Cally Iden

Portfolio for Job Application

2012-02-12T15:45:00.001-05:00

I have included a range of images beginning with my own personal art and documentary photography, and ending with images I took as a school photographer for the Lycée Français de Séoul. Thank you for taking the time to review my application. This post will be removed on April 15th, 2012.

Martin Arnold

2011-09-20T21:53:00.000-04:00

b. 1959 in Vienna

Uses found footage (movie clips) from old black and white films.

In his most recent work, actually creates/selects an environment in which the film is projected, like in the 2003 work, "Jeanne."

La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928), Theodor Dryer

Pièce Touché

1989, 16 mm, b/w, sound, 15 min.

Based on a clip of 18 seconds from Joseph Newman's The Human Jungle (1954)

A knock-off/spoof

Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy Part 1...

1998, Austria, 16mm, b/w, sound, 15 min.

Review by Dirk Schaefer for EM Arts

Based on Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938), starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland

Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy Part 2...

and Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy Parts 3

Passage à l'acte

1993, Austria, 16mm, b/w, sound, 12 min.

The original scene from Robert Mulligan's To Kill A Mockingbird (1962),

based on the book by Harper Lee, starring Gregory Peck

Bunny Island

2011-04-25T18:33:00.001-04:00

I brought my bunny to this island...

More later on that

New Website is Finished

2011-04-24T22:02:00.000-04:00

There's some touching up to do, but by and large it's finished. Please visit at

www.callyiden.com

Thanks!

NEW PROJECT - Empty Signs

2011-04-23T11:55:00.000-04:00

I'm starting a new project. Just as others have begun, I'm not exactly sure how to proceed. But I do have feeling about how the images should look: short depth of field, vignetted?, the sense of a private séance with a normally public advertising space. The sign. Or lack thereof.

A private viewing.
A public sign.
Crocuses
Snow
Staples
Plywood

They aren't fooling anyone

2011-04-23T11:29:00.000-04:00

What do you think of these? Comments welcome!

Cell towers dressed up as pines in...

Ambler, PA

View Fake Trees in a larger map

Chalfont, PA

View Fake Trees in a larger map

Spring House, PA

View Fake Trees in a larger map

Navigation With Trees

2011-04-23T11:00:00.000-04:00

I started this project (though I didn't know it at the time) last winter, 2010). I began photographing the trees in earnest in the fall and have continued through this spring. Some of the newest trees added to this project are shown below. I dread the coming of full blown spring, with the verdant foliage casting a happy shadow of these woody skeletons, bearing the the trees no longer bare.

Update on Goals for this Semester

2011-04-23T10:11:00.000-04:00

With one week of school left, I'm taking inventory of the progress I have made down my list of goals. I've really pushed myself to create new photo work and am really pleased with the results. Shooting every weekend without fail has paid off. The website is coming along, more slowly than I had hoped. Despite being familiar with Adobe software in general, Dreamweaver poses a steep learning curve.

1. Make a new website 2. ~~Complete 3 more works aboutGoogle Maps~~ 3. ~~Go on six more shoots for the~~ ~~"Navigation with Trees"~~ ~~series~~ 4. Make a camera obscura out of the house I just bought in Germantown 5. Line up a summer job in the city6. ~~Apply to~~ ~~artist~~ ~~residencies and exhibitions~~ 7. ~~Register for a Beginning~~ ~~Glass~~ ~~Casting course for~~ ~~Fall~~

What's left on the list? Summer job, camera obscura...things can tackle after this last week of school is over and done with!

Artist Statement (Blog)

2011-03-28T15:00:00.000-04:00

Enjoy this podcast, which has a rather silly tone. It's just feel awfully self conscious when recording my voice.

Rousse

2011-03-28T14:48:00.000-04:00

Georges Rousse is an installation artist/photographer whom I have long admired.
As a young artist he made paintings and drawings on the walls of derelict buildings. At some point he began to integrate the drawings with physical elements in the space. It is easy enough to call his work a simple trompe d'oeil, but I think that such a statement completely misses the point. Rousse creates 3-dimensional sculptures with color, installations that can be appreciated from all viewpoints, but whose rhetoric is intensified from a single point in space. He transforms the mundane and forgotten into places of wonder. Though essentially impermanent (their permanence is the photographic document), these installations are often left in place to be enjoyed by the public, until they crumble or are dismantled.

The Nine Eyes of Google Street View - Jon Rafman

2011-03-18T17:34:00.002-04:00

The Nine Eyes of Google Street View

There are other people out there doing work about Google -- this one, an artist, Jon Rafman, is looking for more than the silly moments like what can be found here. Rafman uses Google Street View to capture a variety of subjects which can be categorized into common photographic archetypes. But that doesn't make his work mundane...au contraire...an interesting image is always interesting despite its provenance. The irony is that google, entirely passive regarding the capture of the images, becomes a kind of receptacle for exhibitionists. In a sense, subjects become the authors, or at the very least, collaborators. The rest of the images fall into another category entirely, the complete accident -- the ultimate decisive moment. Like the one below:

WPPD

2011-03-01T10:10:00.000-05:00

World Pinhole Photography Day

April 24th (Easter Sunday)

I am planning an event...weather permitting. We will transform our house into a camera obscura. Open to whomever is interested. More info to follow.

