![]() |
Larry Wolf (2023) |
![]() |
Larry Wolf (2023) |
![]() |
Larry Wolf (2023) |
![]() |
Larry Wolf (2023) |
![]() |
Larry Wolf (2023) |
![]() |
Larry Wolf, Pink and Blue (2023) |
![]() |
Larry Wolf (2023) |
I can’t remember, now, where I read or heard it, but Jean Cocteau said, “Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don’t like—then cultivate it. That’s the only part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping.”
Jennifer Lunden at Poets and Writers (sent to me by my artist buddy SEL)
![]() |
Larry Wolf, Feedback! (1978/photo 2023) |
Some works held my interest and envoked feeling or questions
You centered the skull! ... I see pure white and no real textured black ... you seem to save it with your presentation since it is slightly off center ,,, keep working
As a set they speak of a tense look at human interactions, even the tender moment "the Kiss" is really a seemingly violent last embrace
The images are strongly personal
You've changed
I'd like to see a series with more contrast
The playground is the least noticed of the group and I find it extremely striking
Is there an "in between?" Black-White, Man-Woman
I wish there were more
Happy... cool... frightening... I like but don't ask me why
I also like the very erotic man in the mirror with a camera for a penis ... the collection of people here tonight says a lot for the artist
I see that you look closely at detail and tiny shapes and spaces ... your surprise portrait of the man in the bookstore has a real invitation to create the story of the moment and the stories of his life
Some fade away from lack of contrast... I found the matting monotonous - it appears perfunctory and does nothing to enhance your photos ... Sontag On Photography "The camera as phallus is, at most, a flimsy variant of the inescapable metaphor that everyone unsefconsdiously employs. However hazy our awareness of ths fantasy it is named without subtlety whenever we talk about loading and amining a camera, about shooting a film
I didn't stay long Monday eve. I left feeling sorta ripped-off. Nine prints and I failed to se how one lapped into another. The only thing they have in common is the mounting. ... It shows talent but you stopped before you finished
Keep shooting
I'm really intrigued by your selection of photos ??? keep going
The lighting is bad - your work is strong - you've got it - the trick is to keep it - I hope you do
... at the Maine Photographic Workshops with Ralph Gibson (23 - 30 July 1987)
![]() |
Larry Wolf, notebook from March 1977 through July 1981 (photo 2023) |
3:37 ... after 5 years (more?) I'm wearing a watch ... $20 TI LCD black band [because I am starting a program where I will be on my own to get places on time]
3 Q's
Where are you now?
Where do you want to be?
What's stopping you?
Sketch
Safe / Scary
3 hours spent with best piece (quietly in a chair)
Well seen ... Well translated (through 1 generation of film and paper)
POINT OF DEPARTURE
"the creative potential of his own ambivalence" Ingmar Bergman
[Do] less good work ... there's potential ... these are too easy
Develop an idea
Listen to your own work
Inventory of unknowns
Break a rule and get a page in history
"I want photography to show me something that I can't see any other way."
Recurring forms
"There's nothing to talk about until you have a dummy"
notan - Japanese theory of black on white field
Presence
Bounded by darkness (a cave)
Tonal balance
![]() |
Larry Wolf (1978/scanned 2022) |
![]() |
Larry Wolf (1978/scanned 2022) |
In 1978, I was immersed in 35mm black and white photography. It was more than a hobby, but what was it? I spent a week at the Maine Photographic Workshops, an intensive of camera, film, chemicals, darkroom, prints and reviews. I came home to Burlington Vermont, where my home darkroom had taken over my bathroom and kitchen. I continued at that pace, carrying a camera with me all the time, even into work meetings, doing my day job writing software and the rest of the time photographing and processing and not getting much sleep. I was 27. Who needs sleep?
Then one day the computer screen I was looking at, writing code, stopped being characters in the syntax of a programming language and was simply pixels of light.
My visual mind had taken over my analytic mind. It was a profound shift in perception. Years of training to turn pixels into characters and characters into language and language into algorithms had been overridden. I was simply seeing what was before my eyes without the mediation of all those concepts. Wow! Yikes! Oh no!
I grappled with the choice: Do I open to this new thing or to set it aside and do what I had become a master of?
At that time, I was not willing to walk away from the good job, the great team, the amazing visionary work, and become, I didn't know what: an artist living in a stream of visual perceptions. How does one do that? How would I do that?
Now 45 years later, I have returned to that choice point. The past four or five years have been a renewed connection to photography and art making more broadly. This year is a fuller nurturing of that way of being. A new immersion. Different daily demands to be a responsible adult and also the time to explore being and seeing and feeling and making.
It is scary and unsettling and exactly what I want to be doing; how I want to be. Who knows what will come of this?
At 71, every day is precious. The journey continues.
