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About the site

2010-01-22T18:41:00.028-05:00

About the author

One of my primary interests with this site is to create entries involving and centered on aesthetics. In my journey over the years I have studied and become interested in the work and insights of Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung and others. Being spiritually inclined (not religious), as the years have passed I have noticed more and more of the mystical occurring not just in the images themselves but also unknowingly around my efforts. I am interested in digging and looking deeper into these observations. Instead of scribbling my ideas, observations or insights on endless pieces of paper I thought I would organize them here in a more formal manor. Hopefully others might have had similar experiences and get more mileage from mine in this format. So I hope if these topics interest you, you will follow along from time to to time.

Now my original reason for starting this blog was to simply support and augment my primary website. My primary website has little room for text and no control for the user or viewer to enlarge it. So that was my original plan and certainly this site will be an adjunct to my formal website. Here one will find reviews of my work and the like.

Although as time has moved on, I realize this whole “blog thing” can be much more like my artistic journey. I am an intuitive worker and am usually guided by or pointed in certain directions by my work. The results of these directions are never entirely clear to me until much later. So hopefully this will be an open ended, ongoing and enjoyable experience. I am only a few months into this blog so I have no idea where it will lead and that like my artistic journey is what I love. I can sense changes coming in my work but I can not describe them. So I look forward to a similar "Ah" experience here.

It is also part of my plan to highlight different artists I find interesting and websites I think would be very helpful to others. Please see the links at right (for emerging photographers), there are many many opportunities both online and in traditional exhibition spaces (also see the art centers list). These days we have "publish on demand books" such as Blurb. If you have never spent a good chunk of time sequencing your images either for exhibition or book publication it can be an enlightening and expansive experience. The subtleties and undercurrents produced through mindful sequencing is a most enjoyable experience and a deepening way to understand and interact with one's images. Finally one of my favorite sites for both emerging documentary and art photographers is Burn.

About the author

2010-01-22T16:59:00.045-05:00

Thanks for visiting. My primary or longest running body of work has been smallish urban landscapes emphasizing abstract qualities of light and form. These images from 1977 to about 1984 were primarily b&w. Around 1983 I was feeling a strong need to add more emotion to my work and began to work in color. It was very challenging to use the colors found in the world to convey my messages. It was a massive transition having to now create images with all the additional information color brought to the images. The images still held a similar mystical quality as the b&w images, but now spoke with a stronger and more multi-textured voice. This work continues to this day.

From 1994 till about 2001 there was a major shift in my work as I became very interested in exploring the aberrations and distortions inherent in the photographic lens (as asset rather than a thing to avoid) as they broke down areas of focus. To my way of thinking these were certainly part of the photographic language, even if they were a less modulated voice they were still certainly part of what elements came together to create the standard photographic language we are accustomed to. One might think of them as simply voice, tones, or the sounds of a source but not yet words. I wanted to see if I could use the previously unanimously considered negative aspects of a lens's personality as the most dominant voice (or across the entire surface) of an image.

I wanted to see what kind of images I might wrestle out of working in this manor. My intent was to create an all over composition of flowing lines filled with light and color. The natural landscape was where I worked. The pictures were certainly not “nature photographs” but maybe images that spoke of the energy behind nature. At this time I spent a great deal of time both drawing and painting in an effort to loosen my photographic vision.

I will add and further edit this page as time permits.

Short Bio:
Before earning his degree in Fine Art from Old Dominion University George Elsasser’s career began in 1977 and he shortly received numerous awards for his fine art photography in juried exhibitions in venues such as the Chrysler Museum of Art and New York University. Mr. Elsasser’s work has received six solo exhibitions and been included in eleven group shows. In 1997 his work was exhibited in a 20-Year Retrospective at the Hermitage Foundation Museum in Norfolk, Virginia.

