Jason Kofke, installation view, Little Victories, 2012. Photo courtesy the artist.

Atlanta is no stranger to the house-as-gallery model, though each example has its own relationship to the white cube industry standard. Jackson Fine Art shows the most fidelity, with its austere walls and brightly lit interior, while at Whitespace Gallery the starkness of the name and refinement of the interior is in elegant contrast to the inviting backyard setting. Kibbee Gallery, on the other hand, does not disguise the initial use of the building, leaving telltale mantels and molding in place. A walled-off stairway positioned like a stoop in the living room gives the space an ominous Shining-like quality. The architecture can sometimes feel at odds with the art, but Little Victories, an exhibition by Jason Kofke, Chris Chambers, and Matt Whitehead, uses this atmosphere effectively with three different bodies of work that speak to relationships with personal space.

Jason Kofke, installation view, Little Victories, 2012. Photo courtesy the artist.

Jason Kofke, installation view, Little Victories, 2012. Photo courtesy the artist.

Jason Kofke and Chris Chambers collaborated earlier this year on The Ends at Beep Beep Gallery (learn more in Casey Lynch’s review for BURNAWAY.). In that show, the two artists impressively inserted Kofke’s 1980s car into the shoebox of a gallery, dominating the single room and dumbfounding visitors as to how he did it. For Little Victories, Kofke applied that same resourcefulness into details that set the scene, taking over a front room with a well-placed array of vintage office equipment. A steel media cabinet set into the closet bursts with dated typewriters and metal boxes simply labeled “KOFKE” or various years between 1960 and the mid-80s, as well as small screens playing video from NASA missions. On one side of the room, NASA launch films play on a projector screen; working time clocks feature on another.

Jason Kofke, 1998, etching. Image courtesy the artist.

Interspersed are several etchings in Kofke’s unmistakable meticulous hand, continuing the NASA subject matter and inserting a theme of obsession. In 1970, a male scientist peers into the scope of a large piece of equipment, concentrating on his task with the same focus of an artist working on, say, meticulously detailed etchings. 1998 gives a view of a shuttle passageway, an endless-seeming tunnel teeming with exposed wiring and open panels with endlessly receding depths as limitless as Kofke’s own absorption and fascination with his subject.

Chris Chambers, untitled installation series for Little Victories, 2012, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy the artist.

Chris Chamber’s photographs open a window into a very different private setting: the cellphone. Chambers took the inside and outer walls of an antechamber, where he installed rows of framed cellphone photos taken over the past few years. The images range from a store display of president-masks, to vintage book covers, to thrift store tchotchkes, graffiti, and bits of trash—in short, little scenes Chambers has found fascinating or funny since he’s owned a camera-phone. None of the images are especially remarkable on their own, but that’s not the point; they aren’t meant to argue for the cellphone as an art device. Instead what they reveal is a personal glimpse into a life, calling attention to the image-trails we habitually create with Instagram and smartphones.  An old record player and mildew-stricken records inhabit an alcove; framed by these photographs, they add the feeling of being in someone’s dingy basement den–a physical private space–providing a counterpoint to the images’ electronic origins.

Matt Whitehead, Revision 6, 2012, mixed media. Image courtesy the artist.

Matt Whitehead, Connecticut 1, 2012, digital archival print. Image courtesy the artist.

The artworks provided by Matt Whitehead speak to the artist’s personal environment. Whitehead is a family man (incidentally, he’s married to Kofke’s sister) and must make art within the constraints, both of available territory and time, that his situation presents.  One series features pages from a fashion magazine, with the faces of models covered with blotches of paint. Whitehead allowed the dark gray colors to drip down the image, the result reminiscent of the mold and decay on the record covers in Chamber’s installation. The most successful images, however, are his series of photographs of wool blankets. Neatly folded and rolled at the end of a bed, the soft pastel blankets seem curled in fetal position with the anthropomorphic quality of Alec Soth’s swan-shaped towels from his Niagara series. These mundane household items are more inviting than the idealized magazine women, and are treated more delicately by the artist.

The works in Little Victories are a celebration of the personal, be it in environment, engrossment in your task or profession, or of the electronic territories we carve out daily. This celebration is not without its complications, and indeed the works bring up questions of self-induced oppression and escapism. The engrossing work of the scientist and the overwhelming glut of technology in pieces by Kofke seem to obscure the scientist as an individual; he seems isolated, as artists toiling in the studio can often feel. Chambers’s cellphone-captured images are surprisingly personal, but even in their entirety, they seem limited, even pathetic. So much of our public persona in social media is made of these kinds of photos. Are these glimpses a satisfactory measure of time, of a life? In Whitehead’s paintings and photographs, we see a life brought into focus, though we must also confront the shrinking of one’s world into a domestic arena. The works in this exhibition are all the more personal and intriguing for the artists’ acceptance of these complications even as are applied to themselves.