Goals for the Spring

2011-02-03T10:49:00.000-05:00

1. Make a new website 2. Complete 3 more works about Google Maps 3. Go on six more shoots for the "Navigation with Trees" series 4. Make a camera obscura out of the house I just bought in Germantown 5. Line up a summer job in the city 6. Apply to artist residencies and exhibitions 7. Register for a Beginning Glass Casting course for Fall

20°25′N, 136°05′E

2011-02-02T09:51:00.002-05:00

A Project Yet to Be Titled

I'm ever so slightly tempted to title this series Through Googly Eyes, but is too light-hearted and the truth is that they Google is mediating both our view and understanding of the world is no laughing matter. Other possible titles include Google Sightseeing, which has been already taken by this blog, or simply "Navigation,"which is too boring. For now, this series remains untitled, and its boundaries remain (ironically) undefined. The first project in the series is entitled 20°25′N, 136°05′E. Plug these coordinates into google maps and you will see roughly the same view as below.

20°25′N, 136°05′E started out about new territorial expansionism, but that quickly turned into a subtopic--the subject of this particular project. I soon realized that there was a great potential to expand on how society uses Google to validate and legitimize their view of the Earth and its boundaries. Google has set in place a policy to accept any name of a place claimed by a people. Hence the Sea of Japan (between Japan and Korea) is also indicated as the East Sea (Korea's claim). Territorial overlaps are also represented, not as conflicts but as coexisting sovereignty. In the projects to come, I aim to explore the mediatory role of Google maps and how it has usurped from governments the power to determine boundaries. I am currently looking at Antarctica and the Arctic Ocean. Stay tuned for the next project in the series.

20°25′N, 136°05′E (60 x 30 inches) 2010...a composite of over 100 screen captures using Google Satellite. Click on the image for full size.

At 20°25′N, 136°05′E is an atoll, located in the Pacific Ocean.

The atoll at the coordinates of 20°25′N, 136°05′E has the official address of

1 Okinotorishima (Okinotori Island), Ogasawara Village, Tokyo

Located 1081 miles south of central Tokyo.

Population zero.

There are two islets: one 2 feet and the other 16 inches high.

Fortified with 60-meter diameter encasements of concrete.

There is an additional platform with a helicopter pad and lighthouse.

Japan claims an Exclusive Economic Zone at Okinotorishima, 154,500 square miles encircling the atoll, 400 nautical miles in diameter.

Navigation With Trees

2011-02-01T16:13:00.003-05:00

The following images are representative of my most recent work. They are works in progress.

I map a hometown that I only recently moved back to, after spending many years abroad. My family are only temporarily living here, and will soon move to the city. This is Upper Bucks County. Beautiful. Rural. Calm. And too expensive for us to afford to live here if it weren't for my parents. These pictures represent my reacquaintance with the area, and the idea that I am a native tourist. Along side each photograph is an areal view of the place, sans any indication of its location, street names, etc.

View Trees in a larger map

Tree 1

Tree 2

Tree 3

Tree 4

Tree 5

Tree 6

Tree 7

Funeral At the Factory

2011-01-26T09:00:00.002-05:00

Artist Statement

The 'Funeral at the Factory' project is about one of the first modern factories in Korea, a cigarette factory built in 1923 in the city of Daegu. This project was made in collaboration with the artist, Jino Park. All photographs were taken by Cally Iden during June and July of 2009 in Daegu, South Korea.

One of my photographs shows two actors reaching out to each other, an empty salute, for one man cannot see the other (7th from the top). They are reaching across the walls of a camera obscura, which divide the reality of the interior space from the dream of the projected exterior. Though the two actors exist on different planes, they are able to meet within this space. Throughout my work echoes this theme of two irreconcilable things meeting. It is about making something new from something forgotten.

The Factory Project

At the KT&G cigarette factory in Daegu, South Korea, My husband, Jino, and converted the fourth floor of the warehouse into a camera obscura. We staged a number of performances on site, and I documented our activities and the factory space.

KT&G was founded by the Japanese during their occupation of Korea, and was one of the first modern factories built on the peninsula. The site of this work is the company's now defunct, largely abandoned factory. It is situated in Daegu, a city so much on the extreme politcal right, that there is hardly a left turn (one is directed make a u-turn and then a right). KT&G, formerly owned and subsidized by the government, continues to be the the sole manufacturer of cigarettes in Korea today. A pack costs around 2 dollars.

This work was made in collaboration with the support of LeeAhn Gallery and with the gracious permission of KT&G.

The Multiple

2011-01-23T19:21:00.000-05:00

Though it may seem rather backward, there is a certain inexplicable power to the photographic multiple-- a grid of images that animate an action, a progression or an evolution of something in a rather old-fashioned way. In particular, I like the work of Robin Rhode, a South African artist, who brings extroardinary humor to his "animations." I appreciate the fact that his work is also a temporary installation and public performance. Take a look at a few of his images; the second is strangely instructional in nature, like it belongs in a booklet about how to play craps with "virtual" dice ;-)

Glad you stopped by...

2011-01-22T08:31:00.000-05:00

Night Hike in the Desert, Arizona

I work with photography in a variety of different ways, often without any conventional camera to speak of. Over the course of the next few posts, I would like to plot out the paths of my personal image-making as well as influences and sources of inspiration.