Brian Ulrich's newest addition in his ongoing COPIA series is titled Dark Stores, Ghost Boxes and Dead Malls. You can view several fantastic images at the CENTER site. Brian received honorable mention in this year's challenge.

"The American suburb as we know it is dying. The implosion began with the housing bust, which started in and has hit hardest the once vibrant neighborhoods outside the urban core. Shopping malls and big-box retail stores, the commercial anchors of the suburbs, are going dark — an estimated 148,000 stores closed last year, the most since 2001. But the shift is deeper than the economic downturn. Thanks to changing demographics, including a steady decline in the percentage of households with kids and a growing preference for urban amenities among Americans young and old, the suburban dream of the big house with the big lawn is vanishing." article

Humble Arts Foundation

Another grant opportunity for emerging photographers from the Humble Arts Foundation.

Call for Entries

Hey, Hot Shot! and The Art of Photography Show are now accepting entries if anyone is interested.

The Fucking Train Wreck

I have a new work up at the Marcuse Gallery this week. The Fucking Train Wreck is a group show organized by Louis Schmidt and includes work by a lot of the current MFA students at UCSD. Here is a chance to view the "artistic yield of the entirety of UCSD’s MFA students’ work within one space, engaged in what will inevitably result in raucous, amiable, and thought-provoking conversation."

EMERGING PHOTOGRAPHER GRANT

Burn is offering a $10,000 grant to a "worthy" emerging photographer.

Dan Graham lecture TONIGHT

Come see the Dan Graham lecture tonight at 7pm in the VAF Performance Space. You can find more information here.

The Boom Is Over

Holland Cotter wrote an interesting article that was in the New York Times today that asks some interesting questions about the art world, including art schools:
Art schools can change too. The present goal of studio programs (and of ever more specialized art history programs) seems to be to narrow talent to a sharp point that can push its way aggressively into the competitive arena. But with markets uncertain, possibly nonexistent, why not relax this mode, open up education?...Why not make studio training an interdisciplinary experience, crossing over into sociology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, poetry and theology?... I’m not talking about creating ’60s-style utopias; all those notions are dead and gone and weren’t so great to begin with. I’m talking about carving out a place in the larger culture where a condition of abnormality can be sustained, where imagining the unknown and the unknowable — impossible to buy or sell — is the primary enterprise. Crazy! says anyone with an ounce of business sense.

Right. Exactly. Crazy.