Friday Night

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Monday

Larry Wolf (2023)

Riso Calling Card Zine

Larry Wolf, Pink and Blue (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Made at Lillstreet in a workshop with Matt Davis of Perfectly Acceptable Press. Color separation by Spectrolite.

Feedback!

I can’t remember, now, where I read or heard it, but Jean Cocteau said, “Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don’t like—then cultivate it. That’s the only part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping.”

Jennifer Lunden at Poets and Writers (sent to me by my artist buddy SEL)

Larry Wolf, Feedback! (1978/photo 2023)

March 1978

Some works held my interest and envoked feeling or questions

You centered the skull! ... I see pure white and no real textured black ... you seem to save it with your presentation since it is slightly off center  ,,, keep working

As a set they speak of a tense look at human interactions, even the tender moment "the Kiss" is really a seemingly violent last embrace

The images are strongly personal

You've changed

I'd like to see a series with more contrast

The playground is the least noticed of the group and I find it extremely striking

Is there an "in between?" Black-White, Man-Woman

I wish there were more

Happy... cool... frightening... I like but don't ask me why

I also like the very erotic man in the mirror with a camera for a penis ... the collection of people here tonight says a lot for the artist

I see that you look closely at detail and tiny shapes and spaces ... your surprise portrait of the man in the bookstore has a real invitation to create the story of the moment and the stories of his life

Some fade away from lack of contrast... I found the matting monotonous - it appears perfunctory and does nothing to enhance your photos ... Sontag On Photography "The camera as phallus is, at most, a flimsy variant of the inescapable metaphor that everyone unsefconsdiously employs. However hazy our awareness of ths fantasy it is named without subtlety whenever we talk about loading and amining a camera, about shooting a film

I didn't stay long Monday eve. I left feeling sorta ripped-off. Nine prints and I failed to se how one lapped into another. The only thing they have in common is the mounting.  ... It shows talent but you stopped before you finished

Keep shooting

I'm really intrigued by your selection of photos ??? keep going

The lighting is bad - your work is strong - you've got it - the trick is to keep it - I hope you do

Untitled

Larry Wolf (2023)

Adams and Wabash

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

see also Lygia Pape: Tecelares at the Art Institue

Self 1978

Larry Wolf (1978/scanned 2023)

Larry Wolf (1978/scanned 2023)

Larry Wolf (1978/scanned 2023)

The Reproductive Structure of a Fungi

Larry Wolf (2023)

see also The Mushroom at the End of the World

Notes from July 1978

... at the Maine Photographic Workshops with Ralph Gibson (23 - 30 July 1987)

Larry Wolf, notebook from
March 1977 through July 1981
(photo 2023)

Sunday - 23 July 1978

3:37 ... after 5 years (more?) I'm wearing a watch ... $20 TI LCD black band [because I am starting a program where I will be on my own to get places on time]

3 Q's

Where are you now?

Where do you want to be?

What's stopping you?

Monday - 24 July 1978

Sketch

Safe / Scary

3 hours spent with best piece (quietly in a chair)

Well seen ... Well translated (through 1 generation of film and paper)

POINT OF DEPARTURE

"the creative potential of his own ambivalence" Ingmar Bergman

[Do] less good work ... there's potential ... these are too easy

Develop an idea

Tuesday - 25 July 1978

Listen to your own work

Inventory of unknowns

Break a rule and get a page in history

Lecture

"I want photography to show me something that I can't see any other way." 

Friday - 28 July 1978

Recurring forms

Saturday - 29 July 1978

"There's nothing to talk about until you have a dummy"

notan - Japanese theory of black on white field

Sunday - Portland Airport - 30 July 1978

Presence

Bounded by darkness (a cave)

Tonal balance

Turning Point - 1978

One day

Larry Wolf (1978/scanned 2022)

and the next

Larry Wolf (1978/scanned 2022)

In 1978, I was immersed in 35mm black and white photography. It was more than a hobby, but what was it? I spent a week at the Maine Photographic Workshops, an intensive of camera, film, chemicals, darkroom, prints and reviews. I came home to Burlington Vermont, where my home darkroom had taken over my bathroom and kitchen. I continued at that pace, carrying a camera with me all the time, even into work meetings, doing my day job writing software and the rest of the time photographing and processing and not getting much sleep. I was 27. Who needs sleep? 

Then one day the computer screen I was looking at, writing code, stopped being characters in the syntax of a programming language and was simply pixels of light. 

My visual mind had taken over my analytic mind. It was a profound shift in perception. Years of training to turn pixels into characters and characters into language and language into algorithms had been overridden. I was simply seeing what was before my eyes without the mediation of all those concepts. Wow! Yikes! Oh no!

I grappled with the choice: Do I open to this new thing or to set it aside and do what I had become a master of? 

At that time, I was not willing to walk away from the good job, the great team, the amazing visionary work, and become, I didn't know what: an artist living in a stream of visual perceptions. How does one do that? How would I do that?

Now 45 years later, I have returned to that choice point. The past four or five years have been a  renewed connection to photography and art making more broadly. This year is a fuller nurturing of that way of being. A new immersion. Different daily demands to be a responsible adult and also the time to explore being and seeing and feeling and making. 

It is scary and unsettling and exactly what I want to be doing; how I want to be. Who knows what will come of this?

At 71, every day is precious. The journey continues.

Eye in the Sky

Larry Wolf (2023)

from 1978

Larry Wolf (1978/scanned 2023)