Today I am thrilled to announce my contribution to F-Stop Magazine, a fantastic online magazine and art space dedicated to showcasing contemporary photographic talents from around the world. This group exhibition focuses on the theme of vacation. I think this is a lovely escape for many of us who have spent much more time indoors in the past months and years than we could ever want or need to. If you want to see some of my blue water centered photographs alongside some other great works feel free to check it out.
https://www.fstopmagazine.com/groupexhibition.html
DON'T TAKE PICTURES
Summer is coming, and better days are around the corner. I am so excited to be able to go outside and feel the sunlight on me once more. I know I am not the only one looking ahead with optimism and feeling the possibilities that a wide open horizon may hold. With that I am so pleased to announce that I am part of the lovely, sunny Blue Skies Online Exhibition hosted by Don’t Take Pictures Magazine. This collection features some truly fabulous work by several other artists and will be running all summer long.
If you want to check it out you can on their website:
https://www.donttakepictures.com/gallery-blue-skies
WAY OUT WEST
My new project Way Out West coming soon!
NOT REAL.
One year indoors. Life is windows and blankets. Routine is repetition, and yesterday is just like today.
Introducing Delicate, a New Body of Work
For a long time I have been juggling about four different photography series. I will go back and forth depending on what mood I am in and what ideas I have at the time. But it really was time to add new photographs to my website, and I am so pleased with these photographs and how they are curated. I think with time I will let this particular series breathe naturally and I might continue to add a photo here or there if I think I have something worthwhile.
I am excited to announce that, and here are a couple of honorable mentions that did not quite make it.
Glamour Affair Magazine Collaboration
This month I am so pleased to announce my very own eight page spread in the esteemed Italian art and design magazine Glamour Affair. This young trendy publication and online international gallery space focuses on interconnecting people through cultural vision. They say that the beginning is always today, and I could not be more happy to begin my 2021 with representation alongside them.
To see the full article on me and check out the rest of their fabulous and glam work, please follow the link below.
https://www.glamouraffair.vision/issue-2021-01-02/04-conrad-valone/?_ga=2.28718204.191223895.1610342539-1615672955.1607375135
PRISM international
I am so glad to announce that I have been starting off the new year right and have had the opportunity to work with the Canadian contemporary writing publication PRISIM International. The quarterly magazine selected one of my photographs to be featured as the cover for their first issue of 2021.
If you want to check out more of their work here is a link to the current issue.
https://prism-epayments.sites.olt.ubc.ca/ubc-product/59-2-winter-2021/
NEW PROJECT IN THE WORKS.
I have always been obsessed with Americana and the varying landscape this country holds. Though travel is restricted, I have been looking through my old works and planning out new destinations to photograph when it is safe. I am excited to put my lens on both urban and rural to make a collection of modern culture through my southern gothic aesthetic.
THE NIGHTS ARE GETTING LONGER.
I live alone these days. I work from home. It is not safe to go outside. After work I pace around my room before ultimately just getting back onto my computer. I hope my old friends are doing well, it has been a while since I heard from them. I feel distant from the world out my window. I spend all my time alone these days.
My dreams are getting stranger.
Jaamzin Creative Feature
JaamZIN Creative Studio is an online creative agency established in 2017 by Zin and Zannnie in Singapore. They bring to light both new and famous artists of all mediums from painting to photography from around the globe. When they found my photography and said they would like to give me a feature alongside the amazing artists on their site I was so excited.
If you would like to check out the article on me, here is the link!
https://www.jaamzin.com/post/photographer-conrad-valone
Tales From the Front Porch Announcement
I am so excited to be part of new multi media magazine titled Emotional Alchemy in their issue, Tales From the Front Porch. This zine brings many themes specifically identity, gender and sexuality, mental illness, love, and community to the forefront.
This magazine explores Americana, one of my absolute favorite subjects to photograph. My series of photographs featured is "The Home that was Never Mine" a body of work I shot in rural Maine in 2019
If you would like to check out my photographs along with the rest of the photography, collages, stories, and artworks follow the link to get your own copy.
https://www.blurb.com/b/10199653-tales-from-the-front-porch
This Isn't Happiness You Can't Get There from Here
It has been a busy year for everyone with big changes to our day to day lives. As an artist who meets up with models and goes to many locations, my shooting style and also my artistic process as a whole has taken slowed, and of course, become largely different. These days for safety I am not shooting on location, and I am not meeting any new models or going to take photographs in the field.
