popular exporter of “vodka, Matryoshka dolls and Kalashnikov rifles”) spying on us is just a sad confirmation that we’re slowly sliding from the top.

In the light of Friedman’s commentary, James Nubile’s 1991 picture of Stalin’s fallen statue comes to mind. The image captures dictator Josef Stalin’s statue toppled from its granite pedestal. A bystander glances at it, much like a statues herself. The obvious interpretation? What was once a standard of authority is now a symbol for a fallen power. The underlaying meaning? Drawing a lesson from Russia’s fate, Americans should not become bystanders to a fallen power. America itself should not become a fallen power. Instead, our governing institutions should actively work with the American people to bring the US back to its “worth-spying-on” status.

—Victoria Docu, The Forward Thinking Museum

To read the original New York Times article, visit:

» The Spies Who Loved Us, by Thomas Friedman