Notes 4/25/16

-Nancy Davenport: staged photographs depict and puts multiple images together to show familiar images in the media
-included by previous works of art by other artists and recreating them digitally
-would go take videos of events and take certain frames out and save them as screensavers
-Screensavers show protestors that reflect social issues that were current of the time
-Nikki Lee: conceptual photographer that wanted to do acting and film, but decided to do photography
-used a point and shoot camera and took photos of subgroups and dressing herself to combine photography and performance
-challenges the ideas of how we judge identity and how fixed our roles are
-she wanted to make us question our identity and can we and do make we our cultural identities
-she would often ask others or friends to take the photographs instead or herself

Maggie Taylor- Presentation 2

Notes 4/20/16

-Elad Lassry: post-appropriating photographer that works with found photographs
-frames around the photographers are the most predominant color in the photographs
-takes photos away from their original use and context, makes it more flat
-uses wires and other pigments in his photographs, sometimes using motion as well
-Alex Prager: dropped out of school at 14 and moved to Switzerland, then later back the states
-highlights a lot of emotional turmoil in her work and makes short movie videos
-a lot of her work in inspired by Los Angeles and public areas
-personally go through and dress each person in her photographs and uses a lot of primary colors
-Sophie Callee: travels for 7 years to get her art degree
-early work was black and white photographs and puts them in a book
-Detective was when she knew she was being followed but to her favorite places in Paris
-photographed people's first reactions of when they saw the ocean for the first time
-Richard Renaldi: takes a lot of self portraits of him and his partner and are often staged
-all his photos look like someone else takes the pictures
-travels to different places and documents him and his partner
-takes pictures of different people at the bus station  and where they are going is documented on the photograph
-Richard Galpin: works with processing of change in urban areas and the environment
-prints and peels away areas of the photos to create unique block-like shapes
-orbital sanding makes more blurred lines where you can't identify what it is; labeled in numbers
-makes 3-D photo sculptures that are anchored to the walls in his current work

Notes 4/18/16

-Brandon Nichols: combines gif images that are animated, usually human-like
-Shai Langen: looks like animation, but it actually real people, sometimes for music videos
-uses wall paper and paint on the human body and doesn't use computer animation
-Noemie Goudal:background images are fake and questions whether God is real in her photographs
-makes backgrounds fake and some real objects to question what's real and what's not
-Henry Hargreaves: noticed people liked to take pictures of their food before they ate
-one of the only photographs in the world that works with conceptual food photography
-works to study the social implications of food on society
-Candida Hofer: known for architectural documentation and analytical detailed photographs
-creates photographs that for made for people to occupy; all about color and shape
-photographs where each photograph was taken
-Roger Ballen: creates very creepy and hard to look at photographs in South Africa
-work reflects racial turmoil and hierarchical issues between differences in people's level of power  
-highlights different struggles that these people are facing
-Denis Darzacq: how people and urban areas interact to reflect how we navigate our world
-people levitating reflects our mindless urban activities and choices we make
-Katharine Cooper: documents white South Africans and how they are the minority
-she grew up as a white South African and shows how they are viewed as white trash
-Abigail Reynolds: works on how you can expend a photographic surface
-makes collages from found pages of books that depict famous places
-Brian Bress: collages to reflect his personal expression
-creates absurd protagonist and changes his own images to reflect the multitude of his identity
-shows how shapes and color reflect human form and work reflects consumerism

Notes 4/11/16

-photographs with thread and textiles
-Lisa kokin: cuts people out of found photos and threads them together
-Amy  Friend: has light shine through her photographs through little holes
-Dieuwke Spans: creates textures and 3-D look by layering her photographs
-Merve Ozlaslan: goes a lot of collage work for magazines and for herself in color
-Diane Meyer: pixelates photographs with cross-stitch, like the Berlin Wall
-Yoon Ji Seon: takes pictures of herself and adds sewing texture to her face other than her eyes
-J Frede: takes found photographs and creates his own unique landscapes by framing them together
-Randy Grskovic: takes pieces of his photographs and hand cuts and flips them
-Liz Orton: works with postcards of places and is interested in landscapes and recreating them
-photography becomes sculpture
-Susy Oliveira: photos creating a sculpture and producing color prints
-she likes to simplify things and it makes it more amplified
-Michal Macku: layers glass together and makes it look like a complete solid piece of glass
-Lucas Simoes: photographs rolled into a book by weaving photographs on wood and says he is making it look like a cinema scene
-Carmen Freudenthal and Elle Verhagen: create photos on blue jeans and making jeans look 3-D in their photographs
-Yuichi Ikehata: creates 3-D objects with photographs and creates fragments of people's' bodies  

