The Fine Art of Spying:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324094704579065123679605360?mg=reno64-wsj.html?dsk=y
video portrait animation of a woman aging:
Danielle from Anthony Cerniello on Vimeo.
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/stunning-timelapse-video-shows-young-girl-aging-elderly-woman-article-1.1455387
http://www.thephotographsnottaken.com/
http://www.unphotographable.com/
Alec Soth:
http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essay/niagara
War Photography:
regarding the pain of others
http://reason.com/reasontv/2013/07/31/war-photographers
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/09/the-shame-of-memory-haunting-war-photographers/
http://mediastorm.com/clients/ripple-effect-images
Documentary on JR's worldwide collaborative project: "Inside Out: the People's Art Project."
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
First meeting with my artist mentor
My artist mentor is Christine Collins
We started talking about what I have been thinking about and researching.
Works that came up that I need to take a look at:
Martha Rosler's essay "In Around and Afterthoughts (on Documentary Photography)"
Photography At The Dock: Essays on Photographic History, Institutions, and Practices (Media and Society) two essays: "Who is Speaking Thus" and "Reconstructing Documentary"
Brian Schumat's photo series: "Grays the Mountain Sends" http://www.bryanschutmaat.com/ Mixture of landscapes and portraits sequenced to interact with each other.
When speaking about my older work, she said that I need to let the space to more work adding extra details to a portrait. What is the tension? Let the space speak. I limit their story. Color would have said more.
She gave me an assignment: Find somebody I'm interested in and produce three images
I should pick the place or have them pick the place that is the most comfortable. I need to control and decide everything.
We also talked through some of my ideas for my next project. The place is important. I will be totally giving myself up not controlling who is in the picture. I still need to work out how exactly it will be enacted. Should I have instructions to guide people? Issues of privacy, surveillance and closed circuit TV come up. We are photographed without consent whenever we are in a public urban environment.
She encouraged me to come up with a thesis for the project. If I.........then I imagine.....to happen"
Thesis: If I set up a camera in a highly trafficked public space to take time lapse photos and post them to social media, then I imagine that people will respond to the camera in a large variety of ways from avoidance to exhibitionist.
She encouraged me to explore this in two veins:
She also suggested to just try out the project without worrying too much how the final visuals or exhibition would be worked out.
We spoke some about the legalities and about Arnes Svenson series, "The Neighbors" http://arnesvenson.com/theneighbors.html and the following court case http://blogs.nppa.org/advocacy/2013/08/05/photographer-prevails-in-first-amendment-vs-privacy-case/
Other works that can up:
Michael Wolf's curation of google street view images. http://photomichaelwolf.com/#paris-street-view/1
documentary: "102 Minutes that Changed America" made from archival footage.
Hitchcock's "Rear window" Take notes on when there is an exchange of power and how looking or photographing effects that.
http://www.paulgrahamarchive.com/possibility.html#a and his book "The present" How little moments change with space and time.
Chauncey Hare, "Interior America" and "Corporate America"
Judith Joy Ross's portraits
We started talking about what I have been thinking about and researching.
Works that came up that I need to take a look at:
Martha Rosler's essay "In Around and Afterthoughts (on Documentary Photography)"
Photography At The Dock: Essays on Photographic History, Institutions, and Practices (Media and Society) two essays: "Who is Speaking Thus" and "Reconstructing Documentary"
Brian Schumat's photo series: "Grays the Mountain Sends" http://www.bryanschutmaat.com/ Mixture of landscapes and portraits sequenced to interact with each other.
When speaking about my older work, she said that I need to let the space to more work adding extra details to a portrait. What is the tension? Let the space speak. I limit their story. Color would have said more.
She gave me an assignment: Find somebody I'm interested in and produce three images
- Make an environmental portrait that means something. I need to be thoughtful about what the place means
- Then photograph mid-distance with a little context
- Then photograph with a simple backdrop or background.
I should pick the place or have them pick the place that is the most comfortable. I need to control and decide everything.
We also talked through some of my ideas for my next project. The place is important. I will be totally giving myself up not controlling who is in the picture. I still need to work out how exactly it will be enacted. Should I have instructions to guide people? Issues of privacy, surveillance and closed circuit TV come up. We are photographed without consent whenever we are in a public urban environment.
She encouraged me to come up with a thesis for the project. If I.........then I imagine.....to happen"
Thesis: If I set up a camera in a highly trafficked public space to take time lapse photos and post them to social media, then I imagine that people will respond to the camera in a large variety of ways from avoidance to exhibitionist.
She encouraged me to explore this in two veins:
- Letting people know and give instructions
- Not letting people know and see what happens in front of the camera.
She also suggested to just try out the project without worrying too much how the final visuals or exhibition would be worked out.
We spoke some about the legalities and about Arnes Svenson series, "The Neighbors" http://arnesvenson.com/theneighbors.html and the following court case http://blogs.nppa.org/advocacy/2013/08/05/photographer-prevails-in-first-amendment-vs-privacy-case/
Other works that can up:
Michael Wolf's curation of google street view images. http://photomichaelwolf.com/#paris-street-view/1
documentary: "102 Minutes that Changed America" made from archival footage.
Hitchcock's "Rear window" Take notes on when there is an exchange of power and how looking or photographing effects that.
http://www.paulgrahamarchive.com/possibility.html#a and his book "The present" How little moments change with space and time.
