Commercial vs Fine Art Continued: Three Slick Websites and an Alternative Process

As luck and serendipity would have it, after rambling about commercial and fine art photography yesterday, the latest issue of PDN just came in, and it's their fat Photo Annual for 2004 -- 200 glossy pages of short features on trends and publishers and photographers to watch in the worlds of commercial and fine art photography. Headlining their notable photographer web sites are three of the slickest Flash sites you will see, from Brian Pearson (who's backpacked around the world for five years and has lots of moody environmental photography on display), Heimo (an Iceland based photographer who takes nice landscapes and quite thoughtful commercial portraits), and Michelle Zassenhaus.

Pearson and Zassenhaus's sites both feature photos that fade in smoothly (or not so smoothly, depending on your internet connection) like a lens coming into focus...pretty cool the first few times you see it, but I can see this as a trend that would get annoying quickly, especially with less distinctive photography. (It reminds me of a craze that developed in the '80s, where numerous music artists would place introductions to their songs starting with radio static and then mimicing a radio station coming into tune, leading into the song...this was another "trend" that got cheesy and dated in a hurry). For what it's worth, I think this these "focusing" transitions work more effectively with Pearson's dreamy and contemplative photography than they do with Zassenhaus' stripped down urban landscapes.

Brian Pearson image, from We Buy Gold portfolio

Heimo portrait

These are ultimately sites with more commercial aspirations in mind, though there's good stuff to be seen (for me, the "We Buy Gold" portfolio in Pearson's site, and Heimo's portraits). I have yet to wade through a lot of the PDN annual, but one photographer with a small mention that caught my eye is Jody Ake, who doesn't appear to have a slick website, but does have some nice images using the wet-plate collodion process -- apparently one of the very few photographers to use collodion for commercial work. The images featured in PDN are part of a fashion story with Harlem as a subject, and are lovely...unfortunately, the only images I've been able to track down online are mostly still lifes and some portraits, though they're still cool and moody-looking.

Jody Ake, "Marianna" collodion image

In doing some basic research on Ake, I did come across this interesting article on the Photo Co-op in New York City, which talks about the positive dynamics of establishing a photo district in lower Manhattan. I liked reading this excerpt about how financially viable building darkrooms still seems to be even in 2004:

"As more photographers go digital, Mozes's decision to provide office space has proven prescient. "I could convert additional darkrooms to digital if that seems the way to go," he says. But just as painting didn't disappear when photography emerged, he doubts that film photography is ever going to go away. 'Right now, if I had twice as many darkrooms I would fill them.' "