Notes 4/6/16

-photography has found its power in documentary and referencing something else
-an approach of documentary photography is just a document, others use text, some are digital manipulation, and others document performances
-Nan Goldin and Larry Clark (1960's-70's): photographed intimate scenes and people doing drugs
-to the people they were photographing, they felt closer to them and didn't see the artists as photojournalists
-Leigh Ledare: focused on relationship between his mother and other family members in the most vulnerable positions
-defies logic of traditional family roles between mother and son; often takes sexual pictures of his mother
-Latoya Ruby Frazier: photographs usually about her family and where she came from
-all the townspeople worked in the steal mining industry and were family in the small town
-how the family relationships changed in the town over 3 generations
-it was her mother's idea to include herself (the artist) in the photographs
-Adam Broomberg and Oliver Charnarin: challenges how we see public and private photographs
-Erwin Wurm: performance about document type of photographs
-wanted to make photographs to poke fun at some artistic mediums
-purposefully made work that was politically incorrect
-challenges how the human body can be changed through different mediums
-Malanie Manchot: staged photographs between real life and performance
-how people regulate between public and private locations
-takes pictures of people that were just passing by, but she places them all in certain spots
-Nikki S Lee: best known for heavily performed and practiced American subculture by transforming herself in photographs
-cuts the photographs after she takes a picture of herself and her various partners in the photos and cuts the partner out to a certain ammount
-uses a disposable camera to challenge the authenticity of the photographs and leaves the date on the pictures
-Beat Streuli: depicts urban installations and photos look accidental like someone took them as they were just passing by
-Paul Graham: photojournalist in England and takes a lot of poverty-stricken areas
-took his American Night photograph by mistake and it turned out white
-Richard Renaldi: asked strangers to perform by touching each other when they didn't know each other
-took many takes since the pose had to reflect a certain level of intimacy

Notes 4/4/16

-these groups of artists collect appropriated images that are just democratic (no artistic significance), figure out the ideal in the photograph, and add their own style to it
-Elad Lassry: founder of the post-appropriating photography, uses a lot of photographs from textbooks, works made for academics
-questions the identity of the photographs and their genres and the frames become an extension of the photographs
-subtle manipulations challenge the genre of the photograph and wants you to find something slightly wrong with the photograph
-challenges how do we understand space by having the frame, foreground, and background all the same color
-Roe Ethridge: commercial photographer who also challenges how we categorize photographs
-skewed the dimensions of the objects to dilute the conventional ideals of photography
-Is it a mash up or a mix up?
-creates details that don't really belong with each other
-Alex Prager: dramatic movie-like compositions full of color and looks almost fake
-recreating images of woman through history of how women were portrayed in movie stills
-photography about photography: post- appropriating photography
-Man Ray: made photograms in the 20's and 30's; camera-less photography
-positions objects on light table to put an art form to a new photographic surface
-Sara Vanderveek: only uses print images from the internet of everyday life that doesn't come with the label of fine art
-puts old photographs in place and re-photographs the image on the light table
-Penelope Umbrico: types in words in a web search and puts them together in a collage in a certain space
-main objective: how anyone can appropriate and make their own photographs
-filters and re-puts together generic objects and sees what comes up for the first 1,000 photographs
-Walead Beshty: creates abstracts and purely materialistic photographic surfaces
-how a photograph can be transformed into something so abstract
-Eileen Quinlan: uses thing mirrors, curves it, and shows how an object is reflected and how it represents an abstract of reality
-tricks the viewer into thinking it's a painting, when it is a photograph
-Wade Guyton: paints on a canvas and feeds it though into a photo printer machine
-Amanda Ross Ho: mixes and matches images from other art mediums and regroups them together
-Michele Abeles:only thing that's real in her photograph is the model (usually male)
-manipulates and collages to make it look more flat, even when it has layers

Response to Jason Salavon

Jason Salavon used very creative ideas to make unique photographs that people both could not make without technology, and also probably would not think to even make at all. I love the first photograph of the morphing of the Titanic scenes. You are able to see such a complex movie in film scenes that are not individually recognizable, but you can see the blended of a common theme to the movie. The centerfolds have a similar idea. You are not able to see each individual woman, but you can see common themes for that time depicted in what people thought was the ideal sex symbol and beauty of that decade. You can see those common themes change over time in each of the different blended photographs. I thought the One Special Moment photographs were very unique since it shows something that is so special to everyone in the photographs, but it makes you realize how common each of those events are for many different people. The Census Data photographs also show commonalities in people over time that people may feel is unique to them, but is actually very common. The 3-D light images add a certain visual value that flat images could not. I liked to see that data could be represented in such a way that would not only make it easy to understand, but very pleasing to look at. I like when artists use technology this way in their photographs, since they are making something they normally couldn’t, not just smoothing out imperfections. 

