My favorite photographer (maybe of all time) is Sally Mann. I realize this is very cliché but I the way she captures images of her children reminds me of my childhood growing up by the lake. I think that Mann’s photography shows a euphoric kind of simple lifestyle. Her photography illustrates the life I would like to live. She really captures the emotion and naiveness of childhood, she photographs her children in such a pure and beautiful way. I love how a lot of her photographs how an underlying social meaning such as sex, puberty, fertility, death, etc. I think that Sally Mann has real eye for photography. I like that she uses a large format camera. I also enjoy that fact that Sally Man uses black and white photography as opposed to color. One of the main reasons I like Mann is because she brings a new style to photography, its not just the same old portraits. I think her book Immediate Family is a cool and interesting way for her to have a photo album of her kids. I think people who put down Mann’s work or call it child pornography are seriously delusional. Childhood is a time to be free and natural and not worry about the responsibilities of adulthood. I think it would be a cool project for Sally Mann to do the same sort of project with her grandkids one day. I do not think she should try and recreation the photographs she has already done but create new ones. The kind of summer kids live without television and video recapture in the present.

George Eastman Show at State Museum

I went to the State Museum and saw the George Eastman show. I thought that the George Eastman House Collection was amazing!! So many big names and such a diverse collection it was breath-taking. I do wish they had a few more modern photographers such as Nan Goldin, Sally Mann, or Gregory Crewdson. I really enjoyed the Edward Curtis pieces at the show. I think his re-creations of Native America life are a beautiful portrayal and exquisite way to pay tribute to the Native Americans. Seeing his photographs up close was so much more powerful then seeing them on a computer screen. Esipermi-Comanche was a beautiful portrait of a Native American man. It gives me an overwhelming seen of serenity but at the same time makes me feel guilty for what the European settlers or “our” ancestors did to this lovely people. It was also great to see another one of my favorites Margaret Bourke White there. Margaret has such an eye for framing, geometry, lines, and point of view. I really enjoy her fascination of industrious things and the way she captures them. I also like Bourke White because of her ability to be very versatile as a photographer. There was a good example in the exhibit of her versatility via the photograph entitled At the time of the Louisville Flood. The picture not only depicts irony and a political stance but also is nicely thought out and photographed. Bourke White had a good eye for seeing photographic opportunities. While I saw many of my old favorites such as Robert Frank, Edward Weston, Lewis Hine, Coburn, etc I also found a few “new” favorites. The first one being Lawrence McFarland and his photograph entitled Wheatfield. It was so beautiful and pure but at the same time almost abstract. The movement in the photograph was so rhythmic and brilliant. I also thoroughly enjoyed Paul Caponigro’s image called RTNE 44 Vicinity. The framing was terrific as well as the contrast. I also believe it was a good way to portray the ever modernizing America and the flashy, gaudy things Americans think are great. Another photograph I really enjoyed was Untitled # 2810 by Todd Hido. I thought the light of the trailer was great. Hido romantized a trailer making it looking peaceful and like inside was a nice place to be, safe from the night. The large format really did a lot for the piece as well. I think the show, as a whole was a perfect range of photographers and different photographic styles. I thought it was just great and have already gone back to see it for a second time.

Andrea Modica

Andrea Modica is a modern photographer. She got her bachelors degree at SUNY Purchase and her Masters at Yale. Andrea Modica shoots pretty much all of her photographs staged. Modica’s photographs have a certain eeriness or gothic, wasteland style to them. Modica shoots some of her photographs sort of out of focus kind of pictorial-ish, like the early work of Margaret Cameron. It is like she is making these gothic, run down scenes more idealized and whimsical even though the images are still disturbing to a degree. Modica’s photographs although depressing contain beautiful lighting and contrast. Her subject matter ranges from mostly people, to landscapes, to animal cadavers, etc. The overall theme of Modica’s work is probably death or desolate. Overall I think Modica’s photography works very well, especially her work in Treadwell and Fountain. Modica pays very special attention to lighting, the lighting in her images is always beautifully done. Modica also pays attention to the framing enhancing her overall composition. I love that she invents and creates her scenes. Modica’s work extracts an emotional response from the viewer. Her work is not only visually appealing, but also its oddness makes you want to keep looking. The fact that Modica uses a large format camera makes the detail extraordinary. I think Modica’s overall inventiveness and attention to the detail of the composition makes her photography not only visually interesting but work as art photography. I enjoyed her work overall, I think that she is a very brilliant photographer and cannot wait to see her future work.

