Journey in Photography – 2016

‘Under One Roof, Joining Forces for Good, 2015’ prints and products.

(Click on link above to secure order products and prints which will be free of any title or printing on the image).

Under One Roof, Joining Forces for Good, 2015, photo by Catherine Herrera, Intl CR Reserved. Contact for License.

Its true. Sometimes, the journey in photography is interrupted – in a good way!

You’ve spent your energy, resources, and passion on an assignment and suddenly, other people catch on to your work, and the blessing of greater exposure for your work arrives. Before you know it, you are pricing matte boards and frames, selecting the invitation photo, coordinating with the gallery owner and assistants, and refreshing your mailing list all in preparation for that moment – the sharing of one’s work with the rest of the world, and the connection to the universal human experience.

‘Spirit of Bolinas,’ 2015, print and products.

‘Spirit of Bolinas,’ 2015, photo by Catherine Herrera, Intl CR Reserved. Contact for License.

As a photographer on the journey, a lot of good can come from exhibiting your work. You may discover along the way things you did not know about yourself. In an instant, the photographer becomes like the subjects of her work, vulnerable to the gaze and interpretation of others. Contradictory emotions are common, a push and pull between wanting to be seen and the fear of exposing oneself through their art.

Well, this is all a lot of rambling to get to my invite to visit UC Berkeley’s Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, at the main entrance gallery are several of my works, part of the ‘Resilience’ exhibit up for the next first few months of 2016.

You are invited to the opening of RESILIENCE, an exhibit at the Phoebe A. Hearst of Anthropology at UC Berkeley, featuring the artwork and the perspectives of Catherine Herrera, CarlaMarie Munoz, Megan Padilla, and Kanyon Sayers-Roods.

Monday, December 14, 2015           Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley

Photographer and Filmmaker Catherine Herrera, director of Flor de Miel Media and Catherine Herrera Photography. Intl CR 2010-2016.

Exhibiting is a blast, make no mistake! I see each exhibit as I do my assignments, a great chance to grow as an artist and produce quality work that connects with audiences who collect and give new life to the photographs.

In November, I had a great chance to push myself creating ‘Sitting Ohlone’ – an urban participatory photo and video installation for an exhibit at the SF Art Institute. Two of the master students at SF Art Institute organized the exhibit which reflected on the hot topic of San Francisco life, and how shifts in policy and economics has produced an unnecessary displacement of long standing communities. The exhibit sparked discussion and dialogue on how young artists and planners and architects can re-envision City life that fosters setting down roots while inspiring creative innovation.

I collaborated with two other artists who helped me while I was doing the performance piece in San Francisco, and made it possible to switch the perspective on this project, with myself in the role of subject.

The experience is something I wrote about and share in my public presentations of ‘Sitting Ohlone’ – in talking about the value and importance of performance art – and what it felt like to be on the other side of the lens and vulnerable in public.

For many years, I felt most comfortable behind the lens, even when I had the chance to be – and was – in front of the camera in a friend’s film and in television interviews.

‘Bear Facts, S.F. Street Scenes, 2015,’ photograph by Catherine Herrera, Flor de Miel Fotos, Contact for License.

As I gained more exposure, I began to embrace being in front of the camera and no longer felt shy or awkward. Now, I am invigorated and welcome the opportunity to overcome my fear and embrace the camera.

Photography is not only about the technical aspects, its so important to  capture that special essence that connects one human to another.

‘Signs of Regeneration #1, S.F. Street Scenes, 2015,’ photograph by Catherine Herrera, Flor de Miel Fotos, Contact for License.

Ultimately, I think I am a better photographer to more fully comprehend the experience from both sides.

So on the journey in photography, embrace the road and its detours, and make yourself vulnerable by submitting your work for an exhibit, switching it up and doing self-portraits, or move outside your comfort zone and explore with a new format for your next project.

Until the next time!

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Remaining Spirits and Ruth Asawa: San Francisco Sculptor Remembered

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Sometimes, the photography journey is interrupted by real life and its demands. Often, the camera is there too, capturing those most difficult moments.

At times, not even framing can change what we see before our eyes.

Recently, my Grandma Mary passed away. She was one month shy of her 99th birthday. I loved my Grandma Mary and felt strongly connected, returning here to Northern California after Mexico, after Canada, to be with her. I was lucky to have 12 more years of time with her, time when she was lucid and present, and we could enjoy time talking and laughing together. She had a peaceful last 20 years of her life with few health problems, and, any health challenges she faced, she got up and over, surprising many.

I always called Grandma when I could not travel to see her. I called so often, she wondered whether I had a job, and worried that I spent too much time calling her! When I first arrived back in the US, I used to feel hurt when she’d say that to me. Working from a home studio made no sense to her.

Yet, still, did working mean one had to forget about one’s grandma??

