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