Defining Beauty Through Avedon
This essay is about a photographer (fashion photographer) who focuses on taking portraits of women. He is involved with photographing models for high fashion magazines such as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. "Fashion photography is a lot about the clothes but as well as the sophistication of a woman that draws the viewer's in. Avedon uses a variety of things in his pictures that has eventually become his signature: the element of surprise. He has a lot of people who imitate his work but it simply isn't replicated easily.
Self-Portrait as Obscure Object of Desire
Jack Pierson, photographer thats famous for taking photos of naked men over time. Displaying the different changes in a mans body over his life time. He was also the photographer that made the book "self portrait" which attests the nature of people desiring for what they see in the magazines, the haircut, the clothes and the different facial features of a particular person in the magazine. He made himself the desire, he became the object of his own attraction.
Is That Portrait Staring at Me?
Photographer, Fiona Tan who did video portraits of inmates at a correctional facility. She made the subjects of her portrait work stand still dead pan in the middle of the frame staring directly into the camera lens. The idea was to appeal to the viewer and to provoke different emotions and feelings amongst the viewers. She's mostly known for her outstandingly unique video portraits of people.
A Pantheon of Arts and Letters in Light and Shadow.
Irving Penn, used bold contrasting light to make the subjects of his work stand out and contrast on the plain white background. It is outstanding. His subjects are bold and out front but they wear simple minimal clothing. He usually photographed his subjects in unusual locations but his work always turned out immaculate.
A Photographer's Lie
This essay goes to show what we all do in our every day lives. We choose certain moments to be shared. There are aesthetics that we follow instead of sharing every single bit of detail that compose of our lives. We decide not to share the messy parts of our lives or the broken parts of our careers and our families, we only share the good things which gives the people around us a false impression of how we are living as people.
Embalming the American Dreamer
Katy Grannan, photographer who finds her models by advertising in the classified section of the newspapers. She wanted to find people that she didn't know, people who she would feel uncomfortable to approach. She has the ability to make strangers look like they were made for the job, the models that were strangers did not look like strangers or distant from her. She would interview the models and find out about their lives, and then she asked the models to point out parts of their clothing that were significant and had meaning to them personally.
Response
I loved this reading. I myself, want to get into portrait photography more, photographing more people and the places that they come from. To match their identity with their environment. I have now found a new appreciation for this type of photography. The artists that stand out the most to me would be the last one, Katy Grannan, I'm so interested in the idea of meeting strangers in a new way and photographing them and telling their story through photography. Recently myself, I have become more confident in asking people if they want their photos taken, without prior knowledge of their abilities to strike a pose or to look natural in photos, I like to give people a chance, and to see if they can surprise you. Its always interesting working with new people because you learn a lot about them and you learn a lot about yourself too.
Friday, February 27, 2015
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Christine Gray: "Photography After Frank: Portrait" Summary/Reflection
This is the first chance, in this class, that we have had to
really explore the concept of photographing people. Portraiture is important for many reasons. A
photograph of a person is the only way to document exactly what they looked
like at that moment in time and save that memory for years to come. We can try
to remember what people looked like at a certain time in history, but none of
our memories will be as accurate as a photograph. Portraits can also convey the
different eras, decades, or certain times in history. They are very popular in
the media as well, such as fashion magazines. Gefter talks about how an
interesting theory about portraiture is that we can never be quite sure if the
portrait is actually of the subject, or if it is supposed to be a self-portrait
of the photographer.
Portraits used to be taken only of people who were well
known in society. Many artists succeeded in that practice, and many still do,
but there are lots of artists since then who have made an art of photographing
average people. I remember reading about a similar trend when I read the
section titled, “The Document”. Photography of seemingly ordinary things,
places, and people was not initially popular.
I was particularly interested in the small section about
Robert Mapplethorpe, which gave me the idea for my final project for this
class. He did close up portraits of his friends, which ended up resembling his
portraits of flowers. After going through his portraits of friends and flowers
online, I noticed that it was very easy to find a flower that looked like each
person and vice versa. They look really remarkable when placed next to one
another.
One artist that I did not quite understand was Thomas Ruff.
He did a series of very large headshots (like for a passport or driver’s
license) where the faces of the people were completely blank. I looked them up
online to see if maybe I was just missing something, and that was it. I must
just need to learn more about his style, because at first glance, his
photographs did not seem interesting to me.
I just found myself wondering, what is the point?