Kibbee Gallery will host the closing reception for Little Victories at 7-9PM Saturday, September 29, 2012.

Disclosure: Preston Snyder, the owner if Kibbee Gallery, is a member of this publication’s Board of Directors. In pursuit of featuring work that significantly contributes to cultural discourse, as well as our commitment to transparency, our policy is to disclose instead of exclude.

Angry residents of Zafrania confront U.S. soldiers guarding an ammunition stockpile after an accident launched a missile that killed several people in their homes. Kael Alford, Zafrania, April 26, 2003, archival pigment print. Photo courtesy Jennifer Schwartz Gallery.

I met Kael Alford while at graduate school at Savannah College of Art and Design Atlanta. I was lucky enough to have her as a professor for Documentary I, where I learned the difference between, and similarity of, documentary and fine art photography. Unfortunately, Kael only stayed a year in Atlanta because she was called away after receiving a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard in 2008-2009. Since then she’s continued to teach at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas though she’s kept her connections strong to the Southeast, particularly Atlanta. She recently found a home for her work at the Jennifer Schwartz Gallery, and next year Alford will participate in the High Museum’s Picturing the South series during the summer of 2012. Kael will be traveling back to Iraq after seven years to revisit her work from Unembedded, a documentary project focusing on Iraqi civilian life. Before she left for her trip, I had the chance to ask her a few questions.

Ryan Nabulsi: You’ve traveled to many different places, interacted with different cultures and all types of individuals; when thinking about photographing a story, are you more interested in the place or the people?

Kael Alford: It’s usually the situation that draws me, or more specifically, the particular moment in history of a place. Like the basis of a good novel, it’s the conflicts of humanity that help us understand ourselves. I’m interested in how people struggle to live with their differences, which is why I’ve been drawn to document various kinds of conflict. We can be humane and civil most of the time, so we tend to forget that we’re also animals. We just happen to have large, slightly more reasonable brains.

In the Balkans for example, and in Iraq during the sectarian violence there, and during the American Civil War, neighbors and families, who lived more or less peacefully for generations, became fearful and mistrusting of each other until slaughtering one another seemed like a logical thing to do. It’s a terrifying process to witness, but we need to understand it. When I started this work, I was seeking that understanding. Now I cast a broader net and look for much quieter, less obvious dramas too, but there is always some underlying tension or conflict in what interests me.

Falluja, April 30, 2003 Smoke from burning oil drifts over the Euphrates River and near the town of Falluja. Kael Alford, Falluja, April 30, 2003, archival pigment print. Photo courtesy Jennifer Schwartz Gallery.

RN: When I think of a photojournalist, I’ll be honest, you would not be the first person I would peg to have gone unembedded into Iraq, when traveling in unstable areas, did you find your appearance to be a disadvantage or an advantage?

KA: Being a fairly small framed woman (if that’s what you mean?) is mostly an advantage, I think. I have cleaned up a lot recently, so I fit in a bit better here in the U.S. now too! It’s true everywhere—I try to blend in. I like to be an observer and that way people are less suspicious of me hanging around. Women are generally seen as less threatening then men anyway, and this can be a great advantage. And being a foreigner can help too. I get to bend rules that locals have to follow.

RN: You’re going back to Iraq soon, why? What are you interested in investigating on your return trip? And do you have any leads or contacts when you get there?

KA: There are many reasons to return to Iraq. I was first in Iraq in 2003 -2004, before, during, and after the U.S. invasion. I’ve always expected to return and I thought if I waited much longer, it would only get harder to go. I received money from the Knight Luce Foundation for Global Reporting to finance the project I proposed, so that meant I could set my own parameters without being beholden to assignment work alone.

Timing wise, most combat troops have pulled out of Iraq now and more are scheduled to leave by the end of this year based on a security agreement with the Iraqi government. This made the visit somewhat timely, which is important if you want news-type outlets to publish your work.

In the broad sense, I’ll investigate the legacy of the U.S. invasion and the aftermath of a horrific civil war. Iraq is barely in the U.S. news any longer, but the complex ties between our countries, for better or worse, are now a part of our permanent records. This is true for me personally as well. It’s a place I think about almost daily. I’ve spent the last months tracking down the people I knew there. I’ve re-established some contact with Iraqi civilians, drivers, translators, and friends. I’m going to revisit them and see what is happening in their lives now and how the U.S. invasion has affected them. I’d like to see if the sectarian divisions in the country have changed how people think, live, or identify themselves. I’ll also be traveling with photographs that I made on my previous trips, using them as a means to find subjects whose names I never even knew, in some cases.