I also felt perhaps she made these comments because my artistic lifestyle had been the subject of speculations, many speculations. If I called Grandma Mary during the day, she’d wonder if the speculation was true.

In 2012, I was so excited to share with Grandma Mary that I’d be showing one of my video installations at the de Young Museum.

Maybe I had not been a huge financial success, yet, I hoped Grandma Mary might see that all the speculation, in the end, was simple gossip.

‘The de Young, wow, swanky!,’ grandma had said. I knew that was probably the best I could get – yes, she was proud of me, and I heard that in her voice and the things she continued to say, yet, a video installation was all still very nebulous, something people with money do – being an artist -( a bum! was the speculation on that!) – and I felt once again I had crossed a line that our people were not allowed. I felt embarrassed to bring it up to her again.

It wasn’t that my grandma wasn’t proud of me being an artist. In fact, she had traveled to my first photography exhibit in Mexico City in 1996. She came all the way to Mexico  at 81 to be there with me!

Once again, I had proven to be too much, as usual.

A few days after her arrival, my partner and I shared the surprising news we were going to be parents, she a great grandma, which shocked her so much she fell off the porch walking away after hearing the news, spending the night at an Emergency Room in Mexico City. And, many more visits to doctors when she returned home.

That’s where the speculation started. That unfortunate evening when Grandma Mary fell from the porch upon hearing our news.

It took us a long time to move past that incident, she and I, mainly because I had felt so badly and she often brought up what happened.

Some family members likened that night to the day my aunt and uncle invited me and my boyfriend to take two of the horses from their ranch for a ride. My boyfriend assured them that he was quite comfortable riding. His horse spooked a short distance into our ride, rearing up, throwing my boyfriend to the ground, taking off in terror. The horse tried to jump the fence and instead, tore a gash in its leg and required stitches and expensive care.

Those events shaped the speculation, and when I returned from seven years living abroad, the speculation had gone beyond into a new realm.

I could not be present during Grandma’s funeral. Not with camera, not physically. Maybe I couldn’t say goodbye. Maybe I couldn’t see her gone. I am a very visual person, and images impact me deeply.

I guess the grieving process takes time.

Grandma Mary and my last conversation was deeply meaningful. I did not know it would be the last time. We had laughed as usual, but then, she stopped and said, ‘you sound like yourself again, a good lady you are.’

The speculation had ended.

I thought to call Grandma Mary next on Saturday, but I didn’t get a chance. I called Sunday to share the news I know she’d be so happy to hear, about Martin’s Beach where she and my grandfather always took us during the summers. The beach had been reopened after a private owner gated off the public access.

Grandma Mary was not there.

She had fallen on Saturday night and even though my aunt and uncle said she’d be ok, that she did seem fine, Grandma would pass very quickly. We never spoke again.

I hold on to the last words she said to me.

Grandma Mary’s spirit remains here in San Francisco – when she was young, in high school and riding the trolley cars after the football games, one in the group of loud, celebratory youth, laughing with joy to be out enjoying life. When she was photographed on top of Twin Peaks on the day of wedding to her new husband, my grandfather.

Grandma Mary embraced life and encouraged us all to do so as well. I am forever grateful to her for giving me permission to be happy and embrace life. Its that spirit that gave me courage as a photojournalist.

The kitchen was the main gathering place in my grandparents home. Food and talking and laughter was just the main course in their home. They had traveled around the world, and the kitchen was where the push board held photos from family and friends near and far.

Later, when I became a photographer, I remembered that cork board. I suddenly recognized the value that photography can have in bringing together family and friends. Photography, that I had made use most as a photojournalist, suddenly became personal and intimate, and its impact on the heart.

This memory allowed me to expand beyond what I had visioned previously. Photographs were much more than documents of the outside.

I made a shift to more personal work, more intimate, and revealing.

After many years of exploring photography in this way, I started doing editorial and assignment work where I was hired to create, not just document, with photography, and, I developed a new love and perspective on photography and art.

I think it was this new direction that made me such a fan and so moved by Ruth Asawa’s sculptures.

The first pieces of her work that I ever came in contact were at the de Young Museum. On permanent display, I passed her sculptures every time I came for a meeting or to work at the de Young Museum.

Ruth Asawa’s sculptures went beyond the mere sense of documentation to inhibit an intimacy that touched people across the globe.

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From the description of her work in the ‘The Sculpture of Ruth Asawa: Contours in the Air’ retrospective in 2006 at the de Young Museum:

‘Contours in the Air establishes the importance of Asawa’s work within the larger national context of artists who redefined art as a way of thinking and acting in the world rather than as a mere stylistic practice….In her lifelong experimentation with wire, especially its capacity to balance open and closed forms, Asawa invented a powerful new vocabulary. Committed to enhancing the quality of daily life through art produced within the home, she contributed a unique perspective to the formal explorations of 20th Century abstract sculpture.’