Notes 3/28/16

-Aziz and Cucher: used photographs of people they actually took, then photoshopped them
-first to use Adobe in their digital photography
-wanted to show how new technology affects us in our daily lives through our psychology
-analyses how technology makes us lose our identity
-Interiors represents living skin that is transformed into 3-D architectural space
-interested in the transformation that takes place when looking at a photograph
-having a very negative outlook on how technology affects images
-Mathieu Bernard-Reymond: constructs images from multiple shots and composes it into one continuous frame
-takes pictures of people for hours and days when they enter the exact same spot
-people didn't know if they would be included in the space
-Beate Gustschow: takes different pictures at different places to make the ideal landscape
-uses over 100 photographs and photos look almost artificial
-photographed all over the world to create an architectural disconnect without any people
-never lists the places she photographs
-Nancy Davenport: photos look like terrorist attacks and constructs political images that are familiar to us
-we look at her images with familiarity and works with our memories that goes beyond the basic level of a photograph
-Joan Foncuberta: became known for series Landscapes Without Memory used from imagery technology that transforms a map into a 3-D simulated images
-uses language of science and look of photography to challenge a truthful landscape image
-creates fabricated photographs from technology to show defined hallucinations
-Richard Galpin: works with his own photographs and technology, prints his photographs, scores the emotion from his photographs to create a collage technique
-subtracts information from his photographs with technology, instead of adding things in like in photoshop
-Rudd Van Empel: uses digital collages to show beauty of black children, taking imperfections out makes it look almost fake
-children look like creatures and mimic soldiers and look too perfect
-wanted to define what makes fairytale child in books instead of normative white children
-Maggie Taylor: creates images that look like tintypes and layers 100-200 images in photoshop that looks very fairytale-like
-sometimes scans literal taxidermy objects that give a fairytale look to her work
-Maki Kawakita: became famous for work that is playful video-game like images and was heavily influenced by Tokyo pop culture
-combines traditional Japanese theater and flower arrangements
-Cao Fei: reflects Chinese culture where she's from and creates complicated images of where she's from
-wanted to reflect how changes in culture affects the younger people in that country
-creates hyperrealistic images of the cultural architecture and behavior

Notes 3/23/16

-digital photography allows us to create a reality, instead of capturing it
-collections from the internet and morphed to make a photograph without a camera
-Nancy Burson: used video technologies to create portraits from previous ones over time
-desired to create ideal beauty portrait based on beauties of the time combined
-created archetype of what the ideal beauty is
-archetype of dictators with similar personalities to create a morph of all the people with a commonality
-Daniel Lee: combined peoples' faces with various animal faces from Chinese zodiac
-photographic surface is 2-D and he wanted to create something that had never been done before
-Christopher Dorley-Brown: went to tiny town in England to take a series of portraits from 2,000 people to combine people from the same age groups and genders, and the people end up looking the same
-Jason Salavon: took 100 centerfold images from the internet and blends them into an image to show a common theme for those models
-lighter skin, better lighting, and different hair color occur over time
-blurring the images makes you wonder what you are looking at
-100 Special Moments are from combining of common American events like weddings, Santa Claus at Christmas, and graduation photos
-makes us question how we categorize our photos and shows us common life events
-Loretta Lux: uses children of family members and friends to create an archetype of the child to show the psychological personality of them, usually creates her own backdrop also
-there is often a detachment and unusual proportions in the children
Gillian Wearing: Album; photographs herself on her family members from old albums
-made masks and body suits to be as close to the real people as possible
-Craig Kalpakjian: wanted to create work that looked like corporate spaces by how he remembers them

