Almost Everything with Jeffery Saddoris

Last month, we lost Ryuichi Sakamoto, who was an absolute monster of an artist and since hearing the news I’ve been going back and listening to a bunch of his catalog, which is not only massive, but it’s also incredibly diverse.

There are certain artists whose work allows you to see the world differently. If they’re really good, they might even allow you to feel it differently. Ryuichi Sakamoto was one of those artists. He worked across multiple musical genres and he was able to tap into and even affect different aspects of the human experience. I think the first piece of Ryuichi’s music I heard was Forbidden Colors, which is a vocal version of the theme to a film he scored and acted in alongside David Bowie called Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. It was also the first of what would be decades of brilliant collaborations with former Japan frontman David Sylvian. A friend in college had reintroduced me to David, who I was familiar with from Japan, but it was his solo record Secrets of the Beehive, which featured Forbidden Colors as a bonus track, that introduced me to Ryuichi and I’ve been a fan ever since.
LINKS
Yellow Magic Orchestra
Brandon Stosuy
Documentary about the piano that was damaged by the 2011 tsunami
asyncAsia
Roger Dean
Tales From Topographic OceansHugh Syme
Storm Thorgerson
Mick Rock
Eric Meola
Hipgnosis
Reid Miles
CONNECT WITH ME
Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com
Twitter: @jefferysaddoris
Instagram: @jefferysaddoris
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MUSIC
Music For Workplaces by Jeffery Saddoris

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”

– William Arthur Ward

I have been drawing as far back as I can remember. My mom used to tell me that I could draw before I could talk. I’ve spoken on previous Iterations about my childhood love of art supply stores, which is still kind of true. All I ever wanted to be as a kid was an animator at Disney and I drew constantly. That changed a bit in high school when I was introduced to photography, but I didn’t stop drawing. In fact, I wanted to go to Art Center College of Design in Pasadena to study photography and illustration. As it happened — and this must have been my sophomore or junior year — Art Center was awarding scholarships for weekend classes, and one of them was being taught by a real Disney animator. All you had to do to be considered was submit a portfolio of your work. I told myself that I didn’t have a shot, and even if I did, there was no way we could afford the $40,000 a year that it cost to go there. On top of that, there was my dad and his repeated “artists are a dime a dozen” speeches echoing in my head. So I didn’t even try. In fact, I went the other way and started making up excuses for why I no longer even wanted to go to Art Center. To borrow from The Book of Pressfield, it was Resistance plain and simple. But my high school art teacher, Mr. Andrew, didn’t agree.

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The new issue of Time magazine which is called The Art of Optimism – 34 people changing how we see our world. The editorial that begins the issue is called “Why art is the antidote for our times” by Director Ava DuVernay and the issue includes articles by Laverne Cox, Bill Gates, and Guillermo del Toro. There’s also a terrific article called “12 Leaders Who Are Shaping the Next Generation of Artists” which features interviews and commentary on where art is at and where it’s going.

Flashbak posted a really great series of photographs of New York taken by Too Papageorge in 1966-67. One of the things that makes them so special — other than capturing New York in a way that many of us have never seen it — is that the photos were all taken on Kodachrome and they just show what an amazing film Kodachrome was – the colors, the shadows – and for many photographers that film stock was what defined their style.

In honor of Black History month, the New York TImes has launched a terrific new project called Overlooked, which begins “Since 1851, The New York Times has published thousands of obituaries: of heads of state, opera singers, the inventor of Stove Top stuffing and of the Slinky. The vast majority chronicled the lives of men, mostly white ones. Now, we’re adding the stories of other remarkable people.” The site is really well done and new obituaries will be added weekly. There’s also a form to allow users to nominate candidates for future entries.

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

In 1976, William Eggleston opened his first color show at MoMA, the reviews were fairly polarized. To some of the art establishment, color photography was for snapshots and not to be taken seriously and black and white was the only true photographic art form. But while one critic called the show “perfectly banal”, another called it a milestone and said that after it black and white would seem slightly quaint and precious. In the 40 years since, it’s almost impossible, at least for me, to imagine a photographic world without color. Don’t get me wrong, I love black and white and spent years shooting only black and white but there’s something to be said for the work of photographers like Fred Herzog, Steve McCurry and Saul Leiter. We see in color and when it’s done right, photography can help us see our world differently through color, which is one of the things I love about the work of Ben Thomas. In Ben’s series
Chroma
, color becomes almost a character, a necessary element to help communicate the narrative behind the work. When I first saw it, I knew I wanted to talk to him. What I found is that each series that he’s done over the past several years is an exploration of composition, texture and color—and it all began with a project called
Cityshrinker
.

LINKS
Olivo Barbieri
Anreas Gursky
Vincent Laforet
Villa Lena
Henry the Worst

CONNECT WITH BEN
Website: http://benthomas.co
Twitter: @___benthomas
Instagram: @___benthomas

MUSIC
Please Listen Carefully
(Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Recently, the closing of my former web host inspired Sean and I to take a step back from our respective websites — and it’s allowed each of us to see the work we do and, maybe more interestingly, the work we share in a different light. Also, Sean reveals an exciting new direction that his life will be taking in the near future.

LINKS
Carrd
Andy Adams
CJ Chilvers
Squarespace Wells template
Sean’s retreat in June
Morning pages

CONNECT WITH SEAN
Website: http://seantucker.photography
Twitter: @seantuck
Instagram: @seantuck
YouTube: Sean Tucker

CONNECT WITH JEFFERY
Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com
Twitter: @jefferysaddoris
Instagram: @jefferysaddoris

You can also connect with both of us by sending an email to [email protected].

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MUSIC
High Line by Duffmusiq

Music featured in this episode is licensed from Artlist, which is a terrific music licensing platform for YouTubers and filmmakers. Use the following link to get two additional months of Artlist free when you sign up: https://bit.ly/JS_Artlist

This post may contain affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something, I may earn a commission. Thanks.

A number of you have asked why I am selling what review after review calls the best APS-C camera on the market today to buy a two-year old Micro 4/3 camera that I’ve already bought and returned once before? Well, it’s complicated, but if you’ll give me a little bit of rope, I’ll promise to try and wrap it up without hanging myself.

What camera should I buy? It’s a question I get asked a lot. And I try to stay pretty consistent with my advice. If you were an On Taking Pictures listener, you know that I could answer the question for everyone but my myself. My search for a new camera became an epic saga and the butt of jokes for years on the show.

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LINKS

Here & Now recently posted an interview with climber Alex Honnold and adventure photographer Jimmy Chin and his wife Elizabeth on their Oscar nominated documentary Free Solo, which follows Honnold as he climbs the 3,000 plus foot sheer granite face of El Capitan without any safety ropes to catch him.

Also, if you dig seeing how the special effects in your favorite movies are done, follow movies.effects on Instagram. The feed features side by side photos and before and after clips so you can get a sense of what it takes to bring these big budget fantasies to life.

And this is either really cool or really creepy, depending on your perspective, but Ukranian artist Olga Kamenetskya transforms overly made up toy dolls into hyper realistic looking figurines. According to the article on My Modern Met “Kamenetskaya strips the dolls’ makeup and opts for bushy facial hair, freckles, and even wrinkles in their skin. The results are so lifelike that you’d expect to see these people walking down the street.”

Em1 Mkii vs. PhaseOne IQ3
Josef Müller Brockmann
My paintings

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0