A lot of terrible things have happened since I left—just unthinkable violence. It’s going to be a sad trip in some ways, with some very bright spots. I’m excited about finding the people who were so open and kind with me even when our countries were at war. I feel like I owe it to them, the people who let me in, not to forget them. I think it’s largely those people giving me the nerve to return. So this feels like a personal journey as much as a photographic or journalistic mission.

A man shows his hand to snipers as he carries a terrified child across the front line between U.S. forces and the Mahdi Army at the wrecked outskirts of the old city. Kael Alford, Najaf, August 21, 2004, archival pigment print. Photo courtesy Jennifer Shwartz Gallery.

RN: After traveling to shoot a story, how long does it take for you to get reacquainted with ‘real life?’ Do you work on multiple stories at once, or one at a time?

KA: I’ve come up with a formula that seems to describe it for me: for every week I am away working on a long-term project, it takes about a week to fully return home—particularly after a long trip. I’m immersed when working on a project and the rest of the world sort of slips away. Relationships at home might change in that time, you lose track of the news of your family and friends. So if your life is lived on the road half the time or more, you are never quite home, you’re always moving emotionally as well as physically. Some people only feel at home when on the road. It’s a strange existence that many photojournalists live; it’s like existing in multiple, parallel universes. ‘Real life,’ of course, is wherever you are. There are multiple realities in the world and photojournalists get to move in and out of those realities.

There is nothing like the process of becoming comfortable in a new place as the curtains of mystery are lifted. You’re on high alert, always scanning for images and meaning with all of your senses. I can become affectionate towards the oddest things that give me insight: canned foul (a type of bean) in Iraq, or plastic table cloths laid on the floor for eating, the portraits people keep on the walls in their homes, rubber boots worn by fishermen. I am comforted by small civilities, like the way people touch when they greet each other or eat with only their right hands, or how they say “be careful” each time you walk out of their sight, the way people do in Louisiana.

I sometimes work on multiple long-term stories, but it’s very difficult. Short assignments are no problem, but when I’m digging in for the long term, I want to give a project my full attention.

RN: You were recently awarded a commission to participate in the High Museum’s Picturing the South series. Can you tell me a little about the work that will be in the show and how you became involved with it?

KA: That project is about two Native American communities who are losing their homeland due to the rapid erosion of the Louisiana Coast. Some of my ancestors on my mother’s side are from these communities, which is how I was introduced to them. I’ve been working on the project since 2006. When I moved to Atlanta in 2007, I was showing the work at APG [Atlanta Photography Group] during one of their events, and I met Julian Cox there who told me about the Picturing the South commission which I was granted the year after Alec Soth was commissioned. That commission allowed me to dig and continue the work for the next two years. I’m still visiting these communities and will be collecting some video interviews there later this year.

A man who lost his wife and two young children to shrapnel from a U.S. bomb that exploded near their home is comforted by a friend at the Kindi Hospital emergency ward. The children were dead on arrival and his wife died shortly afterward. Baghdad, April 8, 2003, archival inkjet print. Photo coutesy Jennifer Schwartz Gallery.

The exhibit at the High Museum in 2012 will feature this work. I recently met with Brett Abbott and I think he’ll be a great person to work with as we put the show together.

I’m also talking to some book publishers and looking for ways to travel this exhibit back to states along the Gulf Coast and the South.

Although this work is about two specific communities, the project speaks to broader environmental concerns. The erosion of the coast is due largely to damage from the oil and natural gas industries, which cut very destructive canals through coastal marshlands. Even the extraction of oil and gas itself has contributed to the sinking of coastal lands. There are activists and local citizens who would like the money that the Federal government is collecting from BP to be designated toward coastal reconstruction. Without reconstruction, much of the coast, including Louisiana, will likely be uninhabitable a hundred years from now.

RN: How do you change your approach when dealing with a specific environment? For example, does the approach change when you are in Iraq versus Louisiana?

KA: Each place is different, and it takes specific research and contacts to understand it. Before I go, I read and research like crazy. Wherever I go, once I get there, I try to find local people I can relate to. If I’m lucky, I’ll make some real friends. It’s a lonely feeling being a stranger all the time, and the (justified) paranoia that you feel in a dangerous place can be soothed a bit and become more rational through relationships with local people who can teach and guide you. In Louisiana, it’s not dangerous at all, but I’m still and outside, so the process of building understanding through relationships is the same. In a place like Iraq where security is an issue, I can’t just walk out the door and wander around. It’s more important that I understand the geography, the players, and factions involved; I need local guides. In a place like that you also really need colleagues on the ground, other journalists who can show you the lay of the land because the situation is always changing.