Chauncey Hare, "Interior America" and "Corporate America"
Judith Joy Ross's portraits
New Directions
After the critiques and research that I have been doing, I am interested in exploring some new ideas and directions. I am continuing to work with community portraits but in a different way. The idea is to set up a camera in a highly trafficked public space to shoot a time lapse. I would like to have people be aware the camera and know when a picture will be taken (maybe with a timer) to see how they react to the camera. The images will then be immediately uploaded to social media. I have been working out the technical aspects, finding the right combination of programing. Ideally I would set this up in a storefront window for a period of time and slowly fill a gallery until every inch of wall was filled with thousands of 4x6in photos. The project would culminate with a gallery opening where the public would be welcome to come and receive the photos of themselves. The challenge is finding an appropriate space and getting permission from the building owner. I realize there will be a variety of issues, questions and dialogue around this project.
Below are some tests for the visuals:
1 day:
Taken from my front window and uploaded to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/101042494@N08/
and https://www.facebook.com/pages/Community-Access-Photobooth/334578120011234
Each row is one hour.
1 month
Collage compiled from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDDq97ZonaE
1 year:
Images compiled from: http://eirikso.com/2011/01/05/one-year-in-2-minutes/ cc 3.0 nc.
Each row is one month.
Below are some tests for the visuals:
1 day:
and https://www.facebook.com/pages/Community-Access-Photobooth/334578120011234
Each row is one hour.
1 month
1 year:
Images compiled from: http://eirikso.com/2011/01/05/one-year-in-2-minutes/ cc 3.0 nc.
Each row is one month.
First Residency Summary
First Residency Summary Group 1
In the critiques I spoke about my interest in community narratives, and each critique leader brought their own response to the way my ideas were visualized. The following are the themes and questions that came up across multiple sessions:
• What is my voice and my sensibility? What unifies the work?
• How do the images live in the community? Is it through a public exhibition system?
• Some of the expressions of the people in the portraits feel controlled or guarded, and I need
more psychologically charged and unguarded expressions.
• What are my responsibilities as an artist to the community? Is it possible to accomplish this
without losing my voice, purpose, and sensibility?
• Have a greater understanding of the history, ideas and issues of the documentary tradition. • Consider the ethics of photographing other people and cultures.
• Move past traditional portraiture and documentary to something more conceptual.
Artists that came up multiple times were, Martha Rosler, “The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems”, Rineke Dijkstra, and JR.
I was a bit nervous at the first critique, but it was good to stand in front of three projects that I was proud of in which I had invested a lot of time and energy. People said that I capture a dignified earnestness in the portraits. This is the voice and sensibility that I bring to the work, but it may not be enough in a fine art postmodern context.
In general the installation of the Gloucester portraits at the lobster warehouse on the harbor was received very positively. I need to continue to think about where images can live and what their relation to people can be. If it is for the community, then it needs to be of relevance to them so that people don't become specimens in a gallery.
Some issues were brought up around photographing people. There is always a potential of an exploitative outsider looking in without giving anything back. For the most part I have found a way to make the photos alive in the community while also documenting the community. While I am aware of historical documentary traditions, how do can I do it today without being exploitative? The challenge is to accommodate their expectations, but also have a more experiential dimension. One reviewer said that the images should not necessarily be about the subjects. The photos should be about me and how I see the subjects.
Other problems photographing people is they present guarded expressions or a smiling face just standing and looking at the camera. We discussed techniques of getting images past that such as building trust, catching an unguarded moment, or getting a psychological response. How much control should be used producing the image? There was disagreement on the lighting used in the portraits. Some felt that it added an additional dimension, while others said it felt too charming, too prescribed, too idealized. Another instructor challenged me to have less control and allow some system to dictate the way the imagery is produced. Also, there is a trend shifting away from the tradition representational documentary photography opening other ways of portraying communities and groups of people.
Two additional projects that I brought with me for critiques did not generate very much discussion. One was a series of documentary images from student protests in Chile, and the other was a series of abstract cityscapes. These two projects are not where I want to focus my energies for this program. While I may return to the visual language used I would rather deepen my understanding of portraiture.
Moving forward, I need to take into account the ubiquitousness of cameras and the millions of photos flowing through social media everyday. Social media needs to be incorporated into any community photographic project which includes social practice.
What do I what to keep from the work, and what do I what to let go of? I have worked hard on many projects and have published thousands of images, but quantity and hard work are not enough. I need to be more thoughtful about my artwork. What I want to keep from the work is the aspect of relevance and accessibility to the general public not just making photos that are for gallery viewers and just a discourse about art. I need to research how contemporary artists have dealt with social documentary photography. I want to keep a documentary impulse and a social dimension while continuing to experiment with audience.
Artists: Stefan Maria Rother who published books devoted to one street of Berlin at a time. Edward Rucha's book, “Every Building on the Sunset Strip”, Suzanne Lacy In Morning and in Rage Catherine Opie Sharon Hayes Jeremy Deller's, “The Battle of Orgeave"a contemporary investigation of a deep historical wound and his installation in the British pavilion of the 2013 Venice Biennale.
Rineke Dijkstra, Wolfgang Tillmans, Dan Graham, Jeff Wall, Thomas Demand. James Casebere, Carrie Mae Weems, Book of photographs crowd sourced form 9-11 Taryn Simon's “The Innocents”
Wendy Ewald Dawoud Bey Alan Lomax Roni Horn Andreas Gersky Edward Burtynsky photographs and film "Manufactured Landscapes” Garry Winogrand street photos in the 60s,
Harry Callahan's Chicago Street images Broomberg & Charnin exposing emulsified paper to the environment in Afghanistan August Sander Magnum photographer Gio Perez. Photo essays "OHIO" Alec Soth. Sleeping by the Mississippi & Niagara. Bruce Davidson East 100th Street
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