Saturday, December 29, 2007
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
Final Project Response
I am still recovering after a long day in Mclellan, but I am trying my hardest to find anything photo related to avoid studying for exams. The initial idea for my final project was really born midway through this semester when we did the project on lying. That project evolved a significant amount and when the end product came along I was unsure as to how it was actually fulfilling the criteria of the lying assignment, but I liked the images. In the critique that day I felt some encouragement to push it further. When the final project reared its head and one of our options was to continue with a project or process from earlier in the semester I immediately thought of the books and my brief study on censorship. From there I knew I needed more, so I explored the possibility of destroying official, government documents. Birth certificates, passports, money, marriage licenses, etc. I thought that the reaction I had gotten from destroying books would be magnified if I worked with things that were literally illegal to manipulate or destruct. I asked around and it seemed like people wouldn't really care if they saw money drawn on or a passport burned up. So, after ultimately wasting a few hours making a mock passport I decided that I wanted to stick to books.
I returned to the controversial literature idea only to find that most of my new ideas, one of which including rolling a joint out of a page of a book, were one liners. I was forced to keep pushing my ideas, shoot without a plan, and simply play. After a class that was set aside as work time I realized that I still didn't really know where I was going to take my idea. That night I stayed up and did what Meg encouraged me to do, even though she told me a few times before I actually did it. I played around with several of the possible directions I could take the project and finally stumbled on the starting point. Cutting out one controversial line of text revealed more text below it, cutting that out reveals more text. I came up with the question, how far does censorship go? From there I thought about not only the written word, but also the spoken word and the actual banning or destruction of the controversial narrative.
I returned to the controversial literature idea only to find that most of my new ideas, one of which including rolling a joint out of a page of a book, were one liners. I was forced to keep pushing my ideas, shoot without a plan, and simply play. After a class that was set aside as work time I realized that I still didn't really know where I was going to take my idea. That night I stayed up and did what Meg encouraged me to do, even though she told me a few times before I actually did it. I played around with several of the possible directions I could take the project and finally stumbled on the starting point. Cutting out one controversial line of text revealed more text below it, cutting that out reveals more text. I came up with the question, how far does censorship go? From there I thought about not only the written word, but also the spoken word and the actual banning or destruction of the controversial narrative.
Color or Black and White?
Before starting this response I felt obligated to go back to one of the first posts I made and read over my initial take on the question. I wrote that I felt that color was distracting in a photograph. With that in mind, I'm pleased to be able to basically rewrite an answer to the recurring question of which is better, black and white or color photography?
I started this semester with absolutely no color experience other than on family vacations. I think that this is the case for the majority of people. For many years color images were just associated with those posed pictures of a group of on top of a mountain or next to a landmark, etc. Keeping in mind however, that photography has been around for hundreds of year prior to color. Black and white photography was a tradition that we were comfortable with. Not to say that the introduction of color was a bad thing, because that's not at all how I feel, but since Kodak introduced color film in the 1930s and then the first commercial digital camera in the 1990s this black and white tradition has obviously taken a hit. Because color film was made so available and now it seems that everyone has a digital camera photography is not restricted to artists. Where the question arises, what makes art art? Anyway, since everyone can take a picture and have a print in front of them a minute later it makes color photography seem less genuine and romantic than black and white.
There were a few points this semester when things were going almost a bit too smoothly and I was missing the of the developing process and the darkroom. There is a hidden charm in the frustrating surprise that you overexposed an entire roll or exposed an entire box of paper to light or maybe even forgetting to put film in your camera. With digital technology I can take a few hundred photos, immediately realize that they are all blurry and retake a few hundred more on the spot (I am obviously associating color with digital now, but at this point I can't help myself because I haven't used color film in seven years).
Regarding the question at hand, I believe there is no answer, only personal preference and I remain fairly neutral. There is without a doubt a gray area surrounding the question, no pun intended. For me, I could not imagine doing my final project in black and white. Despite the unintentional red and yellowness from the printer I just don't think that black and white alone would have been able to capture the varying tones in the pages of the books or in the clippings of words. I think I've written too much, so I'm just going to say that my answer to this question will never be consistent.
I started this semester with absolutely no color experience other than on family vacations. I think that this is the case for the majority of people. For many years color images were just associated with those posed pictures of a group of on top of a mountain or next to a landmark, etc. Keeping in mind however, that photography has been around for hundreds of year prior to color. Black and white photography was a tradition that we were comfortable with. Not to say that the introduction of color was a bad thing, because that's not at all how I feel, but since Kodak introduced color film in the 1930s and then the first commercial digital camera in the 1990s this black and white tradition has obviously taken a hit. Because color film was made so available and now it seems that everyone has a digital camera photography is not restricted to artists. Where the question arises, what makes art art? Anyway, since everyone can take a picture and have a print in front of them a minute later it makes color photography seem less genuine and romantic than black and white.
There were a few points this semester when things were going almost a bit too smoothly and I was missing the of the developing process and the darkroom. There is a hidden charm in the frustrating surprise that you overexposed an entire roll or exposed an entire box of paper to light or maybe even forgetting to put film in your camera. With digital technology I can take a few hundred photos, immediately realize that they are all blurry and retake a few hundred more on the spot (I am obviously associating color with digital now, but at this point I can't help myself because I haven't used color film in seven years).
Regarding the question at hand, I believe there is no answer, only personal preference and I remain fairly neutral. There is without a doubt a gray area surrounding the question, no pun intended. For me, I could not imagine doing my final project in black and white. Despite the unintentional red and yellowness from the printer I just don't think that black and white alone would have been able to capture the varying tones in the pages of the books or in the clippings of words. I think I've written too much, so I'm just going to say that my answer to this question will never be consistent.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)