RN: Thanks so much for your time, is there anything else you would like to add?

KA: During my next trip to Iraq this June, I plan to keep a blog and keep up a dialogue with folks back home if I can. I’d like to connect audiences with organizations on the ground that are addressing the needs of the people I meet. I’m looking for new ways to help viewers engage in the work more personally and to grow and get better at what I do.

When I make friends with a morally complicated militia member in Iraq who allows me into his world and trusts me to take his photograph even though I’m from the ‘other side,’ or I make friends with a beautiful six year old girl who hugs me when I come to visit her and take her photograph every six months, that’s when I feel so lucky to do this sort of work.

Disclosure: Ryan Nabulsi is an employee of Jennifer Schwartz Gallery. In pursuit of featuring work that contributes to important cultural discourse, as well as our commitment to transparency, our policy is to disclose instead of exclude.

Kael Alford’s photos can be found at the Jennifer Schwartz Gallery. The artist has been commissioned to participate in the High Museum of Art’s Picturing the South series, scheduled to present in July of 2012.

Photo by Sandy Hooper.

Robert Gill, a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design-Atlanta, just completed a grueling nine-month thesis project titled Before or After Yourself that tried his body, mind, and skill in photography and digital media. Many thought he was crazy for enduring physical pain for the project, but now, with his newly svelte body, this 28-year-old is living the dream: Gill is bringing his work to the hordes, earning press including a recent article in Esquire Russia and securing a spot at this year’s Art Basel.

Gill recently traveled through Atlanta to retrace his artistic origins before jetting off to begin his new position as a teacher’s assistant at Harvard University. We managed to nab Gill for a luxurious chat in a Kirkwood living room to talk about his latest project.

BURNAWAY: There has always been speculation on whether photography is a legitimate art form. What do you think makes a photograph art?

Robert Gill: Right, what’s a photograph nowadays anyway? What makes it good?

First you have to figure out if you’re making art or commerce. If you’re making something to sell for the intent of selling, that can be photography too, and you can have great photographs, but it’s another thing to make an art photograph.

I guess what I look for is something honest from people. I think I’ve always had a good alarm [for] knowing if something is fake or contrived. You develop that and you fine tune that through school. So, I think sincerity is the best thing; making something that’s actually a part of you that you’re actually interested in.

What subjects are you most interested in photographing?

It’s interesting. Living in New York and growing up in Pennsylvania, I’m interested in blue-collar things or more rural things. [When I lived in New York City] I thought, there is nothing here I want to photograph even though it’s a photographer’s playground.

So why did you move to New York City? Because it’s the “thing to do?”

Yeah, it was. I got two associate degrees when I was in my early 20s and went straight to New York and thought I’d do great. I was working at a modeling agency doing their in-house stuff. It was terrible; I was really fighting for my paychecks. I lived there for six years, and I don’t think I’ll ever go back.

During Robert Gill's MFA thesis project, Before or After Yourself, the artist lost 40 pounds in nine months. Exercise was conducted outdoors without the use of a gym. Photos by Robert Gill.

What do you think has been your most successful project?

I go back and forth between things I can control and things I can’t. I do documentary work and journalism where it’s something I can’t control; the story will guide itself and I’m just there to watch it carry on. And then there’s these other projects I have that everything is hand-tailored by me. I get bored if I do one thing more than the other. I think the most recent work, Before or After Yourself, is my favorite.

Why did you decide to do Before or After Yourself?

That goes back to doing something that’s honest and a part of you. Wanting to make something a lot of people could relate to, in this case physical appearance.

[When I was] growing up, I was a larger kid and got made fun of a lot, and even now maybe there are lingering issues. [But] I didn’t want to necessarily make the project about that. I don’t think people look at it and think “this guy has an image complex.” [Or] maybe they do; that would be interesting.

I was inspired by other forms of media, before and after images. They’re used in advertising—the comparison image—and there is no space in the middle. It’s just a before and after, and it’s kind of a magical transformation that takes place and you don’t know how or why. I wanted to give the viewer more information in making the videos.

What made it so difficult?

The transformation? It was almost impossible; what I put myself through in the past nine months was insane. If I didn’t get my body to a certain point where I thought it was good enough to be a striking transformation, then the project wouldn’t be a success. It’s a lot of pressure: You don’t know if your genetics will even do it.