Pina Reflection

Pina reminded me a lot of the staged photographs we have been learning about in class. The dance with the red clothe on the ground sounded like there was a heart beat in the background, so it felt like a moving representation of anxiety or abuse, similar to the staged photographs of the same things. My cousin is a dancer for the professional ballet company in New York, so I know first-hand how hard it is for the dancers and choreographers to covey emotions without the ability to use words. The same can be said of photography, since it is still life. I found it particularly on the misogynist side because the woman looked like a victim of violence in the first dance, and the man was looking angrily at her. In the scene where the woman had the polka-dot dress, she had to rely on the man to catch her every time she fell, instead of reaching out to check herself, and she looked like she had empty emotions that he had to fill, based on her facial expression. The women are always in dresses with the men having to catch and support, similar to traditional gender roles. I liked that Pina was so unconventional and didn’t strive to make things pretty and glamourous, like most ballet choreographers try to do. She uses very realistic and common life problems depicted in her work, like emotions of anger and sorrow. A lot of people can feel and relate to the emotions she reflects in her dances. 

Notes 3/2/16

Joel-Peter Witkin
-war photographer and liked to take photos of corpse-like people
-adds depth to his imagery by making 3-D photographs on top of each other
-inspired other artists by creating very odd corpse-like people in the photographs
-used a lot of dogs and people who were deformed and had disabilities
Thomas Demand
-made a scene from 30+ tons of cardboard sheeting and no one area is the same
-challenges the age-old motto of photography that has to be documentary and conventional
-likes to portray historical reenactments of certain major events and places  
-Dailies were things in his everyday life and he constructed them and took their pictures
Sandy Skolgund
-childhood affected her photographs later on in life; middle class family
-very colorful work usually with lines and she wanted to learn different types of art
-Radioactive Cats was a way to show that animals are somehow surviving even though humans are harming the earth and making it hard to lie in
-likes to use live models and sculptors at the same time
John Pfahl
-used conceptual photography to show extreme differences in human endeavours
-took pictures of atomic bombs scenes and represents the beginning and end of a culture
-pictures taken from inside people's homes he thought would be a permanent view of the outside
-windmill photos show the contrast between man-made structures and natural landscape
Shizuka Yokomizo
-she takes photos from a distance and doesn't know her subjects
-she was able to capture the natural facial expression and body language
-takes photos from other side of the window to show relationship of emotion from a distance, but still has the intimacy

Notes 2/29/16

William Eggleston
-growing up in Memphis, TN influenced his art being in the South
-dye transfer prints was a way he started to print his photographs
-Los Alamos prints are large color prints from 1974
-doesn't have titles for his photographs, but rather names of a series of works
-takes ordinary objects and creates interesting photographs out of them
Robert and Shana Park Harrison
-series called the Architect's Brother: 1993-2001
-9 sub-series that use a lot of Earth scenes with modeled people
-Robert is often the model in the photos and Shana does the set designs
-uses paper overlays to make the image, sometimes with 18 layers and lots of wax to create texture
Carrie Mae Weems
-got her degrees in art and folklore, which came into her work
-she makes us see the unfair stereotypes that we place on people
-uses colors of overlay on photographs to abolish race of her subjects
-Kitchen Table shows how that space revolves around women and the intimacy of relationships between men and women, women and children, and women and women
David Hillard
-mixes autobiography with fiction and uses subjects from his real life
-uses his father/son relationship in his photos to tell a story
-oftens shoots horizontal photos instead of vertical ones
Philip-Lorca Dicorca
-choose to get into photography after overdosing on drugs and one of his friends died
-all staged photographs that are ordinary but look like they're film stills
-male prostitute photos have staged scenes of real-life workers and the light give glamour to a non-glamorous profession
Mariko Mori
-creates wardrobe and scenes of herself and no one really looks at her
-her costumes represent alien and robot-like figures
-she wants to have a child-like look in her photographs
-she uses different elements of Earth, wind, water, and fire and was very spiritual

Response to Manufactured Landscapes

            At the start of the video, I was unsure what it was going to be about since it started in such a large warehouse. It was surprising to me to see all of the people documented at once in the photos and that there was still detail in their faces. The workers seemed to be content with what they were doing, some on the shipyard even saying that they were working for their country. I liked how the workers looked in the photo when they were all lined up in their yellow work clothes and that they had a uniform symmetrical look like in blocks. It seemed like the artist wanted to capture the masses and depict the overall hard working attitude of the workers. Seeing the smiles of the people, despite the hard labor jobs they were working so hard at to finish like the ship yard, for example. Also, there was the tedious jobs of assembly in the factory, yet you didn’t see the boredom and fatigue in the faces in the workers. Although the workers may in fact be bored of their day in, day out jobs, but it is hard to see that in the photos and video the artist chose to show. It was amazing to me to see the construction of the dam in action, instead of just before and after shots.  I really liked the symmetry in the photographs, especially on the construction sites. It was also pleasing to see to see the smiles in the faces of workers. 

