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