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.