VMFA

Gaylen Morgan "Outside/In"

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I decided to blog about this photographer because he is a narrative photographer and since I am going along the lines of narrative photography in my series I wanted to include him. After looking at his images I started thinking that maybe I should begin taking photographs or even video-taping the environment and atmosphere in which I am taking my self-portraits to give the photos a deeper meaning. I thought that maybe this would help the viewer acquire a better understanding of the series and add another element to the photographs. A lot of windows are used in his series to provoke the outside in theme which enhances the light and mood of the photographs. I feel like all my images do not necessarily have to have a figure present because a lot of the time the space we live in is empty. So I was thinking of showing it in its natural uninhabited state..however, I do not want the series to become about specifically the environment. But it might work if I integrate them well.

John Seward Figurative Distortions

Well I found this realllly awesome website called P H O T O B I S T R O. Hopefully Im not last to hear about it or something. But it has all of these really artistic photographers from all over and I found John Seward who manipulates the human body and it just reminds me of my thought process when I was doing my body image series. Looking at these images has provoked me to continue with that series...I guess on the side or something.
“The idea that puts the form together cannot itself be the form. It is above the form, and is its essence, the universal in the individual, or the individuality itself - the glance and the exponent of the indwelling power.” Samuel Coleridge, The English Essays of the Harvard Classics.

Alessandro Bertolotti

I found Alessandro Bertolotti when I was on the blog site and just searching photography blogs. A blog about him and a book he wrote came up and I became interested immidiately. The book he wrote is called "Books of Nudes" by Alessandro Bertolotti. It is pretty much a collaboration of nude books put together in one gigantic book...
"For all of us who just love anthologies of books, there is a great new one from Abrams called Books of Nudes by Alessandro Bertolotti. Bertolotti, according to the flap copy, has one of the largest collections of erotic books and photographs in Europe. Who his American equivalent would be, I do not know but Bertolotti has brought together more than 160 books and divides them into thematic sections under chapter headings like: Pictorialism, Glamour, European Avant-Garde, Nazism, Gay Pride and others." http://5b4.blogspot.com/2007/11/books-of-nudes-by-alessandro-bertolotti_16.html
So after reading the blog I googled him and found his website, which reminds me of the same concept I am doing with different aesthetics. I really enjoyed looking at all of him images and they became inspiring to me that a straight on photograph is so beautiful and I do not always have to aesthetically enhance it to make it beautiful. Some of his images he deals with relationships, all nude, and mostly women. They are very bohemian looking with natural backgraounds such as trees and the beach, which I am fond of both.

Artist Lecture: Justine Kurland

Before Justin Kurland lectured, I was so excited to her speak about her work and just show it in general. I think I was so excited because I could really relate to her images and the process she takes and the way she thinks and feels about nudes. The entire lecture I was in awe because she was fascinating to me especially when she elaborated and told the story behind the images and how she went to nudist colonies, etc. Her lecture was inspiring, therefore I was even more excited to meet with her indiviually the next day. However, I think I held too high of expectations. I did not really get anything out of our "individual" meeting because she wanted to critique Adriana and I together even though our work is completely opposite. So we were both a little frustrated. Then my computer kept freezing so Justine got very short with me and pretty much wanted told me what she wanted and that was it. She did say though that my work reminded her of hers when she was in college and that it was a "rite of passage" to take pictures of yourself...something every woman goes through. So I was happy about that...until I found out she said the same thing to Amanda. It was an experience, not necessarily a bad one though.

November - First Friday

I attended First Friday last friday and wanted to talk about the exhibit in 1708 Gallery, which completely amazed me. I had heard from a couple of people that the show was incredible, but it was not until i walked into the gallery that I was in total amazement. I could not really understand what the big piles of white grain were on the floor, until I overheard someone talking about it. Then I was just in a state of confusion because I could not understand how the artist screenprinted images on very fine grains of salt. I walked around and studied the images for a long time, not even paying attention to the work on the walls. It was so neat to look down in a gallery instead of staring straight in front of you at the wall. I loved the dim lighting and the mellow mood the entire gallery presented right as I walked in the door. I was really impressed with this show because a lot of the times I have a hard time liking or understanding most of the work 1708 shows. However, Young Kim: Portraits in Granular Salt and Red Clay Powder, was very impressive.

