Happy Memorial Day from RGK!

Greetings to All for 2013 ­ and Happy Memorial Day ! I hope you have noticed that my paper mail has virtually ended. I also hope you have noticed that I DO NOT send you an excessive number of e-mailers... THAT IS BECAUSE I WANT YOU TO OPEN, READ, AND ENJOY THE FEW I DO SEND. Most of my Constant Contact e-mailers are now dedicated to portfolios or individual bodies of work. There will be little or no advertising or calendar event listings involved, just LOTS of pictures and the stories behind them. Using direct e-mailers I can show you more of my work, and with more intimate commentary, than ANY book or gallery exhibit ever did, so I hope you will OPEN THEM, enjoy them, and share them with your friends. Every once in awhile I WILL send a mailing like this one, which is specifically intended to remind you of the numerous new ways I am presenting my work in social media as social media evolves. I am doing some very specific and unique things and you will get the most enjoyment out of them if you fully realize how to view and read the stories I am posting. I have decided to use Facebook as an autobiography, using short blurbs and lots of pictures to tell the many different stories of projects and events in my career. Those stories will also be enriched with greater text and detail in blogs on my website dedicated to each journey. Starting with Monday, I post a new story each day of the week. I leave Saturday and Sunday open for personal event posts and occasional topical news. At this time, Monday's post is about my 1st major commission: In 1984, The Lila Acheson Wallace Fund of New York asked Stephen Shore, William Clift and I to photograph the Hudson River Valley. It was also at this time that I started to use the "new" medium format Pentax cameras and Pentax became one of my life-long sponsors. This body of work became my first Aperture book as well, The Hudson River and The Highlands (1985). Nearly 30 of these images are now online as part of this portfolio. Tuesday's Facebook post features a campaign I took part in to protect San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja, a gray whale birthing area, from industrial development. Orchestrated by the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1997, the initial media event involved Bobby Kennedy and his family, Glenn Close and her daughters, Pierce Brosnan with his son, Jeanne Philipe Cousteau, the painter, Wyland and many others, all camped in tents at the edge of a windy, cool Pacific Ocean trying to "pet" whales. It is an amazing tale, AND, the strategy worked ­ Mitsubishi withdrew their proposal to build an industrial salt complex within San Ignacio. On each Wednesday, my Facebook post is "No Pebble Mine: Pictures from Ground Zero". As you know I have been working on this for many years and NO ONE has THESE pictures! As importantly, the coalition allied against the mine now has more than 250 partners including Orvis, Tiffany's, and Zales, and thanks to NRDC, Robert Redford has become our official spokesperson. This posting will also periodically link you with important petitions and other ways in which you can show your support for Bristol Bay, the last great American fishery and the astounding parklands of southwest Alaska by saying NO TO THE PEBBLE MINE. This is where it really gets interesting ­ Thursday's Facebook post is called "Silk Road" and it is an in-depth look at the embroidery work that I have been doing with a guild in China since the early 1980's. Besides showing each of the pieces we have created, the subtleties of their creation will be highlighted and there will be many detail photographs that have NEVER been in any publications. If you love this work of mine, you will REALLY love this post as it evolves because the detail images are like studying one of these embroideries with a magnifying glass. Lastly, on Fridays I am posting the stories of all my travels in China since the 1st trip in 1985-86. My intentions in going to China were to attempt the embroidery work, but that process in its early stages often involved lengthy visits of multiple months. During that time there would be opportunity to travel to other locations within the country, and then circle back to work more at the institute. I photographed continuously on these journeys but few of these images (100,000-transparencies) have EVER been seen before so my Facebook pages are their publishing debut. To get the full enjoyment out of these portfolios, and to look at the images in any one folio sequentially without interruption from other FB posts, click the Facebook picture on your monitor, or tap it on your phone/iPad. The picture should enlarge. On your monitor, extended text and comments will appear in a sidebar. On smartphones and iPads, partial text will appear at the bottom of the image in white. Place your finger on the text and "lift" it to see the whole text. iPhone screens darken when you do this to make the text more readable. When you finish, "push" the text back down. You may also tap the screen to make all text go away and show you the full-frame picture. While in the picture mode, on a monitor, click the left/right arrows to scroll through the entire dedicated portfolio. On phones/pads, simply "swipe sideways" and the images in the portfolio will cycle through. Bring up text at any time by tapping the screen again. I am particularly pleased to be included in "The Big Picture", organized by the Amon Carter Museum in TX. This exhibit traces the history of photographers exploring the use of large-scale printmaking. Those of you who have followed my work know that use of scale has ALWAYS been of interest to me and one of my earliest and most popular portfolios, ORDER FROM CHAOS was printed in 30" x 40" size only. My 1st exhibit of a large-scale print was a dye-transfer I displayed at CalArts in 1973. As I have for over 20-years, I will be supporting my friends at the Venice Family Clinic with a donation for this year's Artwalk auction. This unique print is part of the new work that I am doing in the digital darkroom, and however strange this may appear to you that know my landscape work, know that EVERYTHING in this image has been derived from one small group of leaves, even the butterflies. At 36" wide it is a radiant print. Come to the Venice Artwalk on April 19, see the auction images displayed on the walls of Google Headquarters. and bid this print up. I give ALL my auction income to support the clinic. Finally, I am happy to announce that two other excellent designers, Jeanne Gadol and Michael Jones, have joined my start-up fabric design company and we have many new beautiful scarf designs which you will find offered in the store on my website: www.robertglennketchum.com. We are also close to some other applications ­ clothing, etc., so if you are interested watch my website store for new additions in the coming months. Remember, our design mission is to represent the natural world with photographs, not drawings, and all of our designers work from that basis. We believe we are creating a visually organic way to surround ourselves with authentic patterns from nature, rather then the abstracted formal drawings that define nature in textile design currently.