Basalt Shards
East Central Oregon
2009
[photography]
Matt Niebuhr
West Branch Studio
This photo from a road trip through East Central Oregon has continued to rattle around in my imagination…
Basalt Shards
Image
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Category Archives: Matt Niebuhr – Photography
Handle with Care…
“Do not lay flat”
Photography
Matt Niebuhr
West Branch Studio
Looking through the camera and finding a composition – a readymade – appear right before my eyes is still quite a thrill. I like to sharpen my visual sense through photography. Composing, framing, taking notice of those objects filled with potential – seeming to appear in the viewfinder, just waiting to be noticed. This visual hunt is a different task than drawing for me, both of which can sometimes be equally surprising… The camera and the frame, the opportunity to layer visual information, are welcome constraints. Drawing, when it comes from a similar understanding of constraint seems to be what I’m most interested in accomplishing.
Looking ahead…
I have (maybe purposefully) neglected this journal for sometime now – though I do on occasion find it useful to pull it up and read what was on my mind some years ago…
With this post, I intend to pick up informally jotting down thoughts. I believe new content posted here will concentrate on my own work focused on the photographic image – which at the time I began this blog back in 2005 was primarily what I wanted to learn more about: photography as an art form.
I have spent the last few years (in earnest beginning in 2009) in focusing on my art practice – primarily drawing based. I think that I turned away from my intense focus on photography because I quite frankly felt I had hit a wall so to speak – with where I was taking things – and the frequency with which I was “producing” photographic images. I think the time away is / was good and has allowed me to slow down in thinking and to be more selective… I think I have come to realize better what my “voice” is with regard to the photographic image I want to make. So I think that my focus on drawing / artwork – (using the hand / mind / eye) is a good influence on the photographic eye.
I have a few ideas that I had begun but had not really pushed along – so I want to see where it might go and I endeavor to do so in 2013. Part of this journal will simply be a record of that…
This image is one from a very small series that I think has merit to continue to investigate.
branch, cross section #1 – side A
Taxus brevifolia (Pacific Yew)
2010_05_06
Matt Niebuhr
from the series, Sections: Natural Forms
“We might say that there are two sections through the substance of the world: the longitudinal section of painting and the cross-section of certain pieces of graphic art. The longitudinal section seems representational; it somehow contains the objects. The cross-section seems symbolic; it contains signs.” – Walter Benjamin
In the meantime, selections of my all my work continue to reside primarily on my website: www.mattniebuhr.com with more frequent drawings posted on my tumblr site: mattniebuhrdrawings.tumblr.com
Here’s to the new year. I’m hopeful.