Gefter talks about Jack Pierson, which brings us back to the
idea of portraits being a self-portrait of the photographer. He did a series of
portraits of his friends, and each of them are supposed to represent him in
some way. I think that that is a very interesting idea. I know a lot of
photographers who hate being in front of a camera, and sometimes it’s easier to
find what you want in other people anyway. Sometimes it may seem to obvious to
use a picture of yourself to describe yourself. If you use a lot of portraits
of other people, you can focus on pinpointed aspects of yourself that you wish
to come across to viewers. Then there’s Cindy Sherman who takes portraits of
herself as different movie characters, which I think is another interesting
take on self-portraiture. Sometimes you don’t want to be yourself, or you want
to see yourself as someone completely different. Photographs are not a
permanent lifestyle change, so it gives you the change to play with the
performance of your identity and experiment with different ways of presenting
yourself.
Gefter touches on how portraits used to be authentic
representations of people. In today’s society, we are more conscious of how we
look because we know that there are ways to change how we look in a photograph.
Similar to the ideas we read about in the previous sections of this book,
authenticity and truth in photographs is something we question a lot more these
days. There is a lot of talk about how models in advertisements are being
photoshopped to look completely different from how they appear naturally.
Gefter also talks about how Fiona Tan blurred the line
between photographic portraiture and video portraiture. A photographic portrait
stops time and focuses on that one instance. A video lets you travel in time
that is still in the moment. Tan had her subject remain still in their video
portraits, which combines elements of the two practices. It is still a portrait
because the subject doesn’t move. However, everything around them is still
happening, still existing in continued time. This form of portraiture was even
more significant because her subjects were prisoners. They were essentially
trapped in the frame just like they were trapped in prison cells.
Rosas_Marion_Photography After Frank Response 4: ‘The Portrait’
This chapter discusses portraiture as a tool for decreasing
the distance between the subject and the viewer, and thus increasing their
relation. It poses an important question of whether a photographic portrait focuses
on the subject in the photograph or the photographer shooting the image. It is
peculiar how an audience often remembers a piece for the photographer who took
it rather than the subject in the photo looking back at them; it seems as
though a member of the audience should remember a face better than a name typed
in small print on the placard beside the piece. Lastly, this chapter examines
how the distance between the viewer and the photographed subject has increased
in the present day since the nineteenth century.
Defining Beauty
Through Avedon
This section begins by describing Richard Avedon’s work in
the fashion industry, photographing female runway models as his subject of
interest. His work revolves around the ‘individual’ rather than multiple human
subjects. He began photographing his younger sister and then moved on to other
subjects like Dovima and Penelope Tree, alternating between erotic and godly
portrayals of women.
Self-Portrait as
Obscure Object of Desire
In contrast to Avedon’s work in the last section, this essay
conveys Jack Pierson’s images of “beautiful men” as their bodies alter over a
lifetime. Jack Pierson is one of these photographers whose work primarily
represents a reflection of themselves: “In an attempt to establish a mythology
of self, Mr. Pierson is presenting new photographs of other men in the manner
of his own portrait, claiming their appearance to represent his own identity.”
His images bring about the idea of a ‘constructed’ identity, something
nonorganic.
Is That Portrait
Staring at Me?
This essay discusses the work of a film and video artist
known as Fiona Tan. Her images are photographs of inmates that have volunteered
to participate in her work. Tan then displays these images on a screen that
displays each image for a limited amount of time in a sequence. Her work serves
to dissuade her audience from developing misleading preconceptions of her
subjects.
A Pantheon of Arts
and Letters in Light and Shadow
Irving Penn photographed significant cultural figures that
were prominent throughout the twentieth century. His work eventually caught up
to him and he also came to be remembered as one of these common icons; in other
words, his work with photography influenced his identity as a human being. In
an exhibition at the Morgan Museum in New York, his work portrayed icons W.H.
Auden, Francis Bacon, Marcel Duchamp, Carson McCullers, Igor Stravinsky, and
even Tennessee Williams. He began to build connections with these people
through the process of photographing them, thus exemplifying an instance in
which the photographer’s work affects his life.
A Photographer’s Lie
This essay brings about a good question: What elements
qualify a personal experience as worthy of artistic expression? Many
photographers have expressed their personal experiences in their art in the
form of what this essay coins as a ‘visual diary’. For example, Annie Leibovitz’s
book A Photographer’s Life serves as
a record of images of her loved ones as well as her professional
self-portraits. However, this essay accuses Leibovitz of understating her romantic
relationship with Susan Sontag by not dedicating enough work to her. This
section utilizes this as an example of an instance in which photography fails
to accurately represent the past.
Embalming the
American Dreamer
Although Katy Grannan’s work in portraiture was a staged
practice, one in which she searched for her subjects in local paper
advertisements, it yielded an unintentional and surprising result. Most of the
subjects that answered her ads in the paper were young women in their early
twenties, often having recently graduated from college. Therefore, her
portraiture work grew into a study of this certain kind of age group—a study of
the variety that existed among people walking along similar paths.
