Printing is expensive. When we first started Dossier, everyone (and I do mean everyone) we spoke with suggested we make it a solely online publication so as to avoid the prohibative costs of printing. Capricious founder Sophie Morner was one of the few people who was really encouraging about printing. She told me, you figure out how to pay for each issue somehow. That’s how we started, and four years in I can attest that she was right – if you take it one issue at a time, somehow you figure it out. Doing it without advertising, however (as Capricious has), is no small feat, and so I was unsurprised to hear that they recently applied for and were awarded fiscal sponsorship through Fractured Atlas. As a fiscal sponsee, they are required to raise $1000 before they can start applying for grants. Even your small contribution can ensure that they are able to continue printing, shining light on new photographic talent. I feel very NPR saying it, but it’s true.

My first solo show in New York, First Love, Last Rights, opens Friday, Nov 19 at Capricious. The show is a cumulation of a year and half of work looking at memory, adolescence, addiction, and, as you might gather from the title, first love. The photographs tell the story of a particularly tumultuous year of my adolescence and of the relationship with my boyfriend at the time. I asked a friend, Valentine Fillol-Cordier, to play the part of me, and we set up scenes and reenacted my memories from that time, using the people, clothes and places that figured into them. I also revisited places without her and photographed them as I would I have if I’d had a camera then. The results are displayed as both prints in the gallery and in a show catalogue that serves as a kind of scrapbook, bringing together photographs I made for the project with a personal text, an interview, and artifacts, including old photos and letters.

First Love Last Rites opens Friday, Nov 19, 7-9 pm at Capricious Space, 103 Broadway, and will be on view through Jan 15, 2011.

Click “Read More” for additional images from the show.

Santiago Mostyn’s solo show, The Symapthizer!, is opening tonight at Capricious. An installation based on his travels in Western Norway, the opening will feature hourly performances by Karen Skog Orkester, a Norwegian sound orchestra.

The Sympathizer! opens Friday, Oct 15, 7-9 pm at Capricious Space, 103 Broadway, Brooklyn. The exhibition runs through Nov 13.

Sophie Morner, the founder of Capricious, is one of my favorite people I’ve had the opportunity to work with here in New York. She has an incredible vision and a very gentle way of making serious things happen. She is also, not incidentally, a talented photographer herself, so we vibe out on the whole photographer-with-a-magazine thing. Her work gives me the same feeling I have when I pick up her magazine or stop by the Capricious space: it draws me into her world, shows me things through her eyes. It is always my goal to elicit that feeling with my photographs, as I think it’s a effect only brought about by true, real work.

After several years of directing her energy towards championing other artists’ work, Sophie has finally decided to use the space for her own show. Sophie’s work is deeply personal, records of moments she has lived with the women around her. It is composed and often almost formal and usually very still. It feels like like a breath was taken in and hasn’t yet been let out. Titled The Name of the Song, the show presents these works with the idea that a photograph can be evocative in the same way a song is, stirring feelings of delight, melancholy, uncertainty, and self-discovery.

The Name of the Song will be on view at Capricious Space, 103 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY from September 10- October 9. An opening reception will be held this Friday, September 10 from 7-9 pm.

Capricious Space is presenting Dutch artist Emmeline de Mooij’s first solo show in the United States. De Mooij is a Dtuch artist who works between Amsterdam and New York. Her work consists of  installations, photographs and performances. The exhibition at Capricious will include site-specific sculptural installations, photos, collage and screen printing. She will also be launching her new book, Muddy, co-published by Capricious.

Last Friday night — before rushing home to watch the first Presidential Debate — your friends at Dossier attended the opening of Amelia Bauer’s Environs exhibition at Capricious Space in Brooklyn. Capricious Space is a relatively new, invitingly cozy addition to Williamsburg’s art scene and was a fitting venue for Bauer’s refined collection of drawings, sculptures and photographs. The exhibition was immediately captivating for its intricacies — for example, the staggeringly detailed work above, titled Web, made of cut paper and gouache.

Sheer weight of numbers attest to the interest in Bauer’s work, which has been featured in Wallpaper* and Matrix magazines, as well a number of McSweeney’s publications. Attendees of the opening filled the gallery and office spaces of Capricious before spilling onto the street — drinks in hand — to mingle and discuss the exhibition. The consensus? Free beer is good, but free beer and Bauer’s art is a winning combination. Click “Read More” to see a collage of happy snaps from the night.

Regular readers of this blog may recognize Bauer’s artwork as the cover art of the forthcoming Department of Eagles album In Ear Park, which was mentioned in a previous post. Word to the wise — the album is out on October 6, through 4AD and it is breathtakingly beautiful.

Environs runs through October 12.

Photo courtesy of Amelia Bauer/Photo collage courtesy of Tom Hines.