Moenkhaus Photography

War Posters

David Moenkhaus — Tue, 31 May 2011 07:14:19 +0000

Every Memorial Day I’m reminded how hard it is for a trumpet player to actually play Taps and play it beautifully. I’ve done it over the years and what with a whole lot of solemn people looking at you, the less than ideal temperatures, and the waiting in the cold, mostly, it’s a real tough piece to play beautifully. Afterall everybody hopes it will be played flawlessly. Because you want to give the mourners the best Taps they’ve ever heard, you give it everything you’ve got. Just be grateful it’s not freezing rain this time.

So driving around Chicago I noticed the Memorial Day parades and of course it reminded me of my Dad’s service in WWII. He was stationed in Italy and his job was to blow up Hitler’s trains and bridges in a P-38 Lightning. And when he was discharged he took with him his A-2 leather flight jacket, his leather helmet & goggles and microphone, his medals and all 50 mission reports, hand written very neatly, on onion skin paper. When going through all this war stuff I came upon this little gem of a WWII propaganda poster, for the boys like my Dad, who desperately wanted to fly airplanes. This one was created by Stan Exman, I think. It sure has got that “We Can Do It” vibe doesn’t it?

Poster for the Army Air Forces circa 1942

An orchestral conflagration and Rilke

David Moenkhaus — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 00:44:35 +0000

…”I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in th future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

-Rilke

My friend, who just went live with his new website http://www.africaindeed.com decided he wanted to get rid of an irreparable upright bass by torching it on a beach in Northern Michigan last week. I jumped at the chance to photograph the orchestral conflagration and we had a blast watching the thing burn at magic hour. I made several fiery photographs with a Graflex and a 6X9 back and a Holga with color neg. But this digital image really sums up the beauty of it.

Poem by Rudyard Kipling

David Moenkhaus — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 06:19:48 +0000

“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you but make allowance for their doubting too, If you can dream and not make dreams your master, If you can think and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters just the same, If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, and stoop and build them up with worn out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it all on one turn of pitch and toss, and loose and start again at your beginnings and never breath a word about your loss, If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the Will which says to them “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with kings, nor loose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much, If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything in it, and which is more you’ll be a man, my son.” – Rudyard Kipling

This poem gets me everytime

Trumpets and tilt shift lenses

David Moenkhaus — Thu, 27 May 2010 07:57:29 +0000

Recently I’ve been thinking about scale and how we interpret size and distance. This came about because of what I see as the resurgence of tilt shift lenses, particularly contemporary digital SLRs that can shoot HD video. I can remember, as a camera assistant in the film business, when the tilt shift lenses and adaptors like Clairmont Camera’s tilt and shift system became really popular in the late nineties as creative tools. Now, the effect is back and the most recent example I’ve seen is a stop motion film I saw on YouTube or something, where the filmmaker used tilt shift lenses to make the urban scenes look like miniatures or models. This made me wonder about the “visual cues” of this effect, cues that make us think we are looking at something small when in fact we are looking at something full-sized. Maybe it has to do with the limited depth of field we are used to seeing in ”miniature” photographs. Whenever we see a photograph of say, a model train layout taken at or near ground level, there is a pronounced loss of depth of field due to focal length, focal distance, and object size. We are used to that. And that gives us our visual cue that what we are looking at is small. But interestingly, when we see a photograph of a “normal” sized landscape exhibiting those same shallow depth properties ( by using tilt and shift lenses for example) our brain unconsciously tells us we are looking at something small. Of course this is mostly academic, but I really do like being optically surprised once in a while. I like exploring scale and proportion in my work by manipulating the unspoken and unconscious visual cues we use to navigate through our environment . In this same realm, I’m fascinated by really small things and really big things. I always will stop to see another Muffler Man in whatever town we are travelling through and I obsessively collect little versions of things like this tiny, brass, Bb trumpet. Eventhough I have a full sized working version of this trumpet in my studio, I like the one below almost as much!

Tiny Trumpet

Forgive, anyway

David Moenkhaus — Tue, 25 May 2010 08:17:39 +0000

Big Mary - Milwaukee 2006

I found this beautiful little piece a few years ago and just recently unearthed it again in my office:

“People are often unreasonable. – Forgive them, anyway

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. – Be kind, anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies. – Succeed, anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people will cheat you. – Be honest and frank, anyway.

