Walk Off The Edge

Larry Wolf (2023)

Four Printed Large

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2019/printed 2023)

Loving Small Things

Larry Wolf, Fortune Teller Folded (2023)

Larry Wolf, Fortune Teller Unfolded (2023)

Larry Wolf, Fortune Teller Flat (2023)

I create 3D objects from single sheets of paper to tell stories. My latest work is a fortune teller about my diagnosis and treatment for prostate cancer. Images are hidden and made visible, revealing layers, juxtapositions, surprises. The imagery is fractured, made whole when folded, animated by the participant observer. In an exhibition, there would be a stack of printed sheets for visitors to foldand play with. What fortunes are we telling?

Submitted to Filter Photo: we like small things v.6
Juried by Anna Goldwater Alexander

Three Viewing 3-D

at the Temple Israel Reform Synagogue in Leadville Colorado

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Monday Morning

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

En Route

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)

Pearls - 1996

Tom O'Neil, Portrait of Larry (1996/printed 1997/scanned 2020)

Flat, Not Flat

Millee Tibbs, Air/Plains
(August 12, 2013 "Interceptor") V.2
from the Filter Dock Party Raffel 2023

Millie Tibbs, in the american west > Air/Plains

Millie Tibbs, Mount Analogue, at Filter Photo 2021

How They Wanted to Be Seen

Patric McCoy: Take My Picture

Many of McCoy's subjects aim that "Look" directly at the camera
and by extension, the viewer. 

Here the viewer is transformed from spectator to prey,
someone to be chosen.

Larry Wolf, Patric McCoy Take My Picture Exhibition (2023)

Larry Wolf, Patric McCoy Take My Picture Exhibition - "The Look" (2023)

Wrightwood 659 - Patric McCoy: Take My Picture April 14-July 15, 2023

 

Over a crucial ten year period, Patric McCoy shot thousands of images—always at the subjects’ request—which form a rich document of 1980s Black gay Chicago. Take My Picture features a selection of some 50 black-and-white and color photographs from this decade, by the end of which thousands would die of HIV/AIDS, including many of McCoy’s friends, lovers, and subjects. McCoy’s subjects are neither posed nor directed; each has agency over how he is seen, elevating his humanity, inverting and subverting the viewer’s gaze. Take My Picture can be seen as a poignant marker of place, time, and memory; an altar to those lost.

Juarez Hawkins, curator

The Queer Review - Interview with Patric McCoy

“... these men wanted to be seen & documented the way they were”

On his 38th birthday in December 1984, budding photographer Patric McCoy made a commitment to himself that he would carry his 35mm camera with him wherever he went, take at least one shot a day, and stop whatever he was doing if anyone asked him to take their picture and oblige.

...

Fulfilling an unspoken need for Black men to see themselves, McCoy’s photographs are an intimate, playful, and poignant marker of place and time. Perhaps most significantly of all, McCoy captured his subjects just as they wanted to be seen.

 

Never the Same - Patric McCoy: Conversations About Art Transforming Politics & Community in Chicago & Beyond

Patric McCoy recently retired from a 28-year career as an environmental scientist in the Air and Radiation Division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Regional Office in Chicago. He has been collecting contemporary African American art for 41 years. In 2003 he co-founded Diasporal Rhythms, a not-for-profit 501(c)3 arts organization comprising informed and passionate art collectors from Chicago’s African American communities. The organization promotes the collection of art works by living artists of African descent. Patric’s striking photographic portrayals of African American men on the streets of Chicago in the 1980s have been the subject of the ongoing “Gift Project” by emerging artist Samantha Hill. 

Diasporal Rhythms

In 2003, Diasporal Rhythms was founded by Carol J. Briggs, Joan Crisler, Patric McCoy and Daniel T. Parker as a direct result of a panel discussion  at the South Side Art Center’s Collectors’ Forum where a spirited discussion demonstrated the need for organized action by art collectors to expand the appreciation of contemporary visual art created by artists of the African diaspora.

 

Go Fund Me - 38 Special

Now – together with his co-author, artist and curator John Neff – McCoy is working to publish his images in an artist's book. Titled 38 Special, this highly anticipated photo book presents a carefully selected sampling of one of the largest and richest photographic archives of a Chicago demimonde that has gone largely unrepresented in existing histories of the city. In the book, large-scale portraits will anchor montage spreads including cityscapes of Chicago street life in the 1980s. Detailed oral histories and other texts will add color and detail to the book. The book will also include documentation of McCoy's The Gift Project (2008 - ongoing), in which he shares his images with other artists for use as inspiration and reference.

Zines Saved My Life

Larry Wolf, First Zine (2021)

Zines became a source of joy for me in the middle days of the COVID pandemic when it looked like this would go on forever. January 2021. The depths of winter. My photo buddy Shawn Rowe was teaching an online class on making photo zines. Other photo friends were going to be there. I was psyched. Little did I know it would be more than just another photo class. It would change my life.

Zines answered that impossibly awkward question: “What do I do with my photographs?” Frame them and put on a wall? In an album to be forgotten on a shelf? A few more bits of flotsam and jetsam in the flood of social media? 

The thrill of something to hold. Something to pass around. Very tangible. A great way to connect with one Forever stamp during the isolation of COVID. Something beyond the virtual. No big deal. Just do it.

The whole thing engaged me. The challenge of the layout and folding. The challenge of what images to use. The constraints of working with a single sheet. The challenge of the printer not always printing the same (color shifts, front-back alignment). Challenges and constraints that resonated with how I think and how I work.

Sojourner Truth,
I Sell the Shadow (1864-65)

One of my art buddies started saying that the single-sheet mini-zines I make are my calling card, that everyone should have a zine calling card. What an idea! It echoes to the early days of photography when cartes de visite were all the rage, some personal, some political (check out Sojourner Truth and her phrase “I sell the shadow to support the substance” -- including filing for copyright to protect her sales, though now public domain).

And then finding other zine makers!!! Chicago Zine Club, Zine Party, Quimby’s and Zine Mercado became my opening to others, people I exchange with, people I’ve become friends with. Now, as the in-person indoor events pick up, a whole world.

Zines are how I express the random movements that catch my eye, the deep grief of a friend whose wife has died or the life-affirming energy that my cancer diagnosis and treatment unleashed. Conceptual. Emotional. Rough and ready.

I am drawn into the magic of these paper objects, learning from origami, from mathematics (hyperbolic paraboloids are nested squares), from my childhood (fortune tellers/cootie catchers), and from other artists. It’s all marvelous and amazing. 

Things I love to make and love to share.

To be published in Behind the Zines, Billy McCall (Summer 2023)  

My zine related blog posts (includes this one and several others).