Hi Jeff -
Thanks for sharing your accounting for time. 5-Year Projects. 20 Summers. Very focused ways to make time real. And for the personal and family health heritage that makes this important to you.
All the best on this amazing adventure,
Larry
Larry,
Great to see you on Friday. I’m glad you were at the opening .... I am grateful that you are part of our community.
Thanks for sharing the drawings you’re making. Please keep making them! I love the ideas you have for sharing your talents and wisdom through your ... crew.
Use the near-term challenges you face as incendiary fuel for making something f***ing amazing. When you’re free and clear of all of this, you’ll have a body of amazing work that can help others in ways you never imagined.
Best,
Jeff
![]() |
John Daido Loori (1971?) Mountain Record |
Learning how to turn the conscious thinking mind off and let the inner mind, the feelings, work free and open seems to be one of the major keys to heightened awareness.
I must continue to allow the “inner self” or “inner mind” to lead and let happen what may.
I have learned to be quiet with myself, and thus have discovered camera. Camera has shown me light making love, from this I learned that I no longer need to “take” pictures for I now know how to make Images. My Images have opened my inner self and thus I find my Images are becoming spirit.
Now I wish to discover how to make my Images disappear.
I am seeking Imageless Images.
My Images are an act of discovery not creation. Much the same kind of creativity as I used in science.
The subjects of my Images no longer make the picture. The viewer makes the picture by the combination of his inner self and my image.
Is-ness and else-ness direct themselves to the rational thinking mind.
Nothingness speaks to the spirit.
Today I photographed a feeling that I did not understand for which I received a gift of a place I’ve never been.
I think the searching is over now, for awhile. There seems to be a path to follow. What’s needed now is time to work and patience to wait.
Selections from John Daido Loori Journal Entries 1971-1974, Mountain Record, Zen Mountain Monastery Archives
![]() |
Larry Wolf, Currently On Loan from the Chicago Public Library (2023) |
It’s easy to romanticize libraries. But, the fact is, they’re not “just” about the written word. Were they ever? As local safety nets shriveled, the library roof magically expanded from umbrella to tarp to circus tent to airplane hangar. The modern library keeps its citizens warm, safe, healthy, entertained, educated, hydrated and, above all, connected.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/14/books/review/library-public-local.html
The subtle bold exertion of intention
hand
of body
pen
pencil
marker
brush
water
pigments
![]() |
Marie Howe, What the Living Do (1998) Photo Credit: Bill Jacobson |
For three days now I've been trying to think of another word for gratitude
because my brother could have died and didn't
music would sometimes drift up through the floorboards,
and he might doze or wake a little or sleep,
and whoever was with him might lean back in the chair beside the bed
and not know it was Chopin,
but something soft and pretty -- maybe not even hear it,
not really, until it stopped
-- the way you know a scent from a flowering tree once you've passed it.
The last time we had dinner together in a restaurant
with white tablecloths, he leaned forward
and took my two hands in his hands and said,
I'm going to die soon. I want you to know that.
And I said, I think I do.
And he said, What surprises me is that you don't.
And I said, I do. And he said, What?
And I said, Know that you're going to die.
And he said, No, I mean know that you are.
Soon I will die, he said, and then
what everyone has been so afraid of for so long will have finally happened,
and then everyone can rest.
When he finally put
his mouth on me -- on
my shoulder -- the world
shifted a little on the tilted
axis of itself. The minutes
since my brother died
stopped marching ahead like
dumb soldiers and
the stars rested.
His mouth on my shoulder and
then on my throat
and the world started up again
for me,
some machine deep inside it
recalibrating,
all the little wheels
slowly reeling then speeding up,
the massive dawn lifting on the other
side of the turning world.
And when his mouth
pressed against my
mouth, I
opened my mouth
and the world's chord
played at once
a large, ordinary music rising
from a hand neither one of us could see.
This will be offered through Latitude starting February 5, 2023
A crucible is a container of energy within which substances can be transformed. We bring our attention, our awareness, into this group with a commitment to be present for each other, to allow for the possibility of change in how we perceive art and, for those who are artists, how we make our art.
What happens as you spend time with a work of art? When you discuss that art with a trusted circle of other people?
Participants in this workshop will:
This is an experiential, participatory program. It builds on approaches of slow looking and appreciative inquiry. We’ll begin each session by establishing our container, welcoming each other, and then take a few minutes to further settle, to be present to our minds and our bodies. There will be a short teaching segment about looking at art and how we interpret it. Each of us will bring art, whether created by us or by others. During each session, we will spend fifteen minutes with each artwork.
We each offer the gift of our attention. From this place of not-knowing and discovering, surprises of all kinds may arise.
This class will be meeting on Zoom on February 5th, February 19th, March 5th, and March 19th from 2:00pm-5:00pm!
Space is limited to 10 participants total so grab your spot!
Questions? Contact us at education@latitudechicago.org
Register at Latitude