Queen’s Day in Amsterdam (tree reflections)
Tree branches (Amsterdam, 2013) © Sheila Newbery
Platinum palladium print, 11 x 8.25″ (image size) on Arches Platine. Amsterdam was teeming with party-goers on Queen’s Day, because it was also the day of the investiture of the new king… Party boats with between 10–25 people each, rigged out in orange, were making slow, clamorous progress around the city, churning up the quieter backwaters, making the old bricks quiver. The folks on board waved ecstatically to those of us on shore. Along the margins, the reflections of the branches undulating in the water grew frenetic and loopy — the surface was pulsating in mesmerizing, wildly shifting patterns: A thousand different images every minute. I pointed my lens downward.
Los Caprichos: Porque rompió las reglas.
Porque rompió las reglas. (palladium print, 2013) from *Los Caprichos*
“Porque rompió las reglas (Because he broke the rules)” from Los Caprichos. Platinum palladium prints inspired by Goya’s 18th-century satirical masterpiece.
“Caprichos” means literally: whims. Images from this series are photographed from video source and printed in platinum palladium. In keeping with the spirit of Goya’s mordant titles, I’ve given each image a caption — in Spanish.
Juxtaposition: live wires
Observations, San Francisco (platinum palladium print, 2013) © Sheila Newbery
The elements of this landscape brought to mind artist Randy Twaddle’s breathtaking Distribution Drawings. I heard him talk not long ago about making these large-scale drawings, which synthesize photographic printing techniques with a chancy hand-held “drawing-with-liquid” — coffee, as it turns out — where marks are made using gravity (and the paper’s native characteristics of absorption), rather than brush or pencil. The results are beautiful and intriguing.
‘New Drawings’ by Randy Twaddle is on view at the Holly Johnson Gallery in Dallas, Texas through March 16, 2013.
News
Cover idea for *Los Caprichos*
I’m imagining what a cover for Los Caprichos might look like—this is one idea (above)— only with an 18th-century roundhand script. Something like this: 
Meanwhile, I’m pleased that one of the Caprichos will be included in the 12th Annual Joyce Elaine Grant Photography Exhibition, to be held at the Texas Woman’s University Art Gallery (Denton, TX), from February 21st–March 2, 2013. The juror was Sarah Kennel, Associate Curator in the Department of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC). The proceeds from the Exhibition go to funding graduate-level training in the visual arts at the University.
In March, I’ll be returning to Santa Fe for the Radius Book Weekend led by Magnum photographer Alex Webb, Rebecca Norris Webb (author of My Dakota) and Radius co-founder/book designer David Chickey. I went to the workshop in 2011, with the Caprichos in an as yet inchoate form. At right about that time, I’d also met and started working with Josh Partridge, grandson of Imogen Cunningham, who’d just completed a limited-edition set of palladium prints of several of his grandmother’s negatives for 21st Edition’s monograph on the photographer. It’s really Josh who made it possible to start printing the Caprichos in platinum palladium — he gave me time in his own studio to make the first test prints, and more importantly, didn’t laugh at my temerity in asking for his help.
Thank you, Josh.
The studio tree
The studio tree (platinum palladium print, 2013) © Sheila Newbery
Monet had his cathedral; I have a tree — the one outside our studio…
Caprichos: ¿Ahogarse o nadar?
“Ahogarse o nadar?” from *Los Caprichos* (palladium print, 2012) by Sheila Newbery
“¿Ahogarse o nadar?” (“Sink or swim?”) from Los Caprichos. Platinum palladium prints inspired by Goya’s 18th-century satirical masterpiece.
“Caprichos” means literally: whims. Images from this series are photographed from video source and printed in platinum palladium. In keeping with the spirit of Goya’s mordant titles, I’ve given each image a caption — in Spanish.
Caprichos: El resultado está amañado.
“El resultado está amañado.” Palladium print, 2012, from *Los Caprichos: after Goya*.
“El resultado está amañado.” (“The outcome is rigged”) from Los Caprichos: after Goya: platinum palladium prints inspired by the 18th-century satirical masterpiece.
“Caprichos” means literally: whims. Images from this series are photographed from video source and printed in platinum palladium. In keeping with the spirit of Goya’s mordant titles, I’ve given each image a caption — in Spanish.
Caprichos: En la cima sólo hay lugar para uno
En la cima sólo hay lugar para uno (palladium print, 2012) from *Los Caprichos: after Goya*
En la cima sólo hay lugar para uno (“There’s only room for one at the top”) from Los Caprichos: after Goya: platinum palladium prints inspired by the 18th-century satirical masterpiece.
“Caprichos” means literally: whims. Images from this series are photographed from video source and printed in platinum palladium. In keeping with the spirit of Goya’s mordant titles, I’ve given each image a caption — in Spanish.
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