Ruth Asawa was considered at the time of the retrospective to be underrepresented in art history surveys of 20th century sculpture.  Dr. Daniell Cornell of the Fine Arts Museums San Francisco, curator of the ‘Contours in the Air’ retrospective, described what he felt was the reason, saying:

‘Because her work uses nontraditional materials and a manual method that appears related to knitting, weaving and craft, it is often overlooked in discussions of modernist sculpture.’

Like the cork board in my grandparents kitchen, Ruth Asawa’s sculptures go beyond what sculpture is normally confined, liberating an intimacy that draws on the heart and minds of its viewers.

Asawa’s use of hanging her sculptures went beyond the conventional display normally reserved for sculpture, like the opening scenes of any memorable film or play, the audience’s attention gravitates and is held by it unique display, in the case of Asawa’s sculptures, captivating the viewer, making one stop and pay attention.

Ruth Asawa is infused forever onto the San Francisco landscape.

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Any visit to the de Young Museum is a wonderful opportunity to view 15 of her wire sculptures on permanent display on the concourse level of the Nancy B. and Jake L. Hamon Education Tower of the de Young museum.

Passing the sculptures often on my visit to the Hamon Tower in preparation for the ‘Bridge Walkers’ screening in September 2012 , designed itself to incorporate into the San Francisco landscape from the Tower view, I fell in love with Ruth Asawa’s sculpture.

As a person, and an artist, I hope one day to leave such a legacy, treasures found and enjoyed by generations of San Franciscans to come.

Read more about Ruth Asawa’s life and work from the SF Chronicle article that came out this week upon her passing.

http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Sculptor-Ruth-Asawa-dead-at-age-87-4709612.php#src=fb

 

 

 

Looking Back, Daily Trojan, photograph, by Catherine Herrera

Every once in a while on the Journey in Photography, its important to step back and organize one’s photo archive.

If you are between projects, or perhaps feeling the need for a kick start in inspiration, take the time to review and organize your photographs.

You’ll have the chance to see how you’ve grown as a photographer, and assess ways you want to improve your skills. This type of inventory can be useful once a year, or to develop a workshop strategy to achieve the skills to improve and meet the level of skill you want to achieve.

The photo review and organization process offers an added benefit of greater familiarity with one’s portfolio, increasing ease and speed of meeting the need for samples for prospective clients, or satisfy print purchase orders.

Each person can choose the best way to organize their own collection. A lot of that will depend on the type of photography you do, markets served, and if you do project-based photography assignments, quick access to the portfolio for print publication requests. These skills are even more important today where each photographer has to be fluid and agile to run with the photojournalism work available today.

I am currently in the review process, stepping back for a second myself.

I pulled up this photograph published in the University of Southern California Daily Trojan newspaper in 1984, one of my first ever published photos. My experience at the Daily Trojan really inspired my interest in transforming my passion for news into a career.

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‘New Growth in the most unlikely place,’ photography by Catherine Herrera

Isn’t it true that growth comes from unexpected experiences.

It is spring after all! Here’s to new growth sprouting up in the most unlikely places.

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Red…because its Saturday, a day for good food, and good friends!

‘Red Pepper and Onion, 2011, photography by Catherine Herrera, Flor de Miel Fotos, Intl. CR

 

Remember! The Journey in Photography is joyous, fun, and as much about enjoying life’s precious moments in time.

Have a good day on the Journey!

The New Purple, #1, 2013

 

The New Purple, #1, 2013, photography by Catherine Herrera, Flor de Miel Fotos, Intl CR

So, how did the Danzon Series come up?

Recently, a person I met through Facebook invited me into the group ‘New Color.’  Its been a lot of fun to be part of the group, to meet other photographers and see excellent photography from people around the world.

One of the most important thing for a photographer is to study and learn from other photographers. Back in the day, one might subscribe to Life, Geographic, the papers that really took photojouralism seriously.

Although I still subscribe to many sources in my study of good photography, I’ve found this medium – and perhaps you will as well – and the social element of the photography groups have reignited in me a renewed sense of joy and passion.

The Journey in Photography is at its core about connecting with people. Whether across the world, or right at home.

I’m also experiencing a lesson in the global photography world, marveling at the skill and talent of so many photographers from around the world.

I welcome this daily exercise and reminder to grow more as a photographer, and then, grow again.

‘Resting Stop for a Butterfly,’ 2013, design-photograph by Catherine Herrera, Intl CR

Over the last several years, my photography has shifted once again, as I’ve written, this Journey in Photography really is a document too of one’s self.

‘Bee News,’ 2013, photograph by Catherine Herrera, Intl CR

For the last 10 years, since moving back from Toronto, I’ve been in California.

‘oh so bright,’ 2013, photograph by Catherine Herrera, Intl CR

In these 10 years, I’ve completed many client assignments, and, my personal work deepened.

