Greg Flanders summed it up like this:

STRANGELANDS is a collaborative effort by an international team of photographers that aims to meld geographically distinct images into one sweeping and dreamlike landscape. The end effect is a sometimes surreal, always surprising juxtaposition of artist, place and vision. More than a reflection on the blurring of boundaries through international means of communication, strangelands is a celebration of today’s odd marriage between the local and the global, the hyper-specific and the triumphantly cosmopolitan.

strange.rs brings together 22 photographers from major cities around the planet. The group is united less by a common aesthetic than by a certain quixotic vision of the world, one that seeks out the subtle strangeness hidden behind everyday reality.

The exhibition was curated by James Turnley and will be showing at the Third Floor Gallery in Cardiff, Wales from today until October 3rd, so if you’re in the UK stop by and see us.

If you can’t make it, we’ve made it pretty easy to follow the festivities from the comfort of your home.

The prints arrive.
Video of the installation.
Projecting live and big.

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And you can purchase the official exhibition catalog online here:

Just click on the image above to take you to the purchasing page.

Madame Baptiste is a 75-year-old woman who lives in Jacmel, Haiti, which is just 60km south of Port-au-Prince, and which was struck with the same force as the capital city. Her house was crumbling, unsafe to live in, and nothing was going to be done about it. As nothing is going to be done about much of the destruction in Haiti. Massive amounts of money was raised to help the Haitian people, but there is little-to-no evidence of it. 6 months after the earthquake, this group headed out with privately raised cash to build Madame a new home. Great care was taken in the designs, contact made with the Jamaican Red Cross to discuss hurricane proofing standards and with California building experts in order to make the house earthquake safe. Madame Baptist is childless and has no one else to care for her, except maybe us.

The point of the project is simple: To build one woman a house that will withstand either disaster, and to train Haitian workers on standards and practices in order that they may gain contracts to build more such houses in the community.

When we arrived and demolished the house to prepare for the build, there was a snag. The foundation, which from the outside showed no damage from the quake — when exposed, showed itself to be beyond saving. A new foundation needed to be laid. With the cost of materials so incredibly high, this snag has made the project run over-budget and over-schedule. Some of the volunteers (including myself) have already had to leave with the house not completed. We can use a little help to put the project back on track. In fact we need your help.

As I’m a photographer and have nothing else of value to offer you, I’m holding a print sale, where you can choose from one of these 8 images in various sizes to help get the rebuilding of Madame Baptiste’s house to completion. If you can’t afford these prices and would like to simply throw a few bucks our way, you can do so via PayPal at curdiogenes [at] gmail.com. Know that all of the funds received will go directly to the feeding of the Haitian workers, who are volunteering their time in order to gain this knowledge, or to the buying of materials or wages to trained Haitian masons and carpenters to complete the house. I’ll be sending every spare red cent that I make at work this week down to help, I’m not asking that from you, but anything you can do will be of great help. And it won’t disappear into the NGO ether, it is real, practical help for Haiti.

The project is due to be completed midweek, and I’m trying to send all the cash I can get on Monday, so not much time left. Sorry if this comes across as some Save the Children guilt-trip. I appreciate your help in advance.

[Clicking on the images will bring you to an outside website where you will be able to purchase prints directly. Between $20-$100 US depending on size.]

Jared Iorio

I’ll have 12 or so pictures hanging at this group show at Gallery 27 in Santa Barbara opening this Thursday during the local Artwalk. The show is designed to show off current and former students of Pierce College, and I was tasked with curating it to a large extent, along with printing, framing, mounting and hanging it. Thankfully, all the photographers involved that could help, did, and it’s been a really educational experience in regards to the planning (or lack thereof in this case) necessary to put a show like this together.

If you’re in the area Thursday or fancy driving up, we’d love to see you there. 5-8 p.m.

Yeah, that’s my voice in there. The one speaking proper English…

Everybody loves Alex when we’re out.

cliche 6/5,

originality 5/2,

treachery 4,

hope 6,

malfunction 6,

history 8,

medicine 10, syphylus 12, kindness 15….

law 20, crime 20,

copulation 30,

LOVE — 50.

Forget overlay. Love never won yet… since platitude was an overnight scratch,

if you can get 3/5 on cliche,

put down everything you’ve got.

(transcribed from “The Creation of the Morning Line” by Charles Bukowski)

Alex JD Smith and I went to the track this last Superbowl Sunday. This is what we did.

To that end, we chose 10 strange.rs each and started pouring through their archives, looking for pictures that fit. Anything with obvious clues to location was generally axed, and they had to have that feeling that things were wrong, that they were tough, while at the same time maintaining a willingness to enjoy the good parts of life — fully. We chose 11 pictures from each photographer and stuck them in a folder, numbered them and went off to see the horses. A trip to Santa Anita later and after drawing name-and-race combinations from a hat at the Down & Out in downtown LA, we had an edit.

20 photographs, sequenced and chosen by horses and jockeys.

We didn’t lift another finger. We wanted a truly (mostly) random edit.

VIEW SLIDESHOW

We got it.

Overall, I’m pretty surprised. A few jarring transitions, sure. I would have certainly chosen quite a few different pictures if I had had control, but reading into it a bit, I can begin to discern a narrative for sure. Interesting result, anyway, when you look around the Web and see all the “curated” presentations out there, to realize that you can get a decent, 20-photograph edit out of thousands of images by relative strangers, by way of horses and barflies.

The strange.rs site has been live for a month and a half now. We’re all still getting the hang of working together, vetting ideas and concepts, and agreeing on ways to move forward. Most of us have never met each other, after all.

One recent decision that was made is that two different strange.rs will take the creative reins each month, to sort of guide the content that is featured.

Since Alex JD Smith and I volunteered for February, and we both live here, in the next few weeks there will be a few features published, all having something to do with Los Angeles. At least, sort of…

We opted to tackle one aspect of LA, and I’m not really sure that it really exists (or existed). The visceral Los Angeles of Charles Bukowski and John Fante, where everything just feels so much.

The interesting part of reading through all the Fante and Bukowski stuff again is that we realized that neither of them actually describe anything. It’s all dialogue and strength of character. By making the characters in their books so alive through sheer personality, you can almost see the way they would dress, the way they would decorate the house, etc…

Potographs generally do the exact opposite. They describe, in detail, and hopefully you can pick up a mood or a flash or personality by how we communicate visually. Basically opposite ends of the spectrum, so we thought it would be fun to play with that.

Photographs that describe, text that doesn’t (but does). That’s Part One.

The rest of the month is in progress, we’ll see what happens.
Check the site through the end of the month.

Andy Newson had the idea for flickr members to donate a print through The Charity Print Auctions group in an effort to raise money to help the Haitian Earthquake victims. I’m in a bad spot financially at the moment, so on the chance that the auction could raise a few more bucks than I would be able to send myself, my offering is available for bid until the 17th. If the above image doesn’t strike your fancy, feel free to choose any image from my website or my portfolios on strange.rs (but please keep all bidding underneath the original image on flickr).

Thanks.

(Update: had 2 winning bidders at $50 each, $100 to the Red Cross. Thanks Cole and Rafa. The group itself has raised just over $10,000 at last count.)

The teaser trailer below.

And don’t forget to meet all the strange.rs in the portfolio section.