Artist Lecture: Su Friedrich

I was really excited to hear Su Friedrich lecture. When I first heard her name and knew she was coming, I thought she was a photographer. But a little later i learned she was a filmmaker, which was even more appealing to me. The images of the baby and the beach attracted me to her work. I looked up her work before the lecture, which excited me even more. I could not wait to hear her talk about her work and show it. Everything she showed thursday really interested me. I especially loved "Hide and Seek" and "Sink or Swim." Friedrich's concepts behind her films were so simple yet very profound. The way she explored womanhood and the technique in which she explored it was really intelligent. Her work, in a way, reminded me of mine and how I view womanhood. Even the way she shot her films reminded me of my work. I got a very nostaligic and eerie feel from her films. Overall, I was very impressed and thoroughly enjoyed listening to her talk.

Zura Arabidze

http://matiss-100.photosight.ru/
Amazing photographer, but cant read the website. Different language. :(

Michael McCarthy

My path toward becoming a photographer and artist began in ernest after spending a tranquil eighteen years living in Ithaca, New York, Since that time I've been lucky enough to be able to see and live in many different and mostly exciting environments.
Studies often provided opportunities to discover new communities: bringing me to Vermont, Paris, Philadelphia and Rome. I received a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from the University of Vermont and then a Master of Fine Arts degree from Tyler School of Art in Photography where I also devoted considerable time to Printmaking.
This is a series of photographs made with hand made pinhole cameras. These images are from two different large scale cameras in which I use paper negatives of 20 x 24" and 10 x 24" size. Pinhole work has fascinated me for some fifteen years. The quality, clearly, is not so finely detailed as it is with professional 35 mm cameras but I feel the pinhole look--which comes from long exposures of a minute or more as well as the strange way in which space is often depicted--gives a powerful quality to the images.

Keith Carter

Called "a poet of the ordinary" by the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Carter's haunting, enigmatic photographs have been widely exhibited in Europe, The U.S., and Latin America. They are included in numerous permanent collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the George Eastman House; the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston; and the Wittliff Collection of Southwestern and Mexican Photography at Southwest Texas State University.

I found Keith Carter when I was just browsing the internet for artists that interested me. Carters "opera" nude monographs is what made me choose to blog about him. I found the way he photographed the nudes, both men and women, very intriguing because they spoke to me in a way nudes normally do not. It was as if he was telling a story, something I am trying to portray with my images. Even though right now I am proceeding along the narrative photography with my work, I want to end up portraying emotion and a story people can relate to within my images. After viewing more and more narrtive photographers and looking at my older work, I want to being using nudes more in my images because right now I feel like I am restricting myself since I am not photographing nudes.

Lawrence Ripsher

I am a British photographer currently residing in Singapore. I shoot a diverse range of subjects from portraiture, street, ballet to storytelling / narrative photography. My work is well known in online communities - in addition to being published in several online and print publications, my galleries on Pbase have received over 1.8M hits in the past 18 months and am regularly ranked amongst the site’s most popular (although these days that doesn't mean quite what it used to). I consider myself to be an 'experimental' photographer.

So I just found Lawrence and to tell you the truth, I have no idea how his images came up on my screen...probably from google. But the more and more I looked into his narrative photography, the more I was overwhelmed with his imagery, because I found it so amazing... His images are on the same level as Bill henson (for me at least). I am mostly focusing on his "scared of the dark" series, which blew me away. The way the figures intereacted with the environment they were in really spoke to me and told me a story...which I am trying to achieve this semester with my images. Narrative photography is something I have never really looked in to and has never really existed to me in that sense. The more and mroe I am reseraching it, the more appealing it is to me and the more I want to make strong images like the ones that have been influencing me.