Notes 2/22/16

-deadpan style was a way of documenting people and the area around them
-Susan Sontag: "There is never any real understanding in a photograph, but only in an invitation to fantasy and speculation."
-what you know about a person can create an implication of the meaning of the portrait photograph
-Thomas Ruff: created photographs in completely flat lighting, with a lack of facial expression, like a photograph for a passport
-neutral background, the portraits only have hair, clothing, and possibly jewlery, so we are forced to infer things about that person through imagination
-Philip-Lorca diCorcia: sets up lighting system in large cities and waits for people to come into the lighting, and takes their picture without them being aware that they are being photographed
-unsuspecting pedestrians become performers and look like they have fallen into their own thoughts, as raw and as pure as it is
-Adrienne Saligner: her and others are interested in transition of time and capturing evolution of people's lives
-invisible man: middle aged men who become older and ignored in society, all of the men she photographed couldn't believe that was what they looked like
-Rineke Dijkstra: became famous for shooting pictures of adolescence at the beach of them going trough their life
-takes the picture just as the subjects are starting the form their pose to capture their uncertainty that reflects the time in their life
-language transforms trough life transitions, like woman to mother, for example
-Katy Grannan: started to give a voice to individual women that she photographed, she gave them a freedom to choose how they wanted to be portrayed
-previously has been a clash of how the artist wants to document the person, and how they want to be portrayed
-Catherine Opie: interested in people who are in-between, photographed LGBTQ people and challenged the meaning of gender definition
-photographs the people in lush, provocative colored clothes, but has no other indication to their gender identity or orientation
-Charlie White: compared adolescents to transgenders right after their surgery
-Kelli Connell: visual manipulation makes the two people look like twins when they are not and the body language was meant to look very similar  

Response to Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall reminded me of Andreas Gursky in the sense that both of them took very large, interesting photos of architectural buildings. I thought the image of the 180 degree inside of the building was a fishbowl kind of effect that was very cool to look at. I think he did a good job of conveying emotion in his photographs. In his photograph of the Asian man walking by the couple, there are racist connotations through the man squinting his eye with his finger, and his trophy white-looking girlfriend who is made to look superior through the way she’s dressed. Just by looking at them, especially at how far away they are standing from the man, you can sense the anger and disgust of his race. Similarly with the picture of the destroyed room, the emotion leaps right out of the picture. It is obvious that it is a woman’s room because of the clothes and shoes all over the floor, but it angered me that they had to make it a woman because it implies that she is weak and emotionally unstable, unable to handle her emotions. I think it would be cool if his photos could have been in magazines like Life and Time, so people were more aware of their social impact of their choices on others. I really liked how complex his photos could look, and I felt like it would become tedious to stag such complex scenes for his photographs, like in the destroyed woman’s room. 

Response to Andreas Gursky

As Andreas Gursky said in his video, there is a certain level of consumerism in our culture, which I feel drives a lot of our actions. I feel like his photo of all of the shoes lined up is a perfect example of this, and is something you would likely see in a magazine ad. Everyone is so greedy these days and is so concerned about themselves and their possessions, that everyone feels a short of disconnect from each other. Even in the way Gursky tried to only take pictures in the galleries where people weren’t looking at the camera can be representative of this. In the picture of the dead soldiers, however, there seemed to be the opposite effect. There seemed to be an emotional tied that kept them all together and they all had something in common. It didn’t matter how much money, material possessions, or status they had, they are all victims of the war now, and they are all the same. There is a certain uniformity in those soldiers, as well as in all of us. Everyone likes to say that they are photographer, sometimes even calling themselves artists, but if everyone can do it, then what makes it special? Being an artist is creating something that no one has before and requires a unique skill that not everyone can obtain with taking selfies on their phones. It’s like the soldiers, at the end of the day, one day our possessions won’t matter, so it’s important to contribute something meaningful while you still can. 