Incidents Show 1990

2010-01-22T14:22:00.065-05:00

the following is:
copyright (c) 2010, The Progress-Index . Reprinted with permission.
The original article appeared in the Entertainment Guide Friday, June 22, 1990

'Incidents' on display at art league
By KATIE THOMAS

P-1 Staff Writer

Petersburg - “Incidents” an exhibition of 26 recent photographs by Virginia Beach artist, George Elsasser, is on display at the Petersburg Area Art League, 13 Rock St., through July 12. Elsasser's will be the Art League's last major exhibit until September.

Elsasser strives to create feelings or personal remembrances of incidents in objects and contrasts in his work. He uses images to “accomplish collective symbols that have been passed down. Symbols in my work hopefully strike an unconscious cord with the viewer,” he said.

“It's not important to me that the viewer gets exactly what I put out. I hope that his or her life experiences connects somewhere with the imagery,” said Elsasser.

Elsassers finds he is attracted to unusual rather than common subjects. He attempts to capture the line between the real object and the symbol or feeling it may be attached to. “Photographs are our most realistic interpetation of real things. I like to walk the balance between real things and unreal,” Elsasser said.

He often finds the symbolic image or feeling between real and unreal by contrasting objects. “I like contrasts between beautiful with ugly, death with life. Death to me is not the literal appearance but a change or moving on from what I was to the new beginning of what I may become,” said Elsasser.

Elsasser sees photography as the opportunity to understand the object and to anticipate what it might look like when it becomes a photographic image.

“It is my hope that my work will hit them on a feeling level with either comfort or unease,” said Elsasser.

Elsasser has been working exclusively in color in the last six years. He said black and white describes form, but adding color gives the image a whole other dimension while staying part of the form.

The artist's interest in photography began 13 years ago with a college photography class. Elsasser was shooting the usual “family, sunset, landscape photos until he saw a long surf board with a strip down the middle on a picnic table in a yard. “I realized if I could present 'X' amount of information and leave a lot away from the viewer then that image would look like a road. With that image I understood that this art was limitless.” Since November, Elsasser has been working full time on his art.

Elsasser's works have been featured in many notable shows to include “American Vision” New York University, New York and “Light Images” at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk. Several of his works are included in the private collections of the First Virginia Bank and the Kirn Memorial Library in Norfolk.

Elsasser holds a fine arts degree from Old Dominion University, Norfolk, and has studied at the Zone VI Workshop in Vermont and Sally Mann-Platinum Printing in Newport News.

“Incidents” will remain on display at the Petersburg Area Art League, from 10 a.m. To 2 p.m. Monday through Friday. Call 861-4611 for information.

see other images from this show.

"Intersections: A 20 year retrospective of photographs by George Elsasser"

2010-01-09T22:40:00.039-05:00

The following is:
Copyright (c)2010, The Virginia-Pilot. Reprinted with permission.
The original article appeared in The Daily Break December 7, 1997.

Fresh approach elevates nature photographer’s work
By Teresa Annas,
STAFF WRITER

From 1992 to 1994, roughly, George Elsasser the long time photographer became Elsasser the painter.

It wasn’t exactly action painting he engaged in, but a kind of energetic Art Brut style inspired by directly expressive painters such as Jean Dubuffet, Karel Appel and Willem de Kooning. He came back to photography as inspired as ever.

In the 20-year retrospective on view at the Hermitage Foundation Museum, that hiatus from shooting provides the line of demarcation between the early work, much of it black-and-white, and his later color work, distinguished by an extremely narrow depth of field.

After his bout with painting, Elsasser immediately shifter to larger prints- canvas-scale, you could say- and began to fill the picture frame with an overall, abstract, rhythmic pattern entirely drawn from a found natural setting. Woods chiefly.

The pictures are generally close views, haiku-like, of a mindfully composed arrangement of sticks, tree limbs, tree trunks and leaves.The scene may extend far into the distance, yet only a few inches of the scene are in focus. The rest is fuzzy or distorted. Often, the background shapes and colors break down into discs of semi-transparent color overlapping one another, and reminiscent of Impressionism, at least in the shared sense of tricking the eye into blending rough bits of color.

