CAMERA ARTISTS is dedicated to the publication of portfolios of photos by artists
who incorporate photography within their respective creative practices.
Our current line-up includes Daniel Gordon and Tim Maul just to name a few.
This project will provide collectors with original signed and numbered prints
cottoned within an artist portfolio plus an artist's book.

Contact CAMERA ARTISTS here

INTRODUCTION

Camera Artists is the name of onestar press’s new venture into publishing limited edition photography or ‘the mechanical reproduction’ to use the parlance of art criticism. For some, this name may also echo the avant garde of the time around the First World War when the camera was the most radical tool in the hands of advanced artists in Europe, America, and in the new Soviet Union. 

Imaging technologies of every kind are now an integral part of a contemporary artist’s studio practice and essential to doing any kind of business with a rapidly shifting global audience. Only in the late last century did the wall come down between the artist and the photographer; painting and sculpture long held the attraction of the unique object while the photograph, even having achieved a ‘fine art’ status
was regarded as an elevated poster or as a medium too entrenched in it’s own past. A 70’s art joke once claimed that the difference between art and photography was $5,000.00, a monetary valuation of the handmade over the print. ‘Idea’ or ‘Conceptual’ art required photography as necessary proof that proposed actions occurred. Branching out of the conceptual were ‘body’, ‘performance’ and ‘narrative’ tendencies-also dependant on illustrative photography. 

The late 70’s saw the emergence of a ‘Pictures Generation’ who were schooled on both critical theory and new writings on cinema that held the Hollywood film ‘still’ in high regard and remains a major influence on much of the ‘pictures’ produced today for gallery walls or magazine pages. 

In 2000 onestar press (Christophe Boutin and Melanie Scarciglia) began to publish paperback books and multiples where intimate collaboration between the artist and the press was prioritized over any other intention. Their success grew out of commitment to this premise along with savvy employment of technical innovations in the digital publishing field. Free of editing supervision individuals both emerging and established artists were attracted to this reinvigoration of art publishing in beautifully realized final products inspiring another manifestation: Camera Artists.

The expectations for Camera Artists can be then set high, offering collectors and institutions a boxed limited edition of signed archival ink jet prints by each artist. In acknowledgment of their devotion to the printed page the directors have requested that each artist, in addition to a suite of original images, produce an accompanying soft-cover publication available as an inset within the hand assembled box. The books content and design is, once again, the responsibility of the artist.

How will Camera Artists be found? - Perhaps not where one would expect to look. Art history has recently undergone a rewriting in regards to the crucial role played by the medium of the photograph/reproduction. Examples could include Picasso’s own cubist-era studio documentation, the self portraiture of Claude Cahun, and in the print image origins of painter Francis Bacon’s delirium. Man Ray, Rodchenko, Cornell, Warhol, Hamilton, Ruscha, Bourdin, The Bechers, Richter, Polke, Sherman, Dijkstra - all honorary ‘Camera Artists’ - look to onestar press to be adding new names to this list.

SEPTEMBER 2011