Influencial artists

My biggest influence has always been the nude human body and the way it is able to express itself. I began photographing the human form abstractly two years ago, focusing on how the raw form can be shaped and viewed as something out of the ordinary. Becoming infatuated with the subject, I wanted to focus on it entirely without any negative space, and I achieved this through the square format of the polaroid. I am most influenced by artists who do use the polaroid because of aesthetic reasons and because I like the tight composition and how the body can encompass the whole frame. Robert Mapplethorp's "Ken Moody" reveals the shapes and lines of a black body softly lit against a black background, Ralph Gibson also works with nude profiles, focusing on the lines they create against a white background. jeanne Dunning is also an artist I find influential because I feel like I can relate to her and how she feels about the human emotion in general. She plays with the psychological connotations of the human body and presents them as irrational and uncontrolled, as seen her series "The Blob." They are many artists out there who do similar work as I do, but i always try to make it unique with my own style, as most of us would like to do.

Second Blog

So originially I was going to write about this new Holga camera I bought off Amazon.com because I was really excited about it and can not wait to take photos with it, but now my mind has changed. I have been a little not into school lately because I had my wisdom teeth taken out plus a lot of complications with it, but today I hit reality. Actually it was tonight, in our pro practice class we all have to take. Out of the class, I learned that I, along with the majority of the class, have no idea what we want to do with our lives and even if we want to continue with photography. It kind of scares me a little bit to think about it because I am a senior and will be graduating in May...so what am I supposed to do? because obviously photographers do not make any money and that can not be your sole job. hmm. Along with that, I feel like we are all being deterred away from being photographers because over and over again, we are being told that A) we wont make any money and B) we most likely wont be successful. So why are we in school? I dont get it. I am just a little frustrated with the whole subject because in the back of my head I know I want to work for a magazine or do commercial work and that could possibly be my means of living, but if not I would have to find another career and do photography on the side. And I do not want to be a teacher or a freelancer, so where does that leave me. Even tongiht, Stretch, our teacher, is 44 years old, has traveled all over the world doing different assignments and now he is basically back at square one...doing only 2 jobs in a 7 month time period. Well I def. dont want to live like that. So maybe I need to rethink some things. I just feel like we are constantly straying away from what we originally wanted to do and now all of us are back at the beginning...hopefully I will figure something out by May.