The challenge for Elsasser, a Virginia Beach commercial photographer by trade, may be considered as: How do you make an artful image, a picture with meaning, that utilizes your well-developed technical skills without looking too slick?

Color photos of nature are as plentiful as pine straw, and many of them are boring. Since 1994, Elsasser has hit on a fresh way of seeing that emerged from his searching attitude regarding the technical aspects, and his own commitment to losing himself in his subject.

While the late color work is clearly a mature phase, the earlier black-and-white work also showed evidence of an intelligent eye schooled in the history of art photography. Even his 1977 photos- shot at age 21- are strong. One is a mysterious black-and-white image that turns out to be a surfboard reflecting nearby woods.

And there are hints of what’s to come. In 7609-D of 1981, he captured a column of light on a living room wall, above the couch. Like two wide strokes of white gouache, the semi-transparent light strokes quiver on the surface. Here, the mystical pops in on the mundane, as it would again and again.

The following is:
Copyright (c) 2010, The Virginia-Pilot. Reprinted with permission.
The original article appeared in Port Folio Weekly December 7-14 issue, 1997.

From Stark To Lively, Photographer Captures Life
By Catherine Dorsey

Over the past 20 years, the work of photographer George Elsasser has made the progression from stark black and white photos to painterly Polariods to brilliantly colored and dreamlike abstractions. Each stage holds it’s own fascination: Elsasser’s multi-faceted talent is evident in a retrospective on view at the Hermitage Foundation Museum in Norfolk.

The earliest photos in black and white demonstrate the beginnings of Elsasser’s exploration of contrast and form over content, a journey which culminates in the artist’s most recent images called the Colorfield series. The 1980 image Window isolates one section of a steamed-over glass pane. A few water droplets course through the intricate pattern made by the steam, leaving their snail-trail on the heavily beaded surface. The patterns in the corner of a stainless steel kitchen sink become the subject for Sink. The interesting curves and reflections of the slick steel, spangled with a textural coating of shimmering water droplets, are focal points while the object becomes secondary.

Elsasser’s images become more complex as they progress chronologically. Objects arranged in odd and unexpected settings create a surreal atmosphere. The trompe l’ oeil effect achieved in the 1992 image No Fish is uncanny. A pot holder shaped like a fish, at first startling in it’s lifelike appearance, rests in the seat of a molded deck chair. The simple composition sets a complex chain of thoughts in motion by altering our perceptions of reality. While the photograph is a color image, the delicately tinted fish provides the only color against the stark white plastic chair. The viewer tends to first perceive the photo as black and white, which it is not, and the fish as real, which it is not.

Three black and white portraits from the early 90’s are quite natural and have a frank quality that is refreshing. A series of spontaneous manipulated Polaroids retain the surrealism found in several of Elsasser’s larger images. In Apple, a bright red apple is blurred into wavy lines while it’s reflection in a stainless steel toaster remains crisp and clear.

Intense color and thoughtful composition are hallmarks of Elsasser’s new large-scale Colorfield photographs, which utilize focus rather than light as tools to shape the image to his mind’s eye. A few sharply focused details emerge from the blurred and often incomprehensible organic subject matter. The eye struggles to discern individual objects in these brilliant tapestries of color. Two withered stalks of grass and a pine cone stand in stark contrast to the soft green and brown wash of blurred greenery in Colorfield-56. The viewer becomes a voyeur in Colorfield-72. A stockade-like row of slender tree trunks are in focus in the foreground, while the sunlit landscape beyond flirtatiously eludes the eye. The golden vista tantalizes by remaining forever just out of reach.

Catherine Dorsey was in the art gallery business for 12 years. She is a native of Norfolk and has a degree in Art History from University of Richmond.

I have renamed the Colorfield Series to Particle Pool.
Others from that group can be found here or here under Particle Pool.

