While researching the artist Annette Messanger for my final project I stumbled upon this contemporary artist. After looking through some of her work, I found this image to be the most enticing. It is 1 of 5 NYC images that she has taken, where she tries to document people in their everyday lives. The illumination coming from the center light creates a silhouette of the two figures in the foreground. The dark that melts down from the background surrounding the lake creates this misty, ominous feeling. The depth of field allows the viewer to see detail in the foreground, creating a smooth and soft texture for the rocks and proceeds back to give us a slight hint of trees and land on the other side of the lake. I really love the sense of cold you get from the hues she picked up within the image. The light is the only thing radiating a sense of warmth within the image, picking up subtle hues of yellow and gold. I especially love how she focuses in on the lake and everything surrounding that main focus is out of focus, especially since the light is the first thing that captures one's attention.
Jen Bandini stated that she is an artist for being a photographer and a painter. She likes to bring a painterly quality to her work and I feel that she did achieve that in this photo. She likes to document people in their everyday lives and that is what she bases her work off of. I find this particular image to be a success and I hope to see her work one day in person.
This is her work: http://jenbandini.com/index.php
After looking through all of her work in her NYC portfolios I found that she has s very wide range of subjects. It's interesting because I don't see a specific topic that she is covering in this body of works other than the fact that they all take place in NYC. That fact alone is surprising enough because some of these pictures (including the one Liz posted above) really don't look like they were taken in a city at all. There are some shots where she has close ups on animals with a sky or landscape in the back which I assumed were at a zoo if they were real animals, or at a museum if they're fake. It's hard to tell. Another part that I liked about her photos were that some of them have this weird depth of field to them giving the objects an odd scale. There is one shot of a subway which looks like it could be a toy train, and another shot or two taken at what looks to be a theater where the dancers on stage look like little figurines. Even though I don't really personally see her getting the documentation of peoples lives across, I still enjoy a good amount of her photos.
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ReplyDeleteI’m going to have to disagree with this post. Jen Bandini’s work brings up the concept of what I would like to call, “accidental art.” In other words, “why don’t I bring the camera with me today and I’ll take some random pictures here and there of my everyday experiences and later on we’ll see if anything comes out.” Honestly, many “art” photographers are undoubtedly dismayed by commercial photography’s depictions of the rich and famous and the extraordinarily beautiful. Nonetheless, there still remains an intention and know-how behind the lens beyond the simple snapping of the shot.
ReplyDeleteWith Jen Bandini’s work, much of it resembles the washed out film prints of our parents' photo albums. Moreover, her compositions look amateur and snapshot-like. In fact, many of her New York City collections appear as if they came directly from Mom’s photo album documenting her trip to New York. To be blunt, little in each photo demonstrates any creativity or voice beyond the image.
Additionally, her set titled, Domestic Bliss could more aptly be titled The Depressing Domestic. As with her others, the entire series was again shot in a snapshot, documentary style that blandly and depressingly depicts Bandini and her lover. Similar to her New York set, these again feel as though they are from a dusty old photo album with little thread to either thematically or artistically link the images. And although I could break out the artsy-fartsy thinking cap and come up with some methods of linking each image to the next, these photographs are simply too down right uninspiring through and through.
Simply put, this work is art for art’s sake with little lasting value beyond the artist’s initial self-expression.