Over the last few years, Edward Burtynsky has been investigating the possibilities of long-term preservation for artifacts in hopes of finding a proper home for the 10,000-year Clock (also known as the “Clock of the Long Now”) and, in turn, has rediscovered a process for producing photographic prints that could resist fading for - no joke - as long as it takes for the Clock to cycle. Burtynsky has proposed the creation of a 10,000-year Gallery to house the Clock alongside a slowly rotated selection of long-life photographs.

If you’re anything like me, you’re getting chills just imagining a gallery space with the Clock (ticking once a year, the century hand advancing once every one hundred years, the cuckoo coming out on the millennium) and photographs lining the walls.

Here’s an excerpt from the Blog of Long Now, explaining more:

Photographer Edward Burtynsky made a formal proposal for a permanent art gallery in the chamber that encloses the 10,000-year Clock in its Nevada mountain. The gallery would consist of art in materials as durable as the alloy steel and jade of the Clock itself, and it would be curated slowly over the centuries to reflect changing interests in the rolling present and the accumulating past. Photographs in particular should be in the 10,000-year Gallery, Burtynsky said, “because they tell us more than any previous medium. When we think of our own past, we tend to think in terms of family photos.”

Burtynsky went on a quest for a technical solution. He thought that automobile paint, which holds up to harsh sunlight, might work if it could be run through an inkjet printer, but that didn’t work out. Then he came across a process first discovered in 1855, called “carbon transfer print.” It uses magenta, cyan, and yellow inks made of ground stone-the magenta stone can only be found in one mine in Germany-and the black ink is carbon.

On the stage Burtynsky showed a large carbon transfer print of one of his ultra-high resolution photographs. The color and detail were perfect. Accelerated studies show that the print could hang in someone’s living room for 500 years and show no loss of quality. Kept in the Clock’s mountain in archival conditions it would remain unchanged for 10,000 years.

The popularization of such printing methods would no doubt change the face of the photography. But at present, making just one print takes five days of work, costs $2,000 and only ten artisans in the world have the knowledge and skills to do it correctly, says Burtynsky.

Read the rest of the story here. And check back here for an .mp3 of Burtynsky’s Long Now Seminar, where he discussed the 10,000-year Gallery.

British redcoat re-enactor, Battle of Concord and Lexington, Lexington, MA, 2002
© Sage Sohier

I’ve always been a fan of Sage Sohier’s work, particularly her series entitled Perfectible Worlds. Currently up through August 15th at Foley Gallery in New York, the photographs are described as so:

Sage Sohier’s latest series of “contextual portraits” began with a photograph she took of her friend and his model railroad; a twenty year work-in-progress that traversed and had long overrun his entire basement. Sohier was taken by the man’s uncommon devoutness to each detail of the minuscule landscape and set herself in search of his kindred extraordinaires; people with private passions and marvelous obsessions.

The photographs in Sohier’s “Perfectible Worlds” portray such singular people; amid their voluminous collections, absorbed wholly into odd hobbies, heavily draped in adornments, or mounting their multitude of achievements. Whether it be by the constructions of small extravagant worlds, or reconstructions of the self, Sohier’s subjects are all carving express utopias over which they can exert near-total control.

Here are a few more photographs from the series:

Man in his basement with model railroad, Newton, MA, 2001
© Sage Sohier

Man applying tanning lotion before a bodybuilding competition, Worcester, MA, 2003
© Sage Sohier

Father and daufghter in camouflage, Gilmanton, NH, 2004
© Sage Sohier

Woman with dollhouse interiors, Charlemont, MA, 2002
© Sage Sohier

Diorama, Fisher Museum, Harvard Forest, Petersham, MA, 2004
© Sage Sohier

See more images on Sage’s website and pick up a copy of her here.

Untitled (from “Ex Nihlio”)
© Benoît Vollmer

Take a look at French photographer Benoît Vollmer’s series entitled Ex Nihlio, which translates from Latin as “Out of Nothing.”

Charlie Rose talks to Charlie Rose, a video piece by Andrew Filippone Jr.

(In hopes of bringing us back to this).

The call for entries for Blurb’s Photography Book Now contest has come and gone and all 1796 submissions have been posted online for everyone to browse through. Now it’s just up to the fine selection of jurors to decide who will go home with the $25,000 grand prize and other awards.

Well, it’s been long enough now for me to give a good look through the entries and select a few personal favorites. In no particular order, here are some deserving titles (taking into consideration concept, design and of course the photographs):

Johnstown by Ed Panar

Cairo Sunset by Misha de Ridder

Something is Happening by John Lehr

Public School by Victoria Hely-Hutchinson

How Can We Be So Different? by Nicola Kast

Reading by Talia Chetrit

3Situations by Bill Sullivan

Angry Black Snake by Michael Corridore

The Theatre of War by Patrick Lyn

After the Fall by Hin Chua

The Daughters of Job by Alison Malone

Human Nature by M. Alexis Pike

Mid-North by Grant Willing

Fjord (edited by Alana Celii and Grant Willing)

At a Loss by Shawn Records

All My Life I Have Had The Same Dream by Will Steacy

Davey by Brian Sorg

The Marine Layer by Peter Holzhauer

Ditch Plains by Joni Sternbach

Big Rock Candy Mountain by Tammy Mecure

I’ll keep it to myself, but the book that I feel should take home the grand prize is somewhere on the above list. There are plenty of other entries to consider, so take a look at them all and decide for yourself!

Best of luck to everyone.

I came across this great excerpt that Mark McKnight sent me a few months back and couldn’t help but share it. The word “Geosophy” is a compound of ‘ge’ (Greek for earth) and ‘sophia’ (Greek for knowledge). In Imagining the Future at Niagara Falls (1987), P. McGreevy refers to Geosophy as, “the study of the world as people conceive of and imagine it.”

Cologne, DE (from “Along the Way”)
© Rachel Barrett

I received a kind e-mail from Rachel Barrett regarding the blog and was very happy to discover that she’s making some nice work of her own. See her series entitled Along the Way.

Picture Shawl, 2008 (from “My Mother and Other Things from the Sky”)
© Irina Rozovsky

Irina Rozovsky has a new website with some stunning images to be found within the series My Mother and Other Things from the Sky.

Derek Henderson is my personal favorite of the recently announced Hey, Hot Shot! winners. I had seen his work previously and remember thinking that he had a great eye, particularly when it came to portraiture. Here are a few images from his project entitled New Zealand:

Wairoa (from “New Zealand”)
© Derek Henderson

Steve’s House, Puhoi (from “New Zealand”)
© Derek Henderson

And some nice Reneke Dijkstra-esque portraits in the series Waitoa Slaughter House:

Untitled (from “Waitoa Slaughter House”)
© Derek Henderson

Take a look at more of Derek’s work here.

I should mention that I’m in Ireland for the month of July, completing a residency at the Burren College of Art. I imagine posts will be rather slow here, but I do have internet if anyone needs to get in touch. If you would like to send me something this month, shoot me an e-mail and I’ll give you my temporary mailing address.