Photo Blogs I Love

2009-12-15T15:18:00.005-05:00

1-This is a fantastic blog for photographers who love images and making them; it's loaded with photographer interviews, photographer galleries, videos and essays on photographers and their work. Its primary focus seems to me to be fine art and documentary photography. The photographer, writer, collector and art critic; Doug Rickard has put together a wonderful site full of information through a lot of hard work. Doug, thank you for a fantastic site!

I had the good fortune of doing a one day workshop with Emmet Gowin about twenty years ago and particularly enjoyed reading the Camera Arts 1998 interview posted here from Doug Rickard's Blog.

http://www.americansuburbx.com/

Book Cover Image, "Cycle"

2009-11-19T02:35:00.046-05:00

larger version

What kind of thoughts I find myself pondering as I study this image:

Does a universal source organize such an event? Who or what made this "image-event"? Would the 2 men have stayed on their personal walking courses had I not been working that day in that particular spot (precise to the inch), not to mention the exact point in linear time? Is there such a thing as a "Metaphysical Vector" or Vectors? All the endless chances for this one event to not occur makes me question who or just what is it that really makes art? Even after 30+ years of picture making I am still mostly baffled.

This is the book cover image for my upcoming book, “Tips & Tales.” The image is a departure from my primary body of work (smallish urban landscapes emphasizing abstract qualities of light and form) in that, people are part of the landscape and the image's success is directly dependent on their inclusion. Although I have long enjoyed Cartier-Bresson's (master of the decisive moment) work, my fine art photography had remained mostly unpopulated by people until about 2005. What stimulated my interest in working in such a manor is my time spent doing journalistic style wedding photography from 1996-2006. This image simply would not exist had I not developed a sense of timing for and interest in capturing people in motion. The stimulus provided by my journalistic style weddings are part of a story called “Paying the bills”.

I hope people who have less experience looking at visual art have looked deeply into this image's picture space and unraveled it's mystery for themselves. If you have not discovered it's magic I certainly encourage a deeper more concentrated look at the larger version before reading further. My favorite book that helped teach me how to see more deeply was my professor Wally Dreyer's 102 text book choice “Looking at Photographs” by John Szarkowski. I cannot recommend it enough for people interested in developing deeper visual skills and much greater joy looking at their visual world.

A more concentrated look into the image will reveal a more transcendent image which should stimulate people's thoughts as to how such things happen. For me this type of image makes me ponder just who or what gets credit for such images? Where do the images come from? How do such things happen or do they even happen if one was not present to witness or record such? I will try to open a discussion of that matter in an entry called "synchronicity and photography” at a latter date.

For now I will point out the crucial stuff some viewers may have missed and wait for my poet/painter friend Karl Watson's commentary on this and two other images. Within the cycle wheel there are two men, one younger and one older walking in opposite directions. To me the sign or symbol in the image (the cycle wheel) should point, lead or remind people of their knowledge if only faint of the wheel or cycle of life. The recognition of a common symbol (the circle) is certainly not a stretch for most trained people but also easily revealed to others who have learned how to observe things more slowly and deeply. There is no big mystique here, no hard to understand art words, just the simple practice of patient observation and the knowledge you are not looking at an image designed to impart a single simplistic message. Lastly, both men's posture, the bending of their legs and the angle of their shoes are virtually identical. There are more visual coincidences occurring in this image I will leave for you to discover.

Like spirituality, viewing and creating art for me involves looking more deeply and beyond surfaces. This is completely unlike the looking and quick analyzing of things in our fast paced world, it is much more akin to meditation where one strives to clear one's mind of all the unnecessary mental chatter the mind provides. Think of the mental state desired being similar to the sports term “being in the zone”. Not only athletes but also artists and musicians work to employee such a mental state on their journeys as well. People who get strong fulfillment from visual art employ knowingly or unknowingly a similar mental state when they do their looking.

