Posts

Martin Parr and society.

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 While exploring the Magnum Photos website, I came across an article on Martin Parr, who became an associate in 1988 and served as the agency's president from 2013 to 2017. His series, in plain view, will be showcased in Paris in a few months as a memorial, which is described as a groundbreaking observation of society. In his own words Parr , took society's natural prejudice and gave it a twist. This created fictional  The reason this artist is relevant to my personal project is in part due to his ability to capture the interaction of society and their environment. This is most relevant to my personal project, as I chose the nearest coffee shop to our campus as my subject. In his photography, Parr captures English culture through the curation of the environment in his images. A series of his that is closely related to the direction that I would like to take my personal project is his 'Common Sense' series, that documented consumeristic culture. The reason that this seri...

Light Drawing and Long Exposure: David Lebe

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 For this project, the person I looked more into for Light drawing inspiration was David Lebe. David's black and white drawing images from 1979-1980 are primarily interesting to me compared to his older work as he began to integrate more into the composition of the images. I enjoy the implementation of backgrounds and scenic scenes that he includes in his drawings.  Another aspect of his images that I enjoy is the attention to detail for smaller details, such as shirt creases and seams. This adds depth to the image and elevates it from a basic silhouette to a more detailed drawing.  Looking at his light drawing images from 1982, they include more of the object rather than the outline of the figures that he did in his early works. His usage of long exposure allows for more details of the object to be seen. While there are some aspects of the darkness of his early work that I enjoy, I can appreciate the visuals of the objects that are seen in his later work. 

Lee Freelander: Reflections

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 Often, we discuss how cars aren't the most interesting thing that we can photograph as they're generally similar. Freelander has an entire series where he photographs from inside of his car called " America by Car". This series was interesting to me because of the composition and framing of the images and how different each one was.  As someone who road trips often the beauty of traveling by car is being able to see geographical and infrastructure differences across the country. This type of photography is also unique because being in a car that is constantly in motion means you're constantly getting a new angle or image and most likely will not be the same from one second to the other. This is where framing really plays a role in these images where those same parts of cars that would be boring otherwise create a division that separate aspects and create a completely different image then what is on the other side of the frame. Also, in the topic of framing Freela...

Steve McCurry: Color and light

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  There is something interesting when you're just looking into the eyes of someone. No expression just eye contact. it's interesting that McCurry tends to shoot most of his portraits with little to no facial expression. In the past we have discussed how eyes are the windows into our soal and I believe that that is something that McCurrys images show. Living in places like the U.S. where we live in individualistic societies and with limited intimate human interaction making eye contact with anyone can be seen as uncomfortable, However the way that Steve's portraits intentionally put you in the place where you have to share a moment with the person in the photograph even for a second. McCurry also does a great job of including cultures from many different parts of the world.  In a world full of conflict McCurry photos are great story tellers. it is interesting that one of his first and most popular image of a young girl from Afghanistan shows that creating of bridges to con...

What Photography Means to me

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There are so many different ways that photography is used in our day to day lives. Social media platforms like Instagram consist of millions of pictures uploaded by users all over the world with the goal of sharing with friends and sometimes strangers. Photography has so many different meaning but to me photography has always been a way of documenting moments. Like Marvin Heiferman mentioned, photographs do things to us " they engage us optically, neurologically, intellectually, emotionally, viscerally, physically". There are photographs that have lingering feelings that you will carry with you.  In a world where photography is accessible to everyone not all photographs evoke the same type of emotions. We can see the image that Marvin used in his book to show the mass number of images all in one space, but what makes that photograph art compared to others? Spending so much time looking at images from textbooks, galleries, museums and social media you have to ask yourself, wha...