Author Archives: Michael Ast

Michael Ast – Photographer, publisher, printmaker

The Month Before Trump, Harvey Benge

Exciting package from New Zealand, from the consistent, inquisitive photo eye of Harvey Benge. “The Month Before Trump”, self-published, 2017, edition of 50 (with 4×6 print). I really dig Harvey’s self-published works created in his own independent making. Always, he offerers up an existential, probing vision that navigates through the ominous nature of modern society, […]

a musing from the rocking dock – Dashwood Books

Signed copies of a musing from the rocking dock are now available at Dashwood Books, NYC. Look/Purchase

Calendar Feature – a musing from the rocking dock

Pleased to be featured in the Spain printing house La Imprenta’s 2017 “Hello Photography” calendar for the month of August.

Squall, Spinnerstown

View from kitchen Window this morning . . . daylight savings time succeeded by 12 inches of hard snow.

Back to Printmaking

An 8-month hiatus from the printmaking studio was a bit too long. Happy to get back to etching plates. This photo etching here, originally photographed in Costa da Caparica (Portugal) in the Fall, proved difficult in transposing to a plate. Rather than trash, I overpainted it with watercolor. Food for thought moving forward.

27 Contexts by Mark Alice Durant (Saint Lucy Books)

I cannot put Mark Alice Durant’s book down. Evocative meditations and insight on photography that arrive poignantly in their telling through Durant’s intimate observation and acumen. The essays I’ve devoured so far, in one night, deliver their impact like a perfectly crafted short story. I looked up from the page at one point thinking “this […]

Work Prints, Kinsey Series

Walking at Dusk

Inherent sadness in the church bell tonight. Walking down Pond Road. Twilight in the puddles and the ravine on the dead leaves. Ambling along the mire, the crunch of stone and slush under my shoes, I stop to make a few pictures, pushing the ISO to a higher grain. Rain drops. Ice begins to patter […]

Sintra, Portugal (Nov. 2016)

Lisbon, Portugal (Nov. 2016)