I realize that portraiture is one of the more radical genres
of photography in the sense of their subject matter. Perhaps this is because a
portrait of another person is the most shocking image to another person
psychologically; a viewer instinctually relates a lot more to an image of
another person rather than that of an inanimate object. Therefore, it would
make sense for portraiture to be a lot more radical than other forms of
photography because its psychological connection makes it the most convenient
tool for sending a lasting message.
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Fitzpatrick, Alex - P.A.F. Response #3, The Staged Document - ARTO250
In this section of Photography After Frank I found many
ideas and sources of inspiration for my project. This section talks about the ways in which
you can manipulate or collaborate with your surroundings and subjects to
achieve an artistic goal or theme. It
talks about how our artistic choices affect our work as photographers.
After
reading this I have some good ideas about working with light and combining
these ideas with the ones I liked from the Portrait section. I think I want to do a series of portraits,
possibly including my own, in a silhouetted or shadow style. I want there to be some lighthearted elements
in the shadow portraits that juxtapose the seriousness of the shadow and tell
us something vague about the subject. I
got this idea after reading the second paragraph in the section talking about
Duane Michal’s series entitled The Spirit
Leaves The Body.
I really
enjoyed the discussion of different ways of representing or capturing time
within photographs. This is cool and tricky
because the nature of photographs is to freeze a particular moment in
time. Working with these opposing themes
can create some very cool breakthroughs and results.
Lastly, we
read about how Ryan McGinley has found a way to stage his documents but retain spontaneity
at the same time. He does things like
invite a large group of friends to a beach house for a party and set up a
trampoline. Eventually and inevitably he
gets some great shots of his friends jumping naked. These pics still seem like he captured a
genuine moment, which he did, but the moment was carefully thought out and set
up ahead of time. Genius.
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Linnea Havener: Photography After Frank - The Portrait
The Portrait:
This chapter talks about the portrait and how in the last
half of the twentieth century the portrait started out being a realistic
representation of the individual before moving towards the calculated artifice
as humans became more self-conscious due to the media and misrepresentation of
image in the world.
Defining Beauty
through Avedon:
This section talks about Richard Avedon who was a
photographer known for taking photos of women. He first started out taking
fashion photos of his sister and later became a photographer for prestigious
fashion magazines such as Vogue.
Avedon’s photographs were successful at animating women with spirit and
determination. He sometimes used elements of surprise as well as showing the
sophistication of each era.
Self-Portrait as
Obscure Object of Desire:
Opposite from Avedon, photographer Jack Pierson is known for
his photographs of attractive men. The main theme seen within all of his photos
is desire. His compilation of fifteen photos of beautiful men he has labeled as
Self Portrait. Pierson’s work brings
up the discussion and thoughts about the construction of one’s self being based
on society and culture. Although none of these photos are actually
self-portraits, they still tell the viewer about the artist such as the desire
he may have towards his subjects or his own desire to be as desirable as those
he admires.
Is that Portrait
Staring at Me?
Fiona Tan used her film and video skills in her project
called Correction to make videos of still portraits. Her subjects were
different convicts and prison guards who she filmed for about twenty to fifty
seconds with them standing straight, not moving and looking straight at the
camera. The final result was more of an installation featuring six video
screens as well as background sounds from the prison. Fiona has always been
interested in the grey area between photography and film, which she was able to
better explore with this project. The idea was that the videos show the passing
of time but by having the subject stand still, they are also stationary as time
passes around them. It is a combination of capturing one moment in time as well
as showing the passing of many moments in time.
A Pantheon of Arts and
Letters in Light and Shadow:
Irving Penn is known for photographing well-known cultural
figures of the twentieth century. His photographic style uses rich tones and
contrasting light to focus the viewer on the subjects’ physicality as well as
making them look monumental. To help show his subject’s legacy, he relies on
their personality such as their attitude, manner and countenance over things
like props and ambient lighting. Penn believed that his photos’ client is not
the subject themselves but the viewer. Before taking photographs of his
subjects, Penn would purposely not study the work of his subjects, as he did
not find it necessary nor would he give them much instruction on how to pose.
A Photographer’s Lie:
The author was not a big fan of this artist named Annie
Leibovitz. Annie’s photos somewhat resembled a personal diary but would lack
the personalization or truth about her. There were photos of important people
in her life as well as professional portraits she took of celebrities. Her
style features high-production, saturated portraits that are clever, staged and
unrevealing. A huge part of her book is of photos of her lover Susan. The
author of Photography After Frank,
Philip Gefter comments on how the personal diary feel of the book implies that
there will be a level of personalization and intimacy in the photos but there
isn’t any and that it is somewhat artificial. He says that in this book of
work, Annie fails to expose her soul to the viewers and instead uses it to
assert her ego.
