Victoria's Peak, Hong Kong by Emily Shur

Victoria's Peak, Hong Kong
8"x10"($20) | 11"x14"($50) | 16"x20"($200) | 24"x30"($1000)
by
Emily Shur

Heated Wednesday greetings, collectors! NYC remains downright steamy and most people in their right minds have skedaddled for their holidays. I'm leaving for the more temperate climes of the West Coast next week; it's business that's taking me there, but I can't wait to get going! (And hope to squeeze in a small bit of R&R while out there, pretty please.)

With penning this newsletter on my mind, this morning's interior monologue has been accompanied by a soundtrack of just two songs on constant repeat: Vacation and American Girl. The choices are so totally me — I was gaga for those sassy Go-Gos when I was a teenager, and adore Tom Petty (shutup!) but I actually find the tracks particularly well-suited to Victoria's Peak, Hong Kong by hip West Coast girl Emily Shur.

Emily's quite busy professionally with an impressive roster of clients. Her fine art projects reflect her globe-trotting lifestyle, but what makes her work most compelling is a stylization which embodies a specific swath of American nostalgia. When I look at her work, I think of our Kodachrome-idealized mid-century past. When considering it this morning, I realized that it was the first time I truly felt like the twentieth century was a thing of the past; it's probably got something to do with the year 2010 now being firmly figured into my near-future plans. We're breaking away from a new century's dawn and hurtling quickly toward its interior.

With things moving so quickly, it's natural to want to look back a little, even as we document the present. As Emily writes: "Photography has allowed me to give due importance to all of the bits and pieces of my life—these images are not idealized views of life experience. Instead, they are representative of a conscious choice I have made regarding how and what I choose as my memories." Even as these memories are being created, we tend to put a little gloss on how we would like to remember them.

In my own glance backwards, I ordered up some of the photographers we've featured on 20x200 who all tend to put their own spin on the present with subtle references to the historical. This little (de)tour back through time starts with Justin James Reed's photographs of Idaho Springs, Colorado and Norristown, Pennsylvania and moves forward to Colin Blakely's dreamy black and white images, Recollection of the Battles Fought and The Seeming Impenetrability. We'd end up between here and there, in both time and space, with Tema Stauffer's Palm Aire—which brings me right back to Emily's Victoria's Peak.

While taken in Hong Kong, Emily's photograph of binoculars turned toward Victoria Peak (known colloquially as Victoria's Peak) could also be found in one of our own great parks in the U.S. It's this ability to make the foreign familiar with her own special blend of color, light, clarity and distance that appeals to me in Emily's work. Amidst my internal ramblings this morning, I also thought of the Obama Family's National Parks tour and my own road-tripping adventures out west. I was in New Mexico for Review Santa Fe in 2007 and was sorely sorry to have missed this year's event. I knew the talented Emily would be present and having become familiar with her work via the interwebs, lamented losing the chance to chat with her in person.

I guess that's another drawback in all this catapulting forward, no? Not enough time to do all that we would like to. And with that, of course, I'm off 'till we meet again next week!