How did you decide the project was over?

It was a duration performance. I knew I had to have this done in nine months and inside of that container you can put whatever you want in that nine months. I like thinking of time as a container.

Photo by Sandy Hooper.

Do you still keep up with the same regimen?

I was exhausted, honestly. I’ve taken the summer to run and keep active and play sports here and there, but I don’t think I’ll ever go back to the same regimen. It was 6AM, wake up and run, two or three workouts a day, not going to the gym ever. It was important to me to keep it outside and keep it interesting. Running on treadmills doesn’t make sense to me.

Were there ever days when you stayed in bed and ate chocolate cereal?

A lot of it was a liquid diet of protein shakes and things like that. There were five months out of the nine that I’d fast for ten days in a row. There were definitely days I didn’t have time but it was such a big thing and so much was riding on the nine months that I had to be really hard on myself and be mad at myself if I didn’t make time for it. I’m pretty good at sticking with something.

We hear you’re in Art Basel this year.

I got picked up by a gallery for Before or After Yourself which is always fun because it’s packed down there, and there is limited space so I have to reconfigure the installation. It was in a pretty large space the first time it was shown. I’m running into a problem with it because every time I show it, it has to be in a different format.

Ideally there would be multiple screens. It’s going to show in New York on an 80-x-120-foot screen in public, and I have to figure that out because the photos can’t be there. Maybe the photos will flash before and after the films.

Some people have told me the pictures don’t need to be there at all, or the videos. Everyone has their own ideas about this project. I think it works so well to have them there side by side because the before and after creates a kind of anxiety, and the videos are kind of a comic relief and [provide the viewer] answers.

What’s your spirit animal?

I’d say I don’t really have one which is kind of a cop-out to the question. I’d have to say if there’s something my spirit is attached to, it’s wind. It’s my spirit weather force. I’m a sailor and I want to make art about wind. [After that] I’d say maybe a bird. I think I’ve wasted every birthday wish I’ve had on wanting to fly.

What are some photographers you’re inspired by?

I guess in history I really enjoy Andre Kertesz. I love Alec Soth but I’d say a lot of people will say that. Andy Goldsworthy isn’t a photographer [but I like his work]. One person who has seen my project so far related it to [Goldsworthy], and I didn’t think the connection was there for other people to see. That was just the best compliment.

Photo by Sandy Hooper.

After living in New York City, Atlanta, and now Boston, what do you think is important for emerging artists to grow and work?

I think in an art community the best thing to have around is [diversity]. My grad school program was only photography and only MFA; the undergrads were on a different floor, and we never saw or talked to them.

Here in Atlanta, at SCAD, all my best friends were painters and print makers and a few photographers. Just having an interdisciplinary approach to learning art is definitely a lot more powerful than sticking to one thing.

What’s your favorite thing about Atlanta?

I guess the sense of community. I was really lucky to make great friends. There are tons of artists here, some of my favorite artists.

Atlanta Art Crush is an interview series brought to you by Susannah Darrow, Laura Hennighausen, and photographer Sandy Hooper. Look for profiles of our latest heartthrobs on the last Friday of each month.

SATURDAY: Create, Destroy, Rebuild opens at Beep Beep Gallery. Above: The studio of BORN.

[UPDATED] It’s about that time of the summer when things might begin to slow down and become a bit dismal. Why not get a quick pick-me-up at one of this week’s stimulating, never-boring group shows?

FRIDAY: Group show at Mason Murer Fine Art. Above: Craig Hawkins, Stand, 2008.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 7

Group show Bill Lowe Gallery 20th Anniversary Celebration
Bill Lowe Gallery / 7-9PM

Liana Repass, Maggie Evans, and Craig Hawkins group show
Mason Murer Fine Art / 7-10PM

Harrison Keys So Far, So Good
Aurora Coffee L5P / until 9PM, regular hours

SATURDAY: Alec Soth's Black Line of Woods opens at the High Museum. Abave: F. P., Resaca, Georgia, 2006, © Alec Soth

SATURDAY, AUGUST 8

Beep Beep flyer: Click to enlarge.

Alec Soth Black Line of Woods
High Museum / 10-5PM regular hours

Jules Cozine Air and Mist
Kibbee Gallery / 6-10PM

Group show Create, Destroy, Rebuild
Beep Beep Gallery / 8-11PM

[NEW] Group show Everybody for Evereman
The Bench (602 Marrietta St) / 8PM

THURSDAY, AUGUST 13

Group show Inspired by Motion
Swan Coach House Gallery / 10-4PM regular hours / artist reception is September 10

Keep checking previous Lists for more ongoing shows!