Embalming the American
Dream:
This section is about photographer Katy Grannan who decided
to photograph random models. Each session involves Katy spending hours getting
to know her models by asking about their lives and finding out what was
meaningful to them. Part of her success capturing a portrait of her models is
that she tried to identify with them. She tries to find the common ground
whether it is desire, vulnerability, physical characteristics or even
psychological scars. Some of her more recent work no longer features indoor
locations but has now moved to the outside landscape. Like Jack Pierson, her
work reveals a lot about herself even though it is pictures of others.
Kelsh: Reading Response 1 (The Document)
THE DOCUMENT
Why MoMa Is Giving Its Largest Solo
Photography Exhibition Ever to Lee Friedlander
Friedlander’s
collection of work is significant in that each photograph he captures is a unique
view of American society, and because of his masterful compositions. The MoMa
decided to display five hundred of his images because of the familiarity of his
work that gives it broad appeal, and that he is “able to keep making the same
picture without it being the same picture” (16). He often revisits the same
subjects such as in his book Self
Portrait, where he captures himself over a span of time, and different
views of himself.
Travels with Walker, Robert, and Andy
Southern Exposure: Past and Present
Through the Lens of William Christenberry
Walker Evans
praised William Christenberry’s snapshot-like work by saying “there is
something about the way [he uses] this little camera that makes it a perfect
extension of [his] eye” (20). What I find most interesting about his work are
his pictures he took secretly of the Ku Klux Klan, because it was a big part of
what described the South; he brought it to light instead of putting a shroud
over it. He created “a stark acknowledgement of the dark side of the South’s
cultural history” (22).
John Szarkowski, Curator of Photography,
Dies at Eighty-One
Szarkowski
changed the perception of photography; before that, “photography was commonly
perceived as a utilitarian medium, a means to document the world”. Rather than just document things that were
oddities or special situations, photographers could too capture things that
were snapshot-like and with subjects that were considered ordinary. In other words, he believed that “their aim
had not been to reform life, but to know it” (23). Mr Szarkowski helped change
the course of photography by praising the photographer William Eggleston’s
work; while at the time people saw it as boring and mundane, he would later be renowned
as a pioneer in color photography.
The Imagist’s Eye
I liked the idea
of photography being a generative process that pulls you along, similar to how
music pulls a musician along. Wessel was also interested in the effect of light
on the world and how it turns out in pictures, particularly because of his
strictly black and white format of photos, such as in his photograph Santa Barbara, California, 1977. I also
like how he puts away his images for a year before deciding which ones to print
so that he can have a clearer judgment of each image, having spent time away
from it.
Beauty Is Not a Four-letter Word
Richard
Misrach’s photography is interesting in the way that it is very aesthetically
pleasing while also being saturated with political commentary about war and
environmental issues. I find it lovely that he is able to allow “the beautiful
and the meaningful to be seamlessly juxtaposed” (31).
The Tableau Inside Your Town Hall
Paul Shambroom
is mostly interested in photographing town council meetings as a means of
cataloging a city’s artifacts of power. He likes being able to capture the
emotions on the faces of these people and how they look during their somber
activity. I find it interesting that his photos also function as a narrative
and bring issues about representation to light.
Bernd Becher, Seventy-five, Photographer
of German Industrial Landscape, Dies
This
photographer was considered one of the best of his time. He used photography as
a scientific documentation and often chose mundane subjects, and also would
often repeatedly photograph the same object and compose them into grids to
create visual anomalies.
Keeping It Real: Photo-Realism
Robert Bechtle’s
paintings, drawings, and watercolors in the 1960s and 70s are nostalgic pieces
that are nearly copies of photography; they do their best to depict the world
with optical clarity and visual accuracy as photographs do. Even other art
movements began incorporating found images into their own work, and yet photo
realists went the furthest by even composing their detailed paintings as
photographs.
Portraits of American Paradises, Mostly
Lost
Joel Sternfeld
was interested in photographing suburbian, utopian communities and emphasize
how displaced and fake they seem from the natural landscape around them. What’s
interesting about his work is how he captures the idea of an ideal world rather
than an ideal world itself.
Keeping His Eye on the Horizon (Line)
I find it
interesting that Sze Tsung Leong is so inspired by his architecture background
and the idea of representing a 3 dimensional space in a 1dimensional picture by
use of horizon and parallel lines. He likes exploring to new place to
photograph thing which is something I highly relate to, since its easy to get
used to/not see the beauty as much in the environment you live in.
Personal Response
I was
particularly interested in Lee Friedlander’s piece New York City because of all the meaning and social commentary
about gender and class divide he was able to pack into one single photograph. I
also find it interesting that John Szarkowski was one of the first to see
photography as “the act of pointing,” and some photographers point at more
interesting things than others do. Photo-realism is also interesting in the way
that it alludes to the way that we can see the world through photography, even
though the movement wasn’t popular at first. Each of these photographers has
contributed to the art world of photography in their own unique way.
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