reading #8

Why didn’t we START with this reading? The irony of it being my last reading and one of my last assignments of undergrad…

While I feel so incredibly fortunate for the education I have received these past four and half years at Tyler, I definitely agree with some of the things that made this list. This semester I’ve particularly struggled with having a balanced life. I spent countless late nights in the semester and when I wasn’t in the studio I was at work. I feel myself desperate to be done with classes so that I can have a regular sleep schedule again. I also feel like my personal life has suffered from not having free time to stay connected with friends. While I am proud of all the things I’ve accomplished this semester, balance really is important. My friends are a huge part of who I am and what keeps me inspired. I’m hoping to find a better balance of work and play post graduating. I don't want either to overtake the other.

           

Another part of the list that makes me nervous entering the “real world,” are knowing how to market myself and business practices in general. I’ve spent so much time in the bubble of art school concerned with creating and pushing concepts that I have no practice in business etiquette. I have no clue how to prepare for an interview or go about finding photography jobs. I’m terrified that I will end up not working in the field of photography.

Since I'm finishing school this week I guess I just have to hold on to hope that I actual know more than I think.....

reading #7

This reading was by far my favorite of the semester and the most relevant to my own artistic vision. In the last year or so, my work has moved further from representation and more to abstraction. I want my work to focus more on the spiritual and emotional aspects of reality that I can’t put into words, so I make them into images. While I find my images rewarding for myself, it’s hard for people outside of the art world to appreciate them because of the problems Lyle Rexer mentions in, The Edge of Vision. People instinctively want to make something of what they see and know how and why it’s made. My goal is the complete opposite of that. My thesis work is a great example of this. I feel like once people know that the images are ink and food coloring they’re satisfied, but they end up completely missing the interaction I want them to have with the images. Abstraction asks the viewer to rely more on their emotional response to the work than purely analytical.

reading #6

John Szarkowski makes several interesting points in the introduction to his book, Photographer’s Eye. I particularly liked his take on the photographic frame and how the frame is selected and not conceived. The choice of what to include or exclude is a key element in the meaning of a photograph. He argues that reality extends out in four directions and therefore photographs are not merely realistic representations. This way of thinking of photographs, even ones traditionally considered representational, is quite intriguing. It puts an emphasis on the decisions of the photographer as a creator rather than as a documenter.

            Another part of image making has to do with time. I’ve always been an admirer of Cartier-Bresson who coined the decisive moment. So much of photography relies on time. The time the photographer decides to press the shutter and capture the image, but also how much time is recorded. Each image was made in the present but as soon as it’s made it becomes a part of the past. The image becomes the remembered reality of the present in which it was made.

            Lastly, I found his argument that “an artist is a man who seeks new structures in which to order and simplify his sense of the reality of life,” to be his most compelling point. This has always been the way I’ve used photography: to make sense of my reality. It’s ironic that he uses this as a basis for an artist since I still struggle with calling myself that even at the end of four years at a fine art school.

2014 Calendar

For my self-directed lighting final I decided to just have fun. I took my friends into the studio, dressed them up and tried to capture each month in a single image. I wanted to have fun for my last undergrad project, but also make nice images. But really.. I'm hysterical.

festive photos

Here's some seasonal photos! Happy Halloween!

table top

Since midterm we've moved away from people for a bit and to the table top! ooooohhh pretty.....

lighting midterm

Here's my people images for midterm!

response #5

Aimee Beaubien

I was drawn to Aimee Beaubien's work because it really pushes the boundaries of what I consider a photograph. Her series, Found & Found, takes the two dimensional image and makes it seem more sculptural. She strips her pictures down to color relationships, textures and the basic forms. I'm intrigued by how she pairs images next to each other, and the shapes she chooses to cut out. The way she collages images has a fluidity to it. For me, I focus less on what the original images were of, but more on what her created images make that's new and different. As a lover of abstraction, I think it's interesting how these become abstractions of things that are based in reality.

Heather Evans Smith

Another artist I found really interesting was Heather Evans Smith. Her work is much more cinematic and theatrical. Her series, The Heart and the Heavy, are gorgeous images, but in each image there’s something that’s just a little off. The formal aspects of the images are beautiful to look at, including the lighting and textural details. The oddities of the scene give the images a surreal, dreamlike quality though that is quite nice. I really enjoy how she uses color in her images. Most of the image has a similar color palette, but then there’s one focal area that pops and draws your eye. Aside from the formal qualities of the work, I also like the concept. I feel like I can relate to the work because it’s about dealing with a struggle which everyone feels at some point in their life. I think the way she illustrates these struggles is really poetic and graceful. She illustrates a feeling in a beautiful way. 

Bill Miller

The last photographer I chose was Bill Miller. His work is also abstract and process wise reminds me a lot of my own work. Broken Polaroids, uses an inconsistent method of image making to produce abstract color studies. I like how he called the process a “photographic painting machine.” I’m really interested in that bridge between painting and photography. What I like about his images is the push and pull between how much information is actually recorded on the film versus how much the work becomes just the layers of color emulsion. While I’m drawn to the images on a purely visual basis because I like the simplicity of the colors and the unexpected alterations, the more I think about the process the more I get from the images. Personally as an artist I’m interested in capturing what the eye doesn’t see with my camera whether it be a snapshot of a fleeting moment, or drawing attention to something that’s overlooked. A broken camera in essence takes away the absolute of the photographic image. Instead of rendering what it sees, it picks and chooses what information it retains just like our brain does to what our eyes see. When I think about these images from that mindset, they really become something much more interesting.