Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Uncle!

Recently, I once again allowed myself to think I had a chance, a pretty damn good chance of being accepted in a group show that United Photo Industries was presenting on the topic of Surveillance. I really thought I had put together a winning team of images illustrating various aspects of surveillance in our private, public and inner lives (within the 8 images requested). Obviously, they didn't think so, and just as obviously, there is no way to decipher why...

SECRETS & LIES  is a juried photographic exhibition that explores issues of anonymity, surveillance, and the illusion of privacy in a digitally inter-connected world.
Photographers are invited to submit photographs that address, respond, criticize, and/or challenge the new realities of our public/private existence.

 Artist Statement:  Watching The Watchers Watch 
Government surveillance and its accompanying paranoia of secrecy and anxiety are now prevalent on several levels of consciousness, both real and imagined. Spying in our name throughout the world is meant to keep us safe from "others," and monitoring our private info right here at home, to protect us from ourselves. Surveillance programs exist in the public domain and consciousness as both threat and savior- from the reality of our everyday, workaday world to our utmost delusional machinations.
 All Photos © All Rights Reserved- Stan Banos


Flag & Camera(s)




Never Broken




George W.




United We Stand...




Emails




1998




Military Talk-Watch




Watching The Watchers Watch


3 comments:

Eric Rose said...

Poor Stan. Keep at it, the more you try the odds get better.

Stan B. said...

Yes, it's finally come down to that- pity. I feel so, so... cheap!

Wow, I'll say one thing, at least the suspense was mercifully short- one week!

I don't know about the odds, there's also the law of diminishing returns, but that assumes you were winning to some extent beforehand, doesn't it? Anyway, one thing I ain't is a gambling man; like to think of it more as a calculated risk- but I was never good at math either way.

Just before I got the news, I was out on my bike most the day taking a little chicken shit photo here and there, nothing special. Stepped off in a deserted area kissed by the last few rays of sunlight, lovely, but not a soul around for a much needed focal point. Yet another missed opportunity painfully slipping by as I tucked the camera back into the bag to ride home... when I spot a couple on two foot scooters coming up the path with two of the largest Great Danes I have ever seen! Lights, Camera... aim, press shutter- 37th Frame.

The roll is taunting me right now, right next to me- and dollars to donuts the shot's not anywhere near as good as I have possibly imagined (if it registered on film to begin with). But I'm not a betting man.

And if by wild circumstance, it is, I'll someday get to enter it in a competition- and there's no mystery there, is there?

Eric Rose said...

You crack me up!