The two other images Karl Watson will discuss in a future entry:

larger version

The Road and the Sky

2009-10-29T11:45:00.025-04:00

6x9" selenium toned gelatin silver print, 1980 larger image

First and foremost thanks for taking the time to visit my blog shutter; if you are attracted to visual images or a creator of such, hopefully you will find it interesting. Where do I begin with such a thing as this? Well I will start with the image that changed my life as I had known it till then, Photo 101 Old Dominion University. Camera images had planted tiny seeds prior to this but nothing had really sprouted until the fall of 1977.

I titled this image “The Road and the Sky,” a song title I used/borrowed/took/stole from Jackson Browne's album “Late for the Sky.” It was more homage than anything else. I was completely blown away at that time with that (still extraordinary) album!

The image itself was created just a few rolls/proof sheets into my new journey. I was quickly becoming bored with the usual stuff fledgling photographers photograph in photo 101 class. This was long before I had seen work from Edward Weston, Minor White, Harry Callahan, Ansel Adams or Paul Caponigro (heroes I would eventually study) and even before I had much understanding of f-stops, shutter speeds, let alone depth of field.

It was just an idea and a knowledge that with lining up the two pointers in my used Olympus's viewfinder an image could be born; even if the birth was defective something should show up on the film. Back then for me it was still all voodoo, smelly chemicals in dark rooms, a wing, a prayer, a Hail-Mary pass in the last seconds of a game I was lucidly dreaming.

So the idea was; “If I photograph this long wide surfboard with a stripe down the middle in b&w can I make it resemble a road or a least for a few moments fool viewers into thinking they are seeing a road?” So I placed my camera (like a 4 wheeled thing) near the fin close to the surface of the board and studied and adjusted it till all seemed right. As Ken Daley the director of ODU Art department told me many many years later, what interested him most about photography was its ability to lie.

I was printing on some recently created (plastic) stuff called RC paper, which I along with some of my heroes would later refer to as bath mat. Although I knew just about nothing at this stage of the game it was already starting to bother me that the chemicals were getting splashed from one tray to another by students in a hurry to get to some more important task, to me time stood still – the task at hand was holy! Oh my God; what my fellow students did with the print tongs, in the stop bath, back to the developer, all over the room, the sacrilege was rampant. The people did not respect the alchemy they played with.

As I watched the image come up in the developer I was rewarded with an idea manifest in the material world that was all mine. It wasn't mine like the drawings and paintings I made during childhood and the various art courses I could never say no to, but for the first time all mine like no other image I had made. After years of trying to deny my artistic inclinations knowing I would never survive such a financially bereft life, the muse set up permanent residence in my heart. I imagine now, her saying to me, “I myself do not care about money, I can give you treasures of joy unimagined that money will never buy.”

I never before knew photography had such power or could do such a thing; I only knew of the pretty advertisements in magazines and when photography was used to provide documentation of things. I was lodged on the hook. With this image I wasn't gonna be anything I wasn't, I was only gonna be me even if I still had to “costume up” for life to make a dollar. From this image on I knew what I wanted! I wanted to simply make images from my heart with no thought of commerce whatsoever and do it full time. Now at least, I understood my time on earth was meaningful, it had real purpose.

Finally I was very fortunate to have received an award of merit by Robert Heinecken (though at the time I was unaware of his work or fame) in a national student show for this very same image. This was a thrill, especially to know someone important in my first real career had found my piece provocative. I finally got an “attaboy” for something that was me, not a hand shake - pat on the back for forcing my self through some task I loathed or at something that held no flame for me. This recognition certainly was the icing on the cake and sealed the deal.

For those that are still with me thanks for hanging on and sharing part of my journey. The fine art photographers and teachers that inspired me early on showed me the way and provided a foundation through their visual journeys so I and others could begin extended further journeys.

Links of possible interest:

Commentary on Jackson Browne's "Late for the Sky"

My early work:

www.georgeelsasser.com