What you spend years building, someone may destroy overnight. – Build, anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous. – Be happy, anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow. – Do good, anyway.

Give the world the best you have and it may just never be good enough. – Give the world you best, anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, It’s all between you and God. It was never between you and them, anyway.” – Mother Teresa

Pat Metheny in Detroit w/ Orchestrion

David Moenkhaus — Sun, 09 May 2010 07:34:46 +0000

Getting ready to head to Detroit on May 10 to see Pat Metheny and his Orchestrion project. The guy has been impressing me for years with most of his albums, and I can’t wait to hear this new project with his Orchestrion: http://www.patmetheny.com/orchestrioninfo/ Hard to even describe the “mechanical musical device” controlled by his guitar. Just him on stage with all this ironmongery and pushing the limits of jazz. Extraordinary musician with very impressive hair.

Borrowing an idea from Mr. Wizard

David Moenkhaus — Sun, 09 May 2010 07:04:10 +0000

Here’s a link to a submission I made recently to a contest called Artists Wanted. http://www.artistswanted.org/DaMoenk

There are 5 images of mine at this link of brand new work that I’ve been doing over the last 6-7 months. The work is my take on an idea I borrowed from the Mr. Wizard Show of the 70′s, where Don Herbert, aka Mr. Wizard, experimented with polarized light on one episode.

With this series of approximately 20 images, I’m exploring the use of polarized light on various diaphanous materials. There is a people’s choice part to the contest so feel free to scroll down and vote for me by clicking the stars.

By the way, Mr. Wizard was a really great TV show shot in the 60′s and 70′s where he would teach kids basic science on each episode. They don’t make shows like this anymore. He had this great grandfatherly/science geek accessibility to him . You can find some old Mr. Wizard shows on You Tube, of course.

Wall Street and Caravaggio

David Moenkhaus — Sat, 08 May 2010 20:33:27 +0000

This is my take on the Wall Street/Goldman Sachs debacle. It’s a painting made by the great Caravaggio but I think it sums up the modern relationship between Wall Street, Congress, and the American people better than any modern political cartoon. It’s called “The Card Sharps” and was painted in 1592 but it’s very apt today. By the way, the guy on the right who’s pulling the cards out from behind his back is Goldman Sachs, the guy in the middle is Congress telling the American people on the left what to do and that everything will be ok. I think it’s hilarious. Like the old saying goes, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” I never really understood that wisdom when I was younger but I do now.

"The Card Sharps" by Caravaggio or, Wall Street, Congress, and the American people

Renaissance papermaker’s chop marks

David Moenkhaus — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 05:51:33 +0000

While searching for some reference material on chop marks (the symbols that papermaker’s would emboss into the papers to identify themselves) I stumbled onto this incredible group of Renaissance marks:

Antiquated Italian papermaker's chop marks

I’m printing some of my some of my images in platinum/palladium and cyanotype onto heavy, handmade, watercolour paper and I want a chop mark. These old Italian marks give me a point of departure in the design of my own. Truly amazing that these even exist and that I was able to access them so quickly. Sometimes I let the internet be my friend.

Pinhole photography and dead ends

David Moenkhaus — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 21:32:25 +0000

While I was shooting my Polaroid pinhole series I came across some article or something that mentioned that a lot of art projects (I really don’t like that term) hit dead ends. I kept thinking about it and sure enough, my kitchen series has hit a dead end. That is, after scanning the Polaroids on an Epson V700 scanner, I realized that to spot and clean each image would take forever. The emulsion is so funky that all the streaks, pits and dirt actually in the emulsion is a huge deterrent to finishing the series as I had planned. I thought I’d scan each image then print out at 20″ X 30″ or a bit smaller and that would be that. I have 20 or so images in the series and well, it would take way too much time to spot each image. And there is no way I am aware of to correct the streaks on the surface of the film, so now I’m rethinking the series. I might do emulsion transfers and then scan and print out as planned. Or float the emulsion in a tray of water and re photograph them on the surface. Great thing about the Polaroid’s, is that I have them stored and scanned and can revisit them anytime I want to, with the option to do analogue or digital work. Here’s a couple of pictures of the set up I used to shoot the kitchen series:

The pinhole studio 1

The pinhole studio 2