Thanksgiving

Artichokes

Documents

Patrice Elmi Gleaning

I'm surprised that it has taken so long for this to happen. Actually, I am pretty sure that there have been other camera phone images displayed in galleries before, but I feel like we all saw this coming a mile away. I do admire Patrice Elmi's movement away from traditional digital technology and towards something that is as common as a cell phone. Not everyone can have a manual Leica or a digital SLR and this is an example of how level the playing field has become. Whether you're using a disposable CVS camera, Canon, Lomo, or Leica it shouldn't really matter. Take pictures of whatever you find fascinating, stick behind your choice to do so, and that should fulfill the criteria of being a photographer.

Contrasting that positive note is the fact that the increasing mega pixel camera phones is starting to steal away some of the authenticity and originality of photography. Earlier in the year we spoke about how our culture is beginning to lack iconic images and we attributed this to the cell phone/ affordable digital camera crisis. I don't think that Elmi is using her phone for evil, but I think that by attracting attention to this trend there is risk to the credibility of photography as an art.

Museum Response: Both Sides of the Camera

A week late, but still good. I just went down to Portland to see the Judith Glickman Collection and was amazed by the number of pieces, the range of photographers, and the organization of the show. I did at times feel a bit overwhelmed by the amount of images and the titles of the categories could have been more clear. Part of me wanted there to be a distinct start and end point to each collection, mostly because there were times when the pieces obviously didn't flow. That made the show a bit inconsistent. Other than that I was pretty content being in that gallery space.

The "Classics" and "Inside and Out" struck me the most. Obviously distinguished images like "The Migrant Mother" and Paul Strand's pieces don't easily get old, but it was intriguing to examine photographs by big names from the early 20th century and then a few minutes later stare at works by up and coming artists.

To now violate one of our big class rules, I'm going to go ahead and say that I really liked the "Inside Out" collection because so many of the images were cool. Seriously though, it is pretty difficult to not immediately fall in love with Morell's "Camera Obscura Image of a Pine Tree in Bedroom" or Scott Peterman's ice fishing cabins. The Peterman ice house and Morell's "Camera Obscura" are images with differing, but still perfect (in my opinion) compositions. Having an exterior image of the woods appear in a run-of-the-mill bedroom is pretty unique, but Morell's choice to use this particular room with the largest tree resting on the bed was important. There is quite a bit going on in the photograph, but he chooses placement wisely, obsessively even. The ice house series, which I further investigated with the help of Google Images, is essentially, in my opinion, a documentary. He has gone to these remote locations and recorded a hobby, but also a life style, that is generally thought of as off the beaten path. Still, his framing of the cabins and decision to zoom out relates to the remoteness of these fishing villages.

The show as a whole promotes a fresh way of thinking about photographs. For me, the breakdown into subtopics was unique. I tend to organize my own images by subject matter or in order of the date they were taken. I have mostly only even really seen photos in exhibits that are organized in the same, generic way. Note to self: organizing images according to common themes is a possibility that should not be overlooked.

Weekly Post XI

Another Alphabet

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/bookpatrol/archives/125487.asp?source=rss

My Brother sent this link to me. An interesting and different approach to a project I did this summer with the students at City Academy.

Test Panorama: 301 Quinby

Confined.

Ghost Walt

Familiar Face

Marylin Minter Response

I began just by looking at the images, but hearing her speak a little about her images helped me after I became somewhat confused looking at photos of the four billboards. Truth is one of the first things that Minter mentions as a motive in the video clip, which is an interesting change of topic, which is coming at the right time. I was becoming a bit too skeptical.

One of the first things that came to mind when I watched the video clip was the Dove Real Beauty Campaign (if you haven't seen this definitely check it out). What the general public sees when they look at common advertisements tends to be a fabrication, obviously this is the case in the Dove video. Minter seems to have something to prove with her decision to show the ugly truth. By renting the four commercial billboard spaces and putting up these images with no textual explanations Minter is attracting attention to the truth, which she is trying to expose. I personally think that advertisements that lack an obvious explanation stick with the viewers longer as they try to find their own reasoning behind the ad.

Jeff Wall Response

It seems that our discussions around lying have made me extremely suspicious. Before the end of the first page of this reading, I was questioning the truth in Wall's work. I feel a little odd questioning a successful, well-established photographer (if that's what he really is), but I couldn't help it. As soon as I read that he "sees something extraordinary" and then "goes back to his studio and sets about recreating the moment," I immediately thought, lies, lies, lies!

Here is a man who, like a film director, is informed of a story and then recreates it into movie set. After reading on, I am still hung up on that being a lie on the most basic level. I've seen Wall's work before and I can't remember being told that it was a set (maybe I skimmed over the captions too quickly). To show an image of a place and lead viewers to believe that it is a live shot is deceiving. This writer goes on to say that Wall uses actors, who actually rehearse the scenes. To me, this would allow the image to lose it's authenticity.

When I look at a street shot, Joel Meyerowitz for example, there is value in knowing that the photographer found and captured interesting aspects of reality. Also simply knowing that he had to have the confidence to roam the streets with his camera and get in people's faces is invaluable. He, like many others overcame the major challenge of photographing strangers in a public setting.

I am not trying to knock the extended periods of time that Wall spends on his sets because I do find that impressive, but it is a different kind of photography just like this article begins to say. I did however find myself getting a little defensive of the medium when I read, "you could say he has introduced struggle to what might have been an easy, too-accessible artform."

Animation Response

From the beginning of this project, iMovie and I did not get along and in the end, the technological difficulties, the flaws in the application, somewhat limited my enthusiasm regarding both of my animations. I was happy with the actions that I chose to animate, someone pumping gas and someone playing guitar. I felt that they were both pretty basic and mundane, especially pumping gas, which is something that is very rarely recorded by itself. By that I mean that we have seen scenes at gas stations in movies and tv shows, but probably no short films or documentaries that revolve solely around one person pumping gas and what he does in the meantime. On the other hand, that might have made it a really boring minute long production.

After animating the guitar sequence, I was uneasy about all of my camera movement. Because the movement of the hand strumming the guitar and the guitarist's body movements were so subtle and contained, I felt that the clip became more about documenting my positioning around her rather than the act of the actual playing. I think that this was more of an issue with the guitar rather than the gas pumping because at the gas station I was surrounded by moving cars and I needed to stay put in order to not get run over. In my friends dorm room, there were no moving vehicles.

I ended up re-shooting my loop sequence (the guitar), but this time I recorded a different action. I actually liked my second attempt much better, but it really came down the the problems with iMovie. I had already finished animating the guitar sequence and I just didn't have enough time to finish the new one. Despite the fight I had with iMovie, I did enjoy the assignment. It was an interesting change of pace and since then I have been shooting multiple frames of any interesting actions and playing through them on my camera like a movie.

Weekly Post X

Just Another Thursday in Maine

Burners

Chapel Interior