Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Jim Collum loves the California redwoods and the neighborhoods, back gardens, forgotten factories as much as the pristine coastlines of the Northern California coast. What does he do differently?
Jim Collum: Photographer of the Week
Currently represented by the Susan Spritus Gallery and work will be available for your viewing at the LA Photoshow 2014 next week!! If you're going, make sure you stop by and say "Asher sent me". That way, perhaps I can get a discount!
We all consume photographs, likely as not seeing thousands of new images each months just in passing. With billions of images having been taken and millions of cameras sold each year, the sampling of the world around us is just what one does, like sipping coffee or texting. So what makes our pictures stand out?
I believe that we are all enthralled with the idea of suspending some view of life as if we could for just a slice of time, control the experience of it all...and we do. This very particular and distinctive sampling of what seems to be before us is what builds the compelling and recognizable image. That's how we separate ourselves from the pack, by selection of circumstances and timing of our pictures to reflect our bending and refocussing of ideas to a timeless image we can somehow export on to a pice of paper as a photograph. When we as photographers admire another's from within our midst, we know something wonderful is happening.
So that's what I find with the recent collection of work by Jim Collum. He has had his love affairs with Leica's, scanning backs and all the DSLR's you can think of, but what distinguishes him is his observational skill in the Northern California Redwoods, countryside, cities, neighborhoods, abandoned factories and surf-smacked coast lines. It's that and the choices he makes in building a body of work joined by some secret ingredient of commonality. Here, I posit that each image has a sense of penetrating one dimension by another.
Jim Collum: Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco
Medium: Platinum/palladium Ziatype
Date: 2013
Size: 7x7"
Edition: 9
Susan Spiritus Gallery
Maybe I'm being simplistic. Perhaps so, but bear with me. I see his platinum image of a building against the sky as a prototype of Jim's probing of one world into the space of another. Let's go with this idea. The sense of it is carried through with light filtering through the canopy of woodlands and then fusing with winding paths. One form penetrates another in a hard, confrontational or curvaceous strokes of light and dark.
Jim Collum: Early morning Fall Creek.
Medium: Platinum/palladium Ziatype
Date: 2103
Size: 8x5", 14x9"
Edition: 9 for each size
Susan Spiritus Gallery
and once again, the light comes down from the sky and cuts a path between the trees, as if the angels are visiting and inspecting what inheritance we will leave behind us after our footsteps are long forgotten.
Jim collum: Summit, Fall Creek
Medium: Platinum/palladium Ziatype
Date: 2010
Size: 7x7"
Edition: 9
Susan spiritus Gallery
So my dear friends, do you feel that one can mark dissimilar scenes by an overriding esthetic sense of unity of purpose? I really believe one might be able to do that and that Jim has shown it here.
Now you can attack me for being so lost in my own meanderings, after all, they just appear to be photographs!
They are actually technically distinguished in having been made by a craftsman to export visions from a poet's mind.
That's a photographer's photographer and so here's a salute to Jim and outstanding patient and imaginative photographer!
and yes, I do really experience some sense of attempts or an exploration of crossing from one physical or spiritual boundary to another in all these currently available series.
Asher
Jim Collum: Photographer of the Week
Currently represented by the Susan Spritus Gallery and work will be available for your viewing at the LA Photoshow 2014 next week!! If you're going, make sure you stop by and say "Asher sent me". That way, perhaps I can get a discount!
We all consume photographs, likely as not seeing thousands of new images each months just in passing. With billions of images having been taken and millions of cameras sold each year, the sampling of the world around us is just what one does, like sipping coffee or texting. So what makes our pictures stand out?
I believe that we are all enthralled with the idea of suspending some view of life as if we could for just a slice of time, control the experience of it all...and we do. This very particular and distinctive sampling of what seems to be before us is what builds the compelling and recognizable image. That's how we separate ourselves from the pack, by selection of circumstances and timing of our pictures to reflect our bending and refocussing of ideas to a timeless image we can somehow export on to a pice of paper as a photograph. When we as photographers admire another's from within our midst, we know something wonderful is happening.
So that's what I find with the recent collection of work by Jim Collum. He has had his love affairs with Leica's, scanning backs and all the DSLR's you can think of, but what distinguishes him is his observational skill in the Northern California Redwoods, countryside, cities, neighborhoods, abandoned factories and surf-smacked coast lines. It's that and the choices he makes in building a body of work joined by some secret ingredient of commonality. Here, I posit that each image has a sense of penetrating one dimension by another.
Jim Collum: Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco
Medium: Platinum/palladium Ziatype
Date: 2013
Size: 7x7"
Edition: 9
Susan Spiritus Gallery
Maybe I'm being simplistic. Perhaps so, but bear with me. I see his platinum image of a building against the sky as a prototype of Jim's probing of one world into the space of another. Let's go with this idea. The sense of it is carried through with light filtering through the canopy of woodlands and then fusing with winding paths. One form penetrates another in a hard, confrontational or curvaceous strokes of light and dark.
Jim Collum: Early morning Fall Creek.
Medium: Platinum/palladium Ziatype
Date: 2103
Size: 8x5", 14x9"
Edition: 9 for each size
Susan Spiritus Gallery
and once again, the light comes down from the sky and cuts a path between the trees, as if the angels are visiting and inspecting what inheritance we will leave behind us after our footsteps are long forgotten.
Jim collum: Summit, Fall Creek
Medium: Platinum/palladium Ziatype
Date: 2010
Size: 7x7"
Edition: 9
Susan spiritus Gallery
So my dear friends, do you feel that one can mark dissimilar scenes by an overriding esthetic sense of unity of purpose? I really believe one might be able to do that and that Jim has shown it here.
Now you can attack me for being so lost in my own meanderings, after all, they just appear to be photographs!
They are actually technically distinguished in having been made by a craftsman to export visions from a poet's mind.
That's a photographer's photographer and so here's a salute to Jim and outstanding patient and imaginative photographer!
and yes, I do really experience some sense of attempts or an exploration of crossing from one physical or spiritual boundary to another in all these currently available series.
Asher