Bill Henson- ambiguous spaces

"Australian artist Bill Henson is a passionate and visionary explorer of twilight zones, of the ambiguous spaces that exist between day and night, nature and civilization, youth and adulthood, male and female. His photographs of landscapes at dusk, of the industrial 'no-man's land' that lies on the outskirts of our cities, and of androgynous girls and boys adrift in the nocturnal turmoil of adolescence are painterly tableaux that continue the tradition of romantic literature and painting in our post-industrial age. Were it not for Henson's primary, almost devotional need to elicit empathy for his troubled human subjects, there's a feeling that nothing would prevent the black in his photographs from completely absorbing his attention and extinguishing his work."

I recently discovered Bill Henson when I was in the book store. His images caught my attention immidiately because of the feeling they gave me. I want his inspiration to show in my images because of the way he uses the body to interact with the spaces they are in. The dark nature of his photographs also intrigued me because of the ambiguity revealed with the lighting and the atmosphere. Even though his main focus is adolescents and youth, I feel like I can relate to his work because of the way he uses the body within the frame, expecially when there are two figures in the frame. But most of all, the emotions his photographs give is what has really drawn me in to research his furthur.

Pat Brassington

"Brassington's images are at once charming and menacing. They rouse a sense of disquiet as they subtly and humorously scratch at the underbelly of the human condition. In her unique way, Brassington blurs the boundaries of the real and imagined, stripping photography of its authority, bestowing it instead with the logic of dream or fantasy."

I chose to write about Pat Brassington because I read about her in another book I just bought recently. The book talks about how she treats the human body and the boundaries she breaks. I have included some of her images because they portray what I am feeling and trying to associate with my own images. I am very fond of the simplicity her images hold, however they are powerful. In other words, they are simple but not simple. She has led me to explore more of the boundaries which I am upholding in front of myself to furthur explore how I can communicate a powerful feeling through simple body language.

After Thoughts

After my last critique, I was a little surprised by the class' reactions to my images. Do not get me wrong, I was very happy, I just was not expecting them to want to see me in the pictures or in my work. That was what I was straying away from because I did not wantmy work to become redundant and continue along the self-portrait line. However, I have continued to use myself and kind of view my personal life if you will say, from an outsiders point of view. I do not want this to be a point blank documentary of my everyday life because I know it is hard to keep someone really truly interested in your personal life. Therefore I want to keep the subject open for interpretation and let the audience have their own point of view, even if something important or at all is going on. I figured I will just keep shooting and see what comes of the images. I would like to continue using the holga, but I also do not want the aesthetic to overpower the actual image, so I have decided to also shoot with other cameras. Anyways, here are some new images I scanned in recently.

Shanna Jackson

I am very intrigued with a lot of my classmates work, especially Shanna Jackson. I chose her because I have never been in a class with her before, therefore I have never really seen her work before or how she works. I was drawn to her work because I felt like it contained the same aesthetic I have always been drawn to; dreamy and mesmorizing. The images she showed spoke to me even though I do not really know anything about her personal life, except that she has recently given birth. I found this aspect of her life profound because I felt like she wants to portray that side of her life, but at the same time, doesnt. I enjoy the stories that she has told through her imagery, even though she may not have a concrete concept or story line. The image of her bed with the projection on her wall told me a lot about her, all through one image. I thought in order for her to do this, her work portrays a strong emotion within it and I look forward to seeing more.