Notes 2/17/16

-contemporary stage approach to photography in documentary form
-captures beautified moment staged by photographers, Kodak moment, dramatized
-major focus is basic functions of photography, captures documents
-daguerreotype photography focused on functionality of camera and shot people straight on
-that was a certain emotional disconnect from the photographer
-August Sander: on of the first photographers of this type, captured portraits of people
-had democratic and sociological connotations in his portraits of who the people were
-portraits shot with minimal lighting and straight on  
-Diane Arbus: considered influential in the 60's, weirdness surrounded her subjects
-topography: the accurate and detailed description of a place, a kind of mapping of the surface
-Robert Adams: stylish neutral landscape, photos could have been done by anyone
-photographs were purely documentary, didn't have human emotion
-William Eggleston: the only commercial photographer using color, looked snapshot-like
-he believed in extracting the ordinary and make it look fascinating
-Bernd and Hilla Becher: founded school of arts from 70's-2000's
-lots of people followed their style of documenting similarity in landscape and buildings
-put buildings in grid format so you could compare all of them structurally
-mapping was used to show diversity of objects
-Andreas Gursky: photographing large architectural structures, everything in focus, from foreground to background, patterns in photographs
-tried to make photographs as large as a painting, one photograph sold for over 3 million
-Thomas Struth: huge photographs, only shown in museums, photographs of inside architectural buildings, looks tutorist-like but intentional
-Do you think this type of style represent how we feel disconnected from each other?
I think that we have researched the point where everyone is a photographer in some sense or another, and we've gotten to the point where nothing is very original or special anymore.

Notes 2/15/16

-Gregory Crewson has hidden narratives in his fairy-tale like photographs
-has haunting and surreal feelings and hires an entire industry to make just one photograph
-staged photographers are relying on one photograph to make an entire story
-Crewson explores suburban America lifestyle and hires townspeople to pose in photographs
-each photo is polished and perfectly lit, people are physically present, but psychologically gone
-blue and green tints give a tv-like feeling of falseness
-wants to give an illusion of a movie, but have it seem like it's a real possibility
-Jeff Wall is one of the best photographers that was fabricated photography that looks like documentary photography
-went to a street and observed events over days to find racist occurrences and recreate them
-famous for being an art critic and historian, wanted people to have emotional responses of his photographs and paintings
-"Destroyed Room" was a women's room shown to depict her psychological aggression and disruption
-started to use digital manipulation by shooting multiple photographs over 5 months and put them together to make one particular photograph, and had to put them together since they could not be printed that way  
-people wanted to use his techniques as a way to advertise things by morphing things together
-Thomas Demand: famous work is images of painted cardboard boxes of historical images from magazines and newspaper, predominantly German
-he creates imagines of nations that are collectively remembered and created by international media
-shows small imperfections purposefully to show a lack of active involvement in the memory
-recreated an event of a cruise ship being hit by a hurricane
-Jeff Wall (video): used paintings to help him find human beauty in his photographs
-wanted his photographs to make a claim to truth
-when starting to use color, he saw illumination in advertisements
-lights shine through white paper to show illumination
-artists wanted to show representation of events to viewer, instead of documentation
-"Dead Troops Talking" he wanted the dead soldiers to wake up again and start having a conversation, so he depicted that in digital photography

Response to Dick Blau

It was interesting to see the difference in quality of the camera Dick Blau compared to the quality of all the high resolution cameras that exist today. As someone so interested in psychology, it was interesting for me to see him do such a good job at capturing the culture and different religious beliefs of the people he documented in his videos. Although I am not a religious person myself, so it is hard to relate to their passion, I believe Dick Blau did an amazing job at capturing it in his films and what he documented really shows depth to the people in his films. I liked his still photos a lot because he was able to tell such an exciting story in one photograph, instead of in moving film, which can be very hard to do. The excitement and joy of the people in the photographs really leaps out at you and you can't help but feel similar emotions. I thought it was cool that his Polish photographs in the gallery were displayed by the escalator, so you could see them just long enough for them to catch your eye before you were on to the next photograph. Overall, I like his photograph, but his films tell less of a story to me, especially the one about the whistles that had the children in it. The creatures looked a little bizarre to me and I didn't understand why they were there. I did like his realistic photos of the Polish people, however. 

