I am currently working a new photo project that is attempting to visually articulate the relationships between online virtual communities and traditional communities. I will be posting new images very soon, probably tomorrow or the next, as I am waiting to get my negatives back from the lab. Some of my initial ideas were to photograph public spaces of traditional, rural communities such as parks and town centers and introduce digital references such as a television or computer monitor. I am now dealing with the issue of isolation that virtual communities are meant to dispel, but in reality seem to perpetuate through isolating the online user within their home or apartment. I am visually investigating this through a series of diptychs that show the subject in their home at their computer, and a formal portrait that is taken outside their home and within their community. I�??m looking forward to getting some feedback on the images/project�?�.it is very much in its infancy stages, but I will be presenting it at my first year review in a month, so I would like to have it be as complete as possible by then�?�..I�??m looking for feedback from my photo friends�?�(you know who you are) and from anyone that is involved in the virtual community�?�ie�?�myspace, facebook, online forums. stay tuned for images!

If anyone has ventured onto the virtual community that is called myspace, no doubt the first thing that they will notice is the incredible visual style that comprises the entire site. There is no where else on the web where amateur web authors can display their latest and greatest visual styles to the entire world. For instance, take a look at this site. Now this is an amazing example of how to effectively design a great looking webpage that accurately represents who you are. Notice the intriguing use of the background image. Now some may say that it is a little overbearing, but I would have to disagree. It has just the right amount of irish flair to make anyone wish it was still St. Patricks Day. It’s almost impossible to pick a favorite element within this page because everything is so well done, but I would have to say that the use of the transparent green background on the text is an understated but well executed feature. It reminds me of the glee that I experienced in 8th grade when I learned how to use the watermark feature in Microsoft Word. You mean I can put clip art of a court gavel behind my essay on the judicial system? Unbelievable!! But back to my favorite myspace site. I love the way that “shirlee” uses that extra space at the top of her page. I just love webpages that use the full potential of the scrolling feature. There is no better feeling than having your mouse fall off your desk because you are scrolling down a 10 page website. And if that wasn’t enough, Shirlee has also used the horizontal scrolling feature, which is the only thing better than vertical scrolling. The only thing Shirlee left out on this page was a contact email so I could hire her for web design consulting.

I just got back from the national SPE conference in Chicago. There were some great presentations, lectures, and displays, and some not so great ones as well. It was my first trip to Chicago and I was impressed by the city, very clean, well maintained, beautiful architecture, and lots and lots of art. It was kinda crazy being around hundreds and hundreds of other photographers and educators, I’ve never seen so many photographers in one room before! I saw some great work from several artists, including Jeffrey A. Wolin. Jeffrey presented a documentary on vietnam veterans. His stories that went along with his portraits of veterans were extremely powerful. He is a great example of how to effectively document during photographing. Another presentation that impressed me was a collaboration between photographer Sant Khalsa and the poetry of B.H. Fairchild. I couldn’t find any links online to the project, but it was a documentation of the death of small town America combined with the dramatic poetry of B.H. Fairchild. Sant presented her photographs and played audio files of B.H. Fairchild’s poetry that were written specifically for individual images. It had a very powerful and emotional effect. The presentation I enjoyed the most was a panel of Chicago photographers: Brian Ulrich, Matt Sibler, and Jonathan Gitelson. I have links to their sites on the sidebar. They all graduated with M.F.A.s from Columbia College in 2003 and 2002, and are now working and/or teaching in Chicago. They had some amazing work, you should really check it out. It was great to see photographers doing extremely relevant digital work that is still easily catagorized as photography rather than new media or media arts. Anyways, gotta get some sleep, big week ahead. We have Liz Wells visiting our program tomorrow, so that should be interesting. peace

I’m leaving tomorrow to attend the national Society for Photographic Education conference in Chicago. I still haven’t started packing and I haven’t read any of my articles for my class at 9:30 AM, not to mention the five page paper that is supposedly due tomorrow that I haven’t started, oh well, thats life. I’ve been grading photo 1 midterms all day and I’m exhausted…looking at 220 photos from undergraduates can be a very monotenous practice. Anyways, I’m looking forward to the conference, I’m sure we all learn about new digital technologies and how to manage the balance of a traditional photographic education with the new digital theories of education. Or more specifically, how traditional darkroom education practices are out of date and should be completely replaced with digital. yeh, its kinda sad to see where photographic education is heading, especially with the huge push for inter-disciplinary programs that seem to look down on specialization and mastering of one medium. Now we can all learn how to be mediocre at everything and good at nothing.

I’m sure that some of you have seen my previous website and have been faithfully visiting the same boring site for over 2 years now. Finally, I have listened to your pleas and redesigned the entire website! The most exciting change about the site is that it is now a dynamic website rather than a static website. This means that I can post images and entries whenever I want very easily. So instead of looking at the same boring images for 2 years, you can now get many more new boring images all the time!! I will be trying to post content as much as I can, and I would like to get as many comments on different images and posts as possible. Don’t be afraid to post and tell me how much you hate or love an image or something that I ramble on about in the blog.

This takes me to the organization of the site. I am still working very hard on getting the site to a launchable state, but if you are reading this, I have decided to launch the site as it is. There will two main sections of the site, the first of which will be a photoblog/portfolio type interface that you will see when you goto www.johndcorson.com. The second part of the site is this blog that will be accessible from the main site. This blog is meant to be a more candid section of the site explaining some of my reasoning behind certain images and hopefully getting some dialog going between people about certain images.

Chase

i was talking to my friend Chase the other day while we were in New Orleans, and he said, “hey man, you should start a photo blog for all of your photos.” So I said, “ok, that sounds like a pretty good idea.” And thats how you have come to be reading this now. I’m a photographer that is currently enrolled in graduate school at Southern Illinois University, but to be honest with you, I don’t know why I’m in grad school, and I may just drop out because it is a highly policitized load of institutional crap that forces you to succumb to other people’s views of what education should be, but usually leaves out the actual practice of creating visual art. so anyways, im going to post a lot of photos and hopefully get some feedback or just comments from friends and family. Feel free to tell me whatever you think, using comments such as: “that photo made me realize what my role in life is” or “you should really consider a different profession because that photo is perhaps the largest waste of silver i’ve ever seen in my entire life.”