My latest personal work has been shifting, currently, very focused on nature, which has had the side benefit of  being quite healing.

‘Irresistible Beauty,’ 2013, photograph by Catherine Herrera, Intl CR.jpg

Today in Journey in Photography, I want to share that when I speak of a journey, I do not mean necessarily mean one must leave, travel or going elsewhere.

The photograph below was taken when I was in college, on an assignment that my friend Jona Frank shared with me, always encouraging me to overcome my internal fears, worries, doubts to believe that I too could be dream of being a photographer. That day, I was sharing the dream!

I am grateful for the early lessons on just how much photographers can exchange and give back in their work, and indeed, that sharing is very joyful when both parties are happy.

Sharing the joy of photography! 1988.

Today’s selections can be seen in closer detail by clicking on the image, and prints can be ordered from the Daily Foto by Catherine Herrera Gallery  – as always, our online print ordering process is secure through Photoshelter, and archival prints can be made by ordering directly by emailing orders@catherineherreraphotography.com with the print title, desired size, and email address. I will reply to you directly so we can finalize the print details before shipping.

‘In a Row,’ 2013, photograph by Catherine Herrera, Intl CR.jpg

 

Photographers have the Creative Power to Contribute!

When I came across Alejandro Durán’s series ‘Washed Up,’ I was moved by the creative power of photography and photographer to capture a civic problem – concern or worry – and make just such an impression as to cause one to stop and think.

No easy feat in a world with so very much one must stop to consider.

The ‘Washed Up’ series is stunning in its imagery, making appealing a subject one often does not consider appealing! Trash.

I found the ‘Portraits’ – intimate portrayals of the trash that Alejandro found washed up on his shore in Mexico. Like the trash, Alejandro moves from place to place – living between Mexico and New York, and perhaps one other location I am forgetting – part of the cycle of consumption and trash as we all are today.

The ‘Portraits’ reveal individual trash floating in from each and every country in the world. I found this part of the series had the greatest impact on me as a global citizen. Reminding me again of ‘how we are connected,’ in a sea of examples abounding of how different we are – how separate.

Somehow, the repetitive nature of the portraits hit home for me the breadth of the trash problem, without hitting me over the head.

Would an image of ocean filled with trash from all parts of the world say the same thing – yes – but, depending on the design, may not have had the impact of looking at each piece of trash in portrait, repetitively, as if to close any loophole by which we might say ‘well, I didn’t do it.’

Alejandro has a series of color-saturated, whimsical and playful images in the ‘Washed Up’ series, like Sueño de Niña, 2010.

Sueno de Nina, 2010, Alejandro Duran (perdon, por no poner acentos)

that take a creative plunge into the world that may be forever ours – damage done – bringing the viewer in as if to say ‘and so, in 2012, despite having not saved the planet and human kind, we still plan on going out with style cabrones!’ As if to shout ‘I will still find beauty and practice the acceptance way – this can’t be fixed so we might as well enjoy it by highlighting the beauty even in humanity’s stubbornness to face its own demise.’

‘Washed Up,’ brings the viewer in casually, but leaves a lasting impression.

This really is our world and we better take care of it – and soon!

I was also impressed with Alejandro’s ‘Nature’ series – which reveals a true love for nature – with the later images in the series once again showing – in the rusted outline of a paint brush – the intersection of man and nature – and this time, reflecting back to a simpler time when our mark was a mere outline that could be shaped back in place with time and nature’s forces.

From Alejandro Duran’s series, ‘Nature’. http://alejandroduran.com/projects/nature/

Instead, the ‘Washed Up’ series reveals the insistent and persistent onslaught of man’s mark on nature against a weary and near exhausted landscape.

Looking at the Nature series, I can almost forgive wo/man for not saving ourselves in time – how simple we remembered our interactions with nature, perhaps we were just unprepared to conceive of the level of destruction that denial of climate change, and failure to address sustainability, has wrought.

The ‘Washed Up’ series feels like a punctuation on a reality that there may not be enough time to avoid the change that inaction brings next.

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Visit Alejandro Duran’s site to tour around his creative power!

District Six Series showing at San Franciso City Hall thru Sept 07, 2012

If you have a chance to stop by – there is still a month ahead to catch the exhibit up at City Hall, with each District contributing images to better illuminate the character of each neighborhood. As part of an ongoing series, District Six – Tenderloin – several of my photographs were selected to exhibit at San Francisco City Hall, room 270.

Green at the Hotel Essex, At Dusk in District Six, 2012, photo by Catherine Herrera

If you’d like prints of any images, click on the photograph to be taken to a secure site for purchase. or visit: www.catherineherrera.photoshelter.com.

Distict Six Series exhibiting at San Francisco City Hall May-Sept 2012, photos by Catherine Herrera – Flor de MIel Fotos