Notes 2/8/16

-fabricated/staged photography: 60's-80's/90's
-Hyppolyte Bayard: took photograph of himself appearing dead in 1840's to show anger over not being known as one of the first photographers
-tableau photographers do it all: directing, make up, setting the scene
-Eugene Meatyard used his family to stage horrific, death-like images
-he used children who didn't really know what they were doing and used their innocence  
-Less Krims took photographs of forensic crime-scene like photos of female victims
-criticised by feminist artists because he only took photos of female victims
-Arthur Tress photographs surrealistic fears and fantasies of the models that pose for him
-emotional confessions were documented into illusionist staged photography
-advertising strategies developed reality in photos in staged photography
-exaggerated posed and dramatic colors were being used in the 80's and 90's
-useful detachment from photography became suggestions, not descriptions
-shift from how a photograph represents reality to how reality can be presented in a photograph
-David Levanthal explores historic images by using toys to depict stories
-takes pictures of how he remembers the historical stories and events (based on memories)
-famous for Wild West stories reconstructed; about hazing memories
-uses color to evoke emotion and sexuality to photographs about historical events
-Ken Botto uses miniature characteristics of toys to create brutal style
-interested in scenes that depict events and information in our modern lives
-Bruce Charlesworth creates everything that goes into a single photograph
-creates absurd, dramatic, and sometimes violent photographs with actual people
-he was so interested in movies that he wanted to create poster-like photographs to intrigue us
-Sandy Skoglund uses people or sometimes animals to show elaborate whimsical photographs
-invites models to come in and model for her to show absurd objects in a scene
-these types of photographs are used to create bias and prejudice in our culture
-Joel Peter Witkens show horrific and pitiful people to show modified human bodies
-used cadavers to show pain in human bodies through such horrific alterations
-he wanted to bring crimes of violence against people to bring awareness to the media
-Robert and Shana Parke Harrison collaborate together together and make the sculptures for the photos
-pre-digital photographs showed the overuse of the land due to the technological age
-used a lot of work to develop photos; Robert often poses in photographs

Response to Georges Rousse

It was interesting to me how he would use old abandon hospitals, slaughterhouses, and warehouses for his work, and he said he would depict what used to happen in those places, kind of like a reflection. I thought it was a unique way that he could make his “self-portraits” seem to float off the walls, although it seemed a little odd to me that he called them self-portraits at all, since all of them looked so different in their appearance and emotion. It baffled me as to how he was able to make his pillar paintings so realistic and three-dimensional. It is very impressive to me that he is such a strong artist in two different mediums of art, painting and photography. It seems like very tedious work to go back and forth from the area in the building to the viewfinder in his camera. At first I thought it was bizarre that he would cut into the walls, but it gives a very strong element of depth in his paintings. By using the same uniform color in his paintings, he is allowing the light to change the appearance naturally. The letters on the walls tell more of a story to his paintings, something that other effects like alterations in light would have trouble doing on their own. I liked when he used elements of his own life into his work, like when he used the lines of the mountains he walks in on the walls. I’m curious as to what happens to the buildings once he is done with them. It would be amazing if they could be preserved in the buildings for others to enjoy for years to come. 

Response to Still Moving

It was interesting to see the art of Joseph Mougel and listen to his talk. I wasn't sure what the art concept would be until I went to the gallery. I thought that his idea of digging holes that are as tall as himself very interesting. I also liked when he took photos of the lake that he cleaned off over several weeks’ time. I think it would be very peaceful to be in solitude, just preparing something for a work of art, especially by putting all the frames together. I think it’s cool when someone with military background will incorporate concepts of it into their life when they come back home. His military photos of the people in white was both personal and impersonal. It was impersonal in the sense that they were all covered in a neutral color and you couldn’t identify them; they were just a number. However, their faces depicted each of their struggles in the war through their facial expressions and the looks in their eyes. I wondered what got Joseph Mougel into teaching after having such a seemingly successful art career so far. Maybe he wanted to pass on his wisdom and experiences. The art pieces in the gallery reminded me of those books where you flip through them backwards and the little moves and tells a story with each page being a slightly altered picture of the last. Still photography seems two-dimensional to me, whereas Still Moving was work that was both three-dimensional, and it came to life.  

Notes 2/1/16

-Yasumasa Morimura paints the same masterpiece as background and inserts himself into photograph
-questions western documentary of our history
-"why can't art history start with eastern art?"
-asks us to question education of western art history
-Carrie Mea Weems posed questions about race and color
-uses tints on black  and white photographs to change perspective on skin color
-work explains how we describe ourselves based on color
-Lorna Simpson uses textures to show differences in class and race
-photographs don't show faces to show gender and race neutrality
-challenges how experience is created through history or memory
-incorporates text to show a story behind the image, but makes you question what you see first: text or photograph
-Gillian Wearing does documentary type work to show the public in a way that we wouldn't normally want to see
-the people she took photos of are choosing how they want to be documented, instead of the artist taking photos of what they want
-Shizuku Yokomizo documented subjects who chose to be photographed without knowing who the artist was, he is just a silhouette
-he took photos of people through a widow after sending postcards asking them to participant
- Ruth Thorne-Thomsen was a famous pin-hole camera photographer
-pin-hole cameras are naturally not focused and shows depth of field
-she was interested in constructing illusions with different distances
-Aberaldo Morell made the whole room a camera obscura and used a tiny hole in the window
-with such low lighting it would take about 8 hours to get the photograph
-Adam Fuss makes photographs with photograms (objects on light table in dark room)
-how much light exposure is going to be made has to be calculated
-Susan Durst uses moonlight and a flashlight as her light source and wanted to be very close to her landscapes in her photographs