NY Expressive Arts Workshop

NY Expressive Arts Workshop is holding a free workshop class that is to introduce people to the upcoming year long program. The free workshop days are June 18 and July 17th. It is a year program that happens one weekend every month that is suppose to be a pretty intense program. I know its not really a photo class, but alot of us are dabble in drawing and painting as well as photo. It is suppose to be an excellent program that teaches a bunch of different techniques. The teachers are well trained, most in art therapy( Elizabeth!) and each one has a different type of art method. I have heard its a really good opportunity for whoever is going to be around plus its free. Although there is an application process.

NYEA website : http://www.newyorkexpressivearts.com/

Anna and Bernhard Blume

Anna and Bernhard Blume are a husband and wife photographer duo, both born in Berlin in 1937. Their work is intriguing both because of its content and technique. All of their work they are the subjects of and featured in performing unfathomable tasks because of the laws of nature would normally prohibit them. Most people today who shoot with digital SLR rely a lot on photoshop to get the same kind of freaky quality in their work as the Blumes have. The Blume’s however do not use any kind of digital camera or editing devices in their work and all of their work is show with black and white film using a large format camera. Their work is unique because of its strange content as you can see from the images above. A great deal of their work plays around with the slow motion stop action affect one can achieve with longer shutter speed times. The second image show above is a very good example of possibly shooting with a slower shutter speed. I am going to assume that somehow the potatoes have been suspended in the air because they are the clearest and crispest things in the image while the figure (which is Anna herself) is clear for the most part until you get to her head and arms which are very blurry and look they’re moving. The images above this one as well look as if the potatoes where some how made stationary and the figure moving using a slow shutter speed to get this freaky effect. For the day that they were making these images this was pretty difficult to accomplish and it required a lot of time and effort to get that one shot. Rolls upon rolls of film had to be developed and sifted through first before you even knew if you had the perfect shot you were hoping to achieve, whereas today with the click of a button our image is presented right in front of us on a tiny LCD screen. While their work for the most part is very amusing and fun to look at and you can help but smile in wonder at how it was made the print quality and technique in the printing are amazing and largely go unnoticed because of how easy modern day technology makes image making today.

William Wegman

William Wegman is probably my favorite contemporary artist. The most obvious reason for my love would be the subject matter of his work, his gorgeous Weimaraners, however this is not the only reason. While does shoot his dogs and to many people just makes cute images with his dogs in funny costumes and poses, there is a lot more to it than that. For any of you that are reading this who have pets of your own and have tried to use them in projects, it is much harder than it looks isn’t it. Anyone that was in the intermediate class this semester or Mindy’s beginning class has heard a story or two about the monsters of mine that I like to call dogs. It is next to impossible to get them to do what you want when you want and if my two who pose and behave half as good as Wegman’s I would die a happy woman. I get a lot of inspiration from his work with his dogs. His work though is much more than just photos of his dogs, for example in his one shot Trainer, the image speaks volumes. His dog is depicted here with some kind of headdress and human clothes with human arms what appears to be a leash or tie out of some sort. This image is hilarious for its content but can also be interpreted to mean more and questions arise like why is the dog the trainer? Why is the dog half human? What does this say about the dog/owner relationship? When you focus on the image itself the quality of the photo is amazing. Taken in 1999 as one of his large format Polaroid images it is amazing. When you think of Polaroid instantly what comes to mind for me is a dinky camera I had when I was about 12 years old and the film came in packs of 12 and you had to wait forever for this tiny like 4x4 picture to develop. Looking at his work with the Polaroid’s, unless I was told that that was the camera the image was created I never would have know. Aesthetically the image is just pleasing to the eye because the lighting is very strategically used and the color scheme plays well with it.

Cindy Sherman

The work of Cindy Sherman for some reason always reaches out to me and I find myself drawn to her than most of the other artists we have looked at this semester and last. I think this is in large part because of the content of her work. She for the most part plays a different character in every one of her shots. Most of my work over the last year has focused mainly around my fiancé and my best friend and in each project the two of them have played different characters. This in my opinion is one of the strongest factors in her work, she can play all of these different characters and in every single shot portray a different woman, but the women are all the same. That speaks volumes when you think about what it says about each individual person perhaps being 5 or 6 different people all rolled into one fun crazy package. Specifically looking at her photo named untitled 276 we see a very interesting kind of character. Grotesque is the first word that comes to mind when I look at this photograph. This is largely because of the position and posture of the figure combined with her attire. She depicts herself in this shot with tons of make up to make her look very aged along with cloths that are very unflattering and a position that is very unladylike. The shot itself is not very pleasing to the eye and I think that is why I am so drawn to it out of all of her other work. Even though it is not very pleasing to the eye the photo just oozes sex and it is a real portrayal of what a real woman’s body looks like. It makes you really think about what real women are supposed to be like and because of that it is a very successful image.