Because of this difficulty, it is especially wonderful to collaborate and get my work featured by websites.
This Isn’t Happiness is an art website that I am lucky to have noticed me and they featured a selection of photographs of mine centered around the road and travel, something that right now seems a thing of the past. These photographs were taken in Quebec, South Carolina, Nevada, and everywhere in between.
It is nice to look back at the roads we traveled yesterday when today we must stay home.
https://isnthappiness.com/?p=52031
Aint-Bad Portrait Highlight
My portrait philosophy is a little unusual, I know. Instead of focusing on the individual beauty of the sitter, I instead tell them to convey a specific emotion. Most often these are longing or determination. I feel like instead of photographing a face I am photographing a feeling.
Recently I collaborated with the amazing Aint-Bad magazine for a feature all about my portraiture style in a collection of pieces titled Human.
Feel free to look at the article on their site if you want to.
https://www.aint-bad.com/article/2020/07/15/conrad-valone-2/
Mim Magazine Highlight
This month I am so grateful to have be selected by the biannual print and arts publication MIM Magazine. It is always so amazing to get the opportunity to work with like minded creatives. It gives me the chance to expand my circle and learn about up and coming photographers, digital, and traditional artists as well as view some really amazing brand new art by others in the same space as I am.
So I of course was really thankful to have my photographs featured alongside these talented emerging artists. If you want to support their small magazine or just check out some really neat artwork pick up a copy or look at some artist highlights on their website.
UNCERTAINTY
I find that I am becoming more comfortable with who I am but less sure about how I want to move forward in life. My goals that once seemed clear have become muddied around the edges. I have only a vague grasp of what I wish to achieve and only a faint understanding of how I may get there.
I think it is okay not to know.
Finding Peace In Solitude.
These days I can remember more without feeling any sting. I am thankful for all those I knew, even if they do not reach out anymore. The quiet moments were all right too.
There are a lot of quiet moments now.
Form and Function (IV)
The first time I was inspired to start photographing bathrooms was a few years ago on a road trip across the southwest. I set up camp at sunset and went to the showers in the bathroom at a state park. Like many government owned facilities, there were no electric lights in the building, so at that time of day the directional yellow light of the sun pouring through the windows was the only thing I could use to see.
I was kind of taken aback by just how beautiful the beams looked, with bits of dust and desert sand whirling around in them. A place that existed purely for necessity was rendered almost ethereal in the fading dusk.
I did not start this project until over a year later, but it was with that evening in mind and how much of what makes something beautiful is how we look at it, and in what light.
Form and Function (III)
One unforeseen consequence of taking photos of a lot of public bathrooms is all of the strange conversations I have with people. I, of course, wait until any multi stall restroom is completely empty before photographing it, so in the meantime, I just oddly stand around as though I am waiting for something specific to happen. And conversely, when someone walks into a bathroom I am photographing I am at a loss of how to explain without sounding strange.
I do think it is a worthwhile pursuit, and in a way, a really interesting way to document places where I have gone camping or towns I just passed through.
Form and Function (II)
Continuing to photograph bathrooms across the United States, I have noticed so much that I never had before. My photographs only include rest stop and public bathrooms, but the variation in these is really remarkable. When we travel they are, of course never a destination, but in fact a stop we try to make as quickly as possible. Maybe it is just because I have been looking at them in a different way, but I have noticed many have high ceilings for better ventilation at a lower cost, and those high ceilings can lend a quite delicate quality of light into the spaces.
A Conversation with myself about Form and Function
For this project I was inspired by the magnificent artist David Leventi. He traveled the world and masterfully shot large format photos of beautiful opera houses. When looking at the rendering of the gorgeous colors in print, one cannot deny the awe that they feel, and as someone who has shot extensively in large format, I know crafting these images was no easy feat.
I still found that I could not help but wonder if these photos were only so striking because the subject matter itself is meticulously crafted artworks in their own right. If you took Leventi’s skill of photography and gave him instead mundane subjects how would they look on the page?
With this in mind, I looked to travel to buildings that could not be a further opposite to luxurious opera houses that are a celebration of form. Rest stop bathrooms. Something so plain and ordinary that exist only for function. This project spans the United States and years of work with the intention of taking a place people barely even glace at and elevate the spaces to an artistic plane.