Response to Vic Muniz

I really enjoyed the work of Vic Muniz and the powerful impact he had in the documentary. I think it’s very cool and unique to use food as a template for an outline of people and pictures used for photography. It is a very creative way to come full circle with the trash workers to build their outlines with recyclable objects. I thought it was very interesting to see the positive attitudes and outlooks in the personalities in the workers. Most people had a smile on their face, despite their job and he various hardships in their lives. I’m glad that Vic was able to document them and make a big impact in their lives by showing them how important they are. I especially liked when Vic used the bottle caps and various smaller objects to show texture in the faces. Vic’s wife brings up a valid point, however, with psychologically affecting the workers and taking them out of their “bubble.” I definitely feel that the workers were living in a bubble, but a lot of people all over the world do, especially when they live in rural areas. When someone lives in an area and has a certain way of life for so long, even their whole life, they often don’t know any better and only know things that learn about from others. They often don’t experience things for themselves, but Vic was able to give them that rare opportunity. Although there was a risk of the psychological health of the workers to change negatively, I think it was worth the risk for Vic to do this project. 

Notes 1/25/16

-content and concepts are more important
-photography for conceptual art is perfect since it's based on looking
- labels on works of art make you understand its meaning and look at it again
-photography is based on nature of representation
-Ken Josephson says there is always an illusion and you're looking at a picture of reality
-John Pfahl alters space and landscape to show dimension
-we assume the farther the objects are, they are the same size,but appear smaller
-the sense of space is being altered in Pfahl's photos
-Zeke Berman, a sculptor, saw photographs changed the way his objects were created
-Georges Rousse painted the walls to change the way his architecture designs were viewed
-David Hockney was the first to show collage art  in photographs
-his photographs look like lots of little frames with movement
-Vic Muniz works with no conventional materials in his photographs, like food
-if you pay attention to the food in his photos, you don't see the photograph
-photography's biggest job is to persuade, over an other medium

Response to Cindy Sherman video

In Nobody’s Here but Me, Cindy Sherman does a great job of depicting postmodernism through her photography. Most of the women in her photos demonstrate what we talked about in class, that are not just selling a product or an image, they are selling a lifestyle. However, I do believe that Cindy Sherman is trying to develop a deeper meaning than that. She takes a concept, such as female vulnerability, for example, and really highlights that emotion in her subjects’ faces, like the woman that appeared to be covering most of her face under the covers. I really liked what Jamie Lee Curtis said about Cindy Sherman not trying to be a feminist, but really showing those qualities, and I’d have to agree with her. She depicts some serious feminist issues in her work, including the male gaze. For example, when the woman was leaning on the front door in the hallway, was she rejected by the man of the house because he was no longer interested in her for an insane reason like not being beautiful or young enough anymore? Another thing I really loved was when she used the medical dolls in place of actual people so she could still shoot some naked body photos after profanity was more regulated in the industry. I love artists who find their way around certain regulations and I believe Cindy Sherman did it in a very interesting and creative way. Although I’m not a big fan of her later work, just because of the blood and it being less realistic, I do think she does well to send a very powerful message in her work. 

Notes 1/13/16

- understanding of history and reality has been through the photograph
- "we start to believe a photograph more than reality"
- life is presented by a series of images
- concept and context become much more important
- crossing over  of ideas and styles is encouraged and expected
- modernism was objective and documentary
- postmodernism was subjective and fabricated photos were common
- documentary photographs in the 60's, for example, were supposed to be truthful
- pop art uses old photographs and uses a twist of their own personality
- Frank Majore was an important postmodernist
- it is less of a product ad, and more selling a lifestyle
-postmodernism means everything is an image
- Sherrie Levine was an appropriationist
-she was saying there is nothing left for an artist to do but copy
- it is a representation of an reproduction of an object
- Cindy Sherman is one of the most celebrated postmodernist photographers