Portraiture

Here are some of my shots for the portraiture assignment. I wanted to say something about shielding or protecting yourself, but it wanted it to feel both staged and a little documentary-ish.

Art 21

Well-known PBS series exploring work of different contemporary artists, designers, photographers:
http://video.pbs.org/program/1217143847/

Here are the best of the pictures I took to this week--









The attributes I chose to highlight in Adie are her intricate collecting, her love of antique practices, and the juxtaposition between that and the technology she uses for school. The knitting represents her love of tactile projects, the cactus represents her roots (Arizona) and her interest in botany. The rotary phone represents the "old school" practices, and the laptop represents the new technology.

Awkward Party

Sorry I missed class last monday but I just wanted to show you my final photograph. We talked about adding an additional element to just the simple "party photo" so my idea was to capture the awkward or "un-fun" moments that we experience at a party.

Portrait

I would like my portrait to be of my friend Adie. With her surroundings I am going to try to symbolize the journey she has taken, and the experiences she has had that have gotten her to where she is now, here at Otis. Or something like that...

Hollywood revised

ok so I thought that the images that I presented in class were a lot more interesting and I guess looked better, but here are a few examples of what my initial idea was-also this is what we talked about during the crit.(it's good thing that I took hundreds of images so I had a lot to work with,and I could probably do a few more of those "day+night" shots).

portraiture assignment

I'm thinking of doing the portrait photograph using water as reference to its symbolism in Judaism. There are tons of examples of why water is so significant for Judaism for ritual purposes and in everyday life. Water can be used for blessings as well as in punishment. The Mikvah is a pool of natural rain water used for ritual purification purposes for men, women, and even utensils. There are many examples in the Bible where water plays a significant role (Noah and the Ark, Moses and the splitting of the Red Sea...just to name some). Even washing one's hands is very important for certain instances (before eating bread, waking up in the morning, etc.). So what I think I'll do is shoot a photograph of someone in my pool to show the ritual purification aspect, and try to bring in other elements as well.

Assignment 5: Portraiture - Symbolism and Myth

Create an image similar in nature to the Arnolfini wedding portrait. Every detail must act symbolically to enhance our understanding of the subject and recast their personality as it relates to universal myths.

The background is as important as the foreground of your image. You will be evaluated on how well each detail upholds the symbolism of the whole.

Photographs must be at least 8 x 10, but this is a minimum. Please consider the appropriate size for your image.

Week one

IN CLASS: Make an initial sketch in class of a loose plan for your image. OVER THE NEXT WEEK: you will take all of the photos needed for your image, which will likely be a composite. Bring in these photos + a second draft of your sketch of the final image (can be hand-drawn or computer generated)

Week two

you may not take additional images. Use your images from week one to produce your final image, which you have already planned.

NOTE: as usual you will be graded on content and craft. Your final image must use appropriate lighting and color correction.

Hollywood is sleeping..

Documentary Photographs Part I

Film Screening Tonight

http://www.redcat.org/event/ken-jacobs

The revered avant-garde filmmaker (Star Spangled to Death) and “paracinema” champion has a repertory of techniques to realize astonishing optical effects. In his live 3-D shows, Jacobs variously manipulates a film projector’s mechanisms, painted plastic cells, and sometimes objects, to summon otherworldly abstractions with vertiginous depth of field. “My self-constructed ‘Lantern’ uses neither film nor video,” he explains. “Abstraction can offer the opportunity to meet and grapple directly with risky situations, taking real chances instead of identifying with some actor-proxy on a movie set. The question of what we are looking at becomes of less urgency than from where in space we are viewing, and where and of what consistency and shape and size is the mass confronting us at any one moment. It might be best to think of what you and others see as a group hallucination.” Jacobs is also screening Disorient Express (1906/1996, 30 min., 35mm, silent).

Gas

work in progress/assignment 4

The Uncanny

For those of you interested in strange-making,
here is Freud's seminal essay on the uncanny:
http://people.emich.edu/acoykenda/uncanny2.htm
(sorry about the horrible gradient background)
essay was referred to recently here

hope for the future

idea machine

brainstorm

excessiveness

I'm interested in the idea of excessiveness :)

Fight the Night

So I was interested in documenting the various ways we try to represent the daylight when the sun goes down. I think we are all afraid of the dark, it must be an evolutionary defense mechanism, or it's the fear of losing ones "self." So we have created all sorts of different artificial lights to keep the darkness at bay. I chose to document the different public lights in my town, I tried to shoot them in a way that gave them a bit of ambiguity and made the light fixture itself seem separate and lonely, we use it every night like a guardian a protector but its just a glass ball of tungsten suspended in the air. The way you quicken your pace through the shadowy patch between street lights, and when standing directly below one you almost feel like a performer. There's something interesting about that.

Some thoughts so far...

I've started out by trying to think of places that I think would be interesting to document. One that I came up with while driving to work was this church. It's a really beautiful church and I would be interested to learn who comes in and out. What kind of people they are, etc.
http://maps.google.com/mapsrlz=1C1GGLS_enUS345US345&sourceid=chrome&q=church&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wl

I thought it might also be funny to hang out in front of the Forever 21 at the new mall by my house and photograph the patrons. I'd be curious to see who is coming and how much they fit my idea of the people who shop there. I fee like the result might be surprising.

What I'm thinking...

As of now I think I would like my "subject" for this project to be children. This week I want to document a place that seems ordinary/boring/mundane--then I would like to go back next week and shoot it from a child's perspective and make it different/exciting/new.

Assignment 4: The Politics of Deception

“One individual might think truth is one thing; another individual might think it’s something else. ‘Truth is what I believe it to be.’ ‘The world is how you think it is.’ And then there’s the second claim. ‘Truth is relative.’ Relative truth is broader than subjective truth. It purports to consider cross-cultural or historical differences. But when there are too many varieties of truth, the end result is the denial of truth.” (Errol Morris)

Part One

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For Next Week (12th)

-Need to bring in at least 40 images. These images must document something that you feel strongly about, whether it be a person, place or event. They must attempt to reveal the truth of the subject you choose

-You also must bring in one documentary image by a photographer that impacted your beliefs about something, ie. politics, religion, social, family, historical events - this we will share in class

Part Two

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For the 19th

Option 1: Alter or retake the image so that the result brings the viewer to a conclusion that is in opposition to one of your original photographs. Present the two images together.

Option 2: Re-enact a historical photograph, changing its meaning towards your own political ends.

BRING YOUR CAMERA TO CLASS MONDAY

this is a reminder.

Wunderkammer tests

This is a set up I am testing out. I thought it would be fun to shoot it outside and have my dog actually be in the photo interacting with the collection. I was also thinking of maybe using multiple images to convey the idea of how the dog is over-running my life. Maybe loving shots of my dog and shots of the trouble she's caused to add depth to the overall collection. I don't know if these should be displayed as separate images or combined almost diagrammatically into one image. (I'm leaning towards one image.)