Since I discovered my friend Suzie Ham’s blog I have wanted to share her photos on Sociotree. Her work conveys some of the qualities I find essential to photography. Suzie’s photographs draw our attention to glimpses of reality that usually get ignored, making the most simple things interesting. I thought it would be great to interview her and we exchanged a few e-mails in the last weeks. You can also visit her website and blog. To view larger images click in each picture.

How did you get started in photography and how long have you been taking pictures?

I started photographing approx. 6-7 years ago while getting my undergrad degree at Rutgers. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to major in English so I started taking classes at Mason Gross, and I’ve been taking photos ever since!
MORE >>

Julia recently sent me a really awesome and I’ve been eager to put it up. Put together on tape, I actually had to hunt down a tape player and had a pretty hard time finding one, but always so much more fun that digital mixes. Never forget physical media!

Featuring 2 sides of thought-out picks, speckled with folk, miniature dance parties and local legends. Put this mix on in your room with a black light and lean back in your lazy boy.

Winter of the Sea Onion Mixtape - Side A

Winter of the Sea Onion Mixtape - Side B

Poster by Jamie Morren

[Update] Right after finishing this post, my friend Jamie sent me over this poster he made for his show at Zebulon last night. I really like it’s simplicity, but also the hand painted font is really awesome as well. Check out his band AOI. Thanks Jamie!

Neon Indian

I was having a conversation with my brother at one of his recent shows that gave me the idea for this post. His band Happy People was playing a show at Piano’s bar in the Lower East Side, a section of wall was patched with an array of concert posters, each fighting for their own space. The question we were discussing was, Do posters still have an affect on you seeing a new/unheard band? If you see a really cool poster, which I did that night, are you going to come to check them out or at least search online for their site? Perhaps in the pre-facebook/myspace days, but what effect does really cool poster work have on our perception of a bands music. I feel like I couldn’t really answer this question without any feedback, so I thought I would put it out there for an audience. What do you guys think? Does  a really crummy band with good accompanied art sound better? Does a really good band with crummy art sound worse? If the poster used to play the role that Facebook and Twitter now play as an announcement tool, what role do they have now? Here is a compilation of some really cool posters from past and present, including the one I picked up at Pianos that night.

MORE >>

A little late, but I have been meaning to write about an event in Bushwick, Brooklyn I went to a couple of weeks ago. Centotto, a gallery run in the apartment of Paul D’Agostino. Paul has been running this gallery for a number of years but this was the first show I made it to, and it definitely caught my interest. Paul invited curators and artists to participate by submitting a work of art or something they considered art to the show. However, the works were not to be revealed until the night of the opening, and everyone (including Paul) was completely unaware of what we were in for. As the unveiling took place, dramatic classical music was played on speakers to heighten the anticipation.

MORE >>

Mireia Villa is an artist from Barcelona who I met in New York during one of her stays in Brooklyn. Last December, a few days before leaving New York, she held an intimate exhibition in an apartment in Brooklyn with the portraits she had made of her friends in New York. She called it “See You,” as if she was trying to grasp those last moments in this city by capturing her friendships that she made here. The event was a farewell, and so I wandered around the apartment where the drawings were hanging from the walls and ceiling feeling a bit sad another friend was leaving. I felt bad I did not find the time to write a post about it, and I thought it was never late to show some of those drawings. Using just watercolors, Mireia works spontaneously playing with the mystery that involves trying to find in the paper someone you know. As she told me, it is as if with each brushstroke you get closer or further from the subject. When I asked her about the differences between making a portrait of a friend and a unknown person, she said with friends she is more free to distort the subject and gives them a more grotesque aspect. Thanks Mireia and we miss you!

MORE >>

Last week I went for my monthly Second Friday walk through the heart of Williamsburg and wanted to do a post about some work I saw at Pierogi Gallery by Dawn Clement. It stood out among the work that I had seen that night, except maybe a painting by an artist that called me a thief for taking a photo. She jarringly reminded me that “it ‘s Copywritten!”. Anyway, back to Dawn Clement. I haven’t seen still life work that has actually put my mind to work in a long time, not unless I am looking through the history books. Using ink-based mural-sized drawings reflect on a small setup of objects that are setup in the room for you to observe, consisting of placed objects and some sculptures of her own. I noticed myself going back and forth between the setup and the drawing, the latter making me focus on the details of the objects and seeing them in new light. Check it out.

MORE >>

This week, I thought I would write about a musician that I have been coming across on my way to work in the Union Square Subway Station. I’ve seen him a few times and is one of my favorite New York Metro musicians. The instrument he plays, the kora, is particularly sparkling and spirited and, for me, speaks well to the movement of people at rush hour, without making it more intense than it already is (I like the free jazz band that plays there, but it doesn’t exactly ease the nerves after a long day).  The song I’ve posted up here is called “Kadija” off the album titled “My Family- Mandinka Traditional music from Senegal”, featuring a number of musicians, including Béla Fleck. So I finally decided to pick up one of the cd-rs that he had for sale, and since I like it so much I wanted to share a piece of it with you. Unfortunately I cannot share the whole thing, but you can go to his site or pick up a cd-r of your own if you see him at 14th st.

Kadija

On my way back to New York from Christmas in Spain I stop by Valencia to see my friends Sara and Julio. They had just moved into a great new studio space in the neighbourhood of Ruzafa where they work on graphic design and photography under the name of Estudio Julio Alonso (or you can visit their new Tumblr here). For their first public event they created a few flyers that included Sara´s photographs. I had been wanting to share her work in Sociotree for a long time, and this series seemed like a great way to do it.

MORE >>

From m-inspira, sweet type. Created by two young graphic and industrial designers from Valencia, Spain, the series of letters was created with sugar and gelatin and are edible.

(via colossal)

The time has come once more for the moment of the year that I look forward to the most. Where Santa comes racing on his synth-powered sleigh with low drones of sound blasting him in speed around the world. You will find in your fire place this year, a glowing, kryptonite-laden mix, digitally crafted by Cristian Subirá (aka Summer Recreation Camp).  I present to you, Merry Synthmas Volume II, as awesome as ever.

 Merry Synthmas Vol. II – Cristian Subirá