"The Fall" Jane Burton

I came across Jane Burton recently when I was on amazon.com and found a book called "Erotic Ambiguities." The cover photograph, which amazed me, was by Jane Burton. Her photography drew me in to buying the book and furthur researching her as an artist. Come to find out, her work possesses the same ideal and concept as I am trying to possess. She focuses on the emotion of the female nude by placing them in an isolated environment. This semester I am still playing around with this idea and the concept of body language, something I have never focused on before. I want to bring depth and meaning into my work while presenting some sort of emotion to the viewew, whether I am the subject or someone else unknown. I find Burton's work intriguing because her images are very ambiguous, presenting different meanings to them, however they are all powerful and make you want to keep looking. Burton also explores the psychological concept of the female body leaving the viewer unaware of the outcome of the image, which I have found very helpful in my research thus far.

Anxious Bodies

"Anxious Bodies brings together the work of three photo-artists, Jane Burton, Pat Brassington and Jane Eisemann, whose images all converge through literal or abstract depictions of the body. The bodies they photograph are presented as morphed, or structured so that the figure is distorted or altered. This exhibition highlights not only the diverse manner in which three photographers approach the subject, but also examines the connections between their practices. Their work is edgy and seductive, sometimes anxious in spirit, intent and meaning, as their images are infused with black humour or dark mystery.

Jane Burton, for example, presents the female figure in unusual and isolated environments, constructing a kind of psychological drama where the future is unsure. Her moody and filmic photographs are imbued with a sense of mystery, where the body denotes an unspoken desire. Each series is presented as a quasi-narrative as the photographs are linked in look and content with female forms invariably placed alongside black and white landscapes, empty interiors, deserted car parks or glowing orange public telephone boxes.

Bodies and other anthropomorphic shapes occupy the spaces of Brassington’s digitally constructed images. Her work is about the body and of a modern surrealist sensibility. Brassington’s images are characteristically dreamlike; yet, at times they can be quite abject and confronting. Her recent photo-works, however, are lighter in tone although they are still creepy and perverse as they continue to slither in and out of fixed readings. She achieves this by using odd and thoughtful titles, which redirect and enhance the meaning of her work.

In contrast to Brassington’s mischievous compositions, Jane Eisemann’s work is moody and dark. Like Brassington, Eisemann uses digital tools to charge her works with ambiance and suggestion. In recent work Eisemann is combining figures with architectural interiors she sourced in Vietnam and Japan and presenting them in a triptych format. Here, veins are discernible through skin that is shot through with a bloody red tinge and heads are metaphorically cut off at the neck by the frame of the image.

The three artists in Anxious Bodies all use the body to explore different ideas. Their work acknowledges the history, theory and weight of the body as subject and they explicitly employ it as a point of comparison and conjunction. Burton and Eisemann do this by pairing the human form respectively with landscapes and architectural interiors. Brassington, however, adds titles that both deflect the viewer away from the content and add further meaning, using the body as foil, a known entity that becomes strangely unknown. "
http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/media/archives_2003/anxious_bodies

Continuation of influential artists

I am posting these images by Jeanne Dunning because the first time I came across her was last semester and I stared at her images in awe. I could not figure out why and what that "thing" was on this womans body. So I researched her a little bit more and gradually began understanding Dunning's thought process and the way she views the human body in general, female or male. These images above almost portray the female body as a burden or something we have to deal with. It gives me a sense of destruction or something that we are always going to have to live with. After I discovered Jeanne is when I began my self portrait series in which I dealt with female identity and accepting you for who you are. So many of us are unsatisfied with our physicalities, most of which are women. I was inspired with Dunning's work because I feel through her series "The Blob," she expresses how women feel, more specifically, "Jeanne Dunning's work in photography and video investigates the body and its physical boundaries as a metaphor for psychological transgression. She initiates simple interventions with the body that blur the distinction of interior and exterior self. The body becomes landscape, food repository and corporal layering of flesh and fluids." (http://www.ktfgallery.com/artists/jeanne_dunning/?show=home) Through her work, I interpret the body as just an outer physical "thing" made up of flesh, whereas most of us think of it as who we are and what differenciates us from the person next to us.