Inpost Artspace Reception: Sunday, September 10, 3-5pm
Exhibition dates: July 10 – November 2, 2023
This Inpost Artspace photo exhibit features two dedicated jazz fans/photographers who have frequented Outpost shows ever since each of them moved to Albuquerque. They are an intrinsic part of Albuquerque’s celebrated jazz scene. We decided to let them use their own words to define the show and their artistic approaches. Mark Weber: “Photographs inhabit the 4th dimension, they are shadows & light of what has passed, five days ago or 25 years bygone. I take them for memory. Sentimental. First time I watched the ghost of an image appear in a developing tray it blew my mind. I was like the wildman Enkidu seeing Babylon for the first time. As to my aesthetic, it’s a bit sideways of prevailing practices . . . For the most part I’m a documentarian in the anthropological sense: A jazz scene includes artists, instrument repair techs, promoters, deejays, record stores & record collectors, journalists, priests, recording studios, historians, photographers, hagiographers, club owners, university jazz departments, agents/managers, and the audience. Is there a narrative to this show? Yup. It’s the community of listeners and musicians that have grown up around the Outpost. My favorite jazz photographer (besides, Roch) is William Gottlieb, who knew that jazz is a culture and photo’d it in its natural habitat: the jazz club of the 40s & 50s. Like any art form, one must be decisive, and with photographing music concerts there’s an etiquette, unspoken, but if you don’t pick up on it, you won’t last – it involves common decency, patience, tact, and mostly the fact this is the audience’s concert, not yours.” Roch Doran: “My goal is to document what I see without ever changing the experience of those that may be sharing that space in time with me. The challenge is to see beyond the obvious and to capture what is unique in that solitary moment. After years of being in a band that had dissolved more into talking about music than playing music, I was in heaven when I got my first camera. The camera gave me the freedom to share something about my world without hours of conversation. Since 1977, when I began this journey, my two loves have been constant, nature and documenting people creating music. Over the years the technology has changed and I have gone from film to transparencies, back to film, to digital and now digital with a mirrorless camera. While the tools have changed, the objects of my interest have not.”
Led by renowned Albuquerque-based drummer Cal Haines, a long-time friend and associate of Mark Weber, The Cal Haines Quartet, which took home three awards at this year’s New Mexico Music Awards, also features David Parlato, electric bass; Alex Murzyn, tenor sax & flute; and Adolfo Acosta, trumpet & flugelhorn. The group plays original compositions and beloved standards, but with an open, chordal-free